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2004 IWCA Conference

INTRODUCTION | INSTITUTE LEADERS | INSTITUTE PARTICIPANTS | TOPICS AND SCHEDULE

Institute Leaders

Drawn from community colleges, a secondary school, and universities of various sizes, the institute's leaders have deep and varied experience within the profession.

The leaders will all be in residence throughout the week--leading workshops, participating in discussions, meeting individually and in small groups with participants, and doing everything they can to make this institute a collegial, valuable, and fun learning experience.

Co-Chairs

Since 1999, Anne Ellen Geller has been Director of the Writing Center and Writing Program at Clark University, where she also teaches writing classes, including a literacy class that incorporates community engagement. She is the co-recipient -- with Gino DiIorio/Theater Arts -- of Clark's Seymour N. Logan Faculty Fellowship (2004-2006). As part of a Carnegie Foundation funded initiative, she has, for the past two years, worked with high school literacy coaches in the Worcester Public Schools. Her essay, "What’s Cool Here?”: Collaboratively Learning Genre in Biology," is forthcoming in Genre Across the Curriculum. She is currently writing about how we experience time in the writing center. She has been the Chair of the Northeast Writing Centers Association and she hosted the 2001 NEWCA Conference at Clark University. She received an IWCA Dissertation Research Grant in 1999.

Paula Gillespie has directed the Ott Memorial Writing Center at Marquette University for over twenty years – and still loves doing it. Her writing center recently moved from a fifteen-year "temporary" home on the outskirts of campus into a new technology-rich library right in the heart of campus. She is the co-author, with Neal Lerner, of The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring and the co-editor of Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation, winner of the International Writing Centers Association's Outstanding Scholarship Award. She has published book chapters on pedagogy, feminist cyberscapes, voice, and working with ESL students, along with a book on James Joyce's Ulysses. With Brad Hughes of Madison, Wisconsin, she co-chaired and organized the last Summer Institute and serves as the immediate past president of the International Writing Centers Association. Her current research involves a study of the long- and short-term effects of tutoring on tutors, and she is interested in the development of writing centers abroad. She hopes to get back soon to writing a biography of Mother Agnes Morrogh-Bernard, an Irish Sister of Charity.

Neal Lerner is Lecturer in Writing Across the Curriculum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-editor (with Beth Boquet) of The Writing Center Journal and co-author (with Paula Gillespie) of The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring, 2nd ed. His recent publications have appeared in The Writing Center Journal, The Writing Lab Newsletter, Composition Studies and several edited collections of writing center scholarship. He has twice won the IWCA Outstanding Scholarship award, and his current research focuses on the history of teaching both writing and science via “laboratory methods.” Neal was one of the leaders at the 2003 Summer Institute in Madison, WI, and is excited to have the opportunity once again to talk, listen, and learn about writing centers with next summer’s participants and leaders.

Leaders

Michele Eodice is the director of the writing center at the University of Kansas, where she also teaches a peer tutoring course and a technical writing course. She is the associate editor of development for the Writing Center Journal and co-author of (First Person2): A study of co-authoring in the academy. In addition, Michele has published work in the areas of plagiarism, writing center administration, and writing groups. She has twice won the "closest to the pin" contest at her weekly golf league outing. Michele is an active board member with the International Writing Centers Association, the Midwest Writing Centers Association and the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing.

Dawn Fels set up The Writer's Room at University City High School four years ago and can speak to any facet of creating a writing center in an urban-suburban high school besieged by financial difficulties and poor public perception. Working closely with faculty and community volunteers, including professors and pre-service teachers from nearby Washington University, Dawn expanded the services offered to faculty and students at UCHS beyond the walls of the writing center to help educate faculty in the methods and benefits of conference teaching, raise awareness of the reading and writing connection across all curricular areas, and improve the reading and writing culture of the school. Dawn was a participant in last year's Summer Institute in Madison, WI, and describes her mantra as "subversive activism."

Carol Peterson Haviland is Professor of English, Writing Center Director, and WAC and Upper-Division Writing Coordinator at California State University, San Bernardino. She teaches undergraduate and graduate composition courses and is particularly interested in feminist theories, intellectual property, feminist theories, collaboration, writing centers, and WAC. She is co-editor of Teaching/Writing in the Late Age of Print and Weaving Knowledge Together: Writing Centers and Collaboration as well as articles in writing center and composition journals and is the Pacific Coast IWCA representative. Her current research is in two areas: concepts of intellectual property and ownership across disciplines and the shared spaces that writing centers, writing programs, and WAC are shaping.

Harvey Kail has been involved in writing centers since l977 when he directed a new writing center at Kishwaukee Community College in DeKalb, Illinois. He is currently director of the Writing Center at the University of Maine, where he is an Associate Professor of English. He began a career-long interest in peer tutoring and collaborative learning as a participant in the Brooklyn College Summer Institute in Training Peer Writing Tutors, directed by Kenneth A. Bruffee. Harvey has led workshops in the U.S. and in Europe on training peer writing tutors, and has published articles and reviews on writing centers and composition theory in the Writing Center Journal, The Writing Lab Newsletter, College English, College Composition and Communication, WPA, English Journal, Rhetoric Review, and in collected editions. With John Trimbur he coauthored Collaborative Learning in the Prentice Hall Resources for Writing series. His current research interests are in assessing the value of peer tutoring for former peer tutors and in the development of writing centers in European higher education.

Howard Tinberg is Director of the Writing Lab and Professor of English at Bristol Community College. He is the author of Border Talk: Writing and Knowing at the Two-Year College (NCTE, 1997) and Writing with Consequence: What Writing Does in the Disciplines (Longman, 2003). He currently edits the journal Teaching English in the Two-Year College (TETYC), published by the National Council of Teachers of English and is a member of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Executive Committee as well as the National Two-Year College English Executive Committee. He has published articles in several journals, including College Composition and Communication, College English, the Journal of Basic Writing, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College.

Jill Pennington is a Writing Professor and Writing Center Coordinator at Lansing Community College in Michigan. She teaches first year composition and preparatory writing in traditional, face-to-face settings, as well as on-line and in hybrid environments. Pennington was hired to coordinate LCC's Writing Center in 1997, but was not told until after accepting the position that the college had no space, no budget, and no staff for its proposed new Center. As a stereotypical Aries, Pennington opened a writing center anyway, one that gradually gained momentum and recently celebrated its 5th anniversary (Fall 2003). Pennington has also worked in writing centers in several other Michigan colleges, is former Coordinator of the Michigan State University Writing Center, founder of the Michigan Writing Centers Association and Past President of the East Central Writing Centers Association as well as its 2000 Conference Chair. Pennington currently serves as Secretary to the IWCA. She has served as a reviewer for the Writing Center Journal. In her ten years of involvement in the writing center community, she has delivered more than 40 conference presentations on various writing center topics at state, regional, and national conferences. She looks forward to talking with institute participants about issues related particularly to writing centers in two-year colleges.