This spring a delegation of Howe Writing Center consultants participated in the annual East Central Writing Centers Association (ECWCA) Conference, held this year at Wabash College in Indiana.
Each year ECWCA hosts a conference for consultants across a six-state region. The event serves as a hub for writing center professionals to share expertise and collaborate on new ideas. The conference aims to advance literacy development by fostering communication, encouraging scholarship, and promoting effective practices across all writing centers.
This year’s conference requested proposals considering the writing center as an overlapping and dynamic ecosystem. Through this lens the theme sought critical thought about what it means to create organic growth within this unique environment. What does it mean to grow within a writing center, writing program, or other writing related initiative?
Brady Hall and Emma Bapst, both graduate student consultants, led a session on strategies for addressing genAI use in writing consultations, drawing upon their research and experiences conversing with writers about the issue. Said Emma, “We found it very helpful to hear a diverse number of ideas and opinions in this new digital landscape that writing centers must navigate.
Speaking to the roundtable structure of the presentation Brady added, "Emma and I wanted to use our presentation as a space to share our stories and invite the stories of others. We learn best from one another."
Fellow graduate student Sean Steele examined the various roles a consultant must perform and how they are mediated by online writing center spaces. “I've been working in writing centers for a long time, and one of the central topics I find myself coming back to again and again is the roles of/uses of technology in writing center work - what do we use, why do we use it, and are we being sufficiently reflective in our use of it?”
Undergraduates Kerigan Moore, Brooklynn Quattrone, Charlotte Melville, and Felix Karmilowicz held a roundtable on agenda-setting, presenting data gathered in the writing center and using that to inform scenarios that use agenda-setting to overcome specific consulting challenges.
Said Charlotte, “I find presenting to be a fulfilling and engaging process that requires you to put yourself in other people's perspective. At ECWCA, presenting is often about finding commonalities and differences amongst our shared writing centers and making sense of them.”
Rounding out the presentations, undergraduate Isaiah Serra held a workshop on providing feedback for creative writing, using the framework of the Lerman Method. By advocating for a more specialized consulting strategy his work encourages growth between writing centers and the creative arts.
The event challenged the consultants to view their work through fresh eyes. Charlotte recalled being surprised by the creativity on display: "In one session, we played with playdough and wrote comics... in another, I learned what philosophy has to say about our online systems. It was a good reminder that there is always more to learn." For those presenting their own research, the regional stage provided a welcoming entry point into academic scholarship. "The ECWCA was a very supportive and friendly environment for presenters," Sean reflected, suggesting that such gatherings are "great places to cut one's teeth on presenting scholarship in their field."
The students reported that the conference was an important personal and professional milestone: "I loved meeting writing center staff, consultants, and administrators from throughout the region," Brady noted. "We all had different but overlapping experiences to share and that was exciting and cathartic." That sense of community was echoed by Kerigan, who found that the experience of traveling to present with a group created the opportunity for bonding with her fellow students. "ECWCA is the perfect opportunity to have a deeper sense of belonging at the HWC," she said.
