In lieu of the traditional travel awards that NCPTW typically offers, this year, we decided to offer awards based on academic merit and relevance to writing centers and the conference theme. Peer tutors were invited to apply, and you can find the winners below. These emerging writing center scholars demonstrate the potential paths forward for writing center scholarship and the ways in which the field may change in the future.

Congratulations, all!

Chi Vu, Augustana University

Application excerpt: “…I realized that my previous topic on linguistic racism and personal experience connected with ELLs’ subterfuge and double-consciousness which dated back from Black Americans who tried to assimilate their actions into the ‘white standard’. The conference’s theme this year encouraged tutors to speak up about their experience and fight for a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable palace for both ELL tutors and tutees. As not every writing center has touched on this mission, sharing my story and research will help everyone get to know more about how to work with and how to appropriately support ELLs in the writing center. Language and writing would be much more beautiful if everyone learns how to embrace and appreciate the differences in the way people use them based on their backgrounds and cultures instead of ‘sanctifying’ a certain standard and trying to assimilate everyone into a certain framework. This conference’s theme paves a foundation for us to share our stories, become allies for tutors and tutees who have experienced the double-consciousness and subterfuge, and make the writing center a safe space for everyone.”

Olalekan Adepoju, University of Louisville

Application excerpt: “I believe my research connects to the conference theme, focusing specifically on how writing center tutors subvert best practices to fit the paradigm of synchronous and asynchronous writing consultations. The asynchronous mode of tutoring is a classic example of how most writing centers have subverted the profession’s axiomatic assumption: “our job is to produce better writers, not better writing” (North, 1984: 438) in efforts to successfully do their work during the pandemic. Although on the surface the asynchronous tutoring (also called written feedback) suggests that the tutor primarily focuses on making the writer’s draft better, writing center professionals have nevertheless adopted specific strategies to ensure that the asynchronous tutoring achieve the goal of producing better writers regardless of the subversion. One of these strategies used by writing tutors is to craft an expansive letter (headnote) that summarizes the kind of tutorial work done on writers’ draft, offering comments, praises and generative questions that help a writer to develop.”

Courtney Cook, Abilene Christian University

Application excerpt: As a tutor who was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic through a shift to online learning and tutoring, the switch to completely online resources was jarring. However, as I entered graduate school and began to transition back to face-to-face learning in Fall of 2020, I was surprised to see how active online, asynchronous tutoring and online resources were still being used in the writing center. I appreciated how our writing center adapted to include online resources while also encouraging face-to-face tutoring, but I could also see that there was tension between online tutoring and our writing center’s emphasis on, to paraphrase Stephen North’s iconic statement, making better writers, not just better papers.

Laura DeLuca, Binghamton University

Application excerpt: I have conducted this study while also considering both Binghamton University’s general demographic information as a predominantly white institution (PWI), and the demographics of writing center clients, from Spring 2020 to Spring 2021, as well as the vital historical context of the period in which we are living, which affects all tutoring sessions. Namely, I consider how the COVID-19 pandemic, racial upheaval (both BLM and Asian hate crimes), and rise in anti-trans bills in the south impact all tutoring sessions, whether that be in the actual content of the session, or the legibility of the identities of myself and/or my clients. I have chosen to test Freire’s teaching theories and apply them to my university’s writing center because no equivalent of tutoring models has yet been theorized, to combat oppressive tutoring practices. This is a dire gap in scholarship because tutors operate in a complex space of authority as instructors who are helping fellow students. My results demonstrate the importance of considering the sociocultural moment in which one is tutoring, and how more level conversations with tutors can increase their confidence in their learning and connection with their tutor.

Allison Wade, Purdue University

Application excerpt: Community writing centers are beneficial when available to incarcerated individuals during their reentry because literacy and education can completely change the path of a formerly incarcerated and/or homeless person. Literacy and writing shape their ability to gain employment. Often adults visit community writing centers and benefit from resume and job documentation assistance which is many times one of the firsts steps to reentry. I have seen first-hand the struggle of trying to gain employment with a criminal record and how homelessness can be a result of this. During my internship with a restorative justice mediation center, which was placed in the heart of a city filled with individuals experiencing homelessness, I saw some of the very barriers and challenges I had become so familiar with in research…The field of writing centers is often a place of scholarship and academia. Expanding writing centers into the community not only benefits the lives of certain vulnerable populations but extends research into a community that is often pushed aside. Writing centers have many of the resources to help vulnerable members of the community including tutors who have been trained to listen to and support writers when help is needed, the ability to conduct workshops on specific writing projects like job documentation or resumes, and access to literature or research to effectively expand this work into the community.