Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies
Amount Awarded: $3,871.94
Awarded for 2019-20
Title: Writing & Rhetoric Courses
In collaboration with the University Writing Center, this Dee Grant project will support two undergraduate courses in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies: WRTG 4020, a tutor-training colloquium with a diversity-training component, and WRTG 2905, a supplemental, studiostyle writing course. To aid curricular development, grant funds will allow for travel to two leading institutions in studio-style learning. Additionally, one guest scholar will share their expertise through a workshop on related theoretical and practical issues.
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We want to first take this opportunity to thank the Council of Dee Fellows again for awarding us a Dee Grant in 2019-2020. We—both faculty and students—are grateful for this generous support.
Our Dee Grant funded two initiatives that work together to support undergraduate learning at the University of Utah. The first initiative involves the growth of a studio-style writing support course entitled, WRTG 2905: Writing Collaborative. The second relates to the tutor training course required for all new writing tutors, WRTG 4020: University Writing Center Theory and Practice.
To grow the WRTG 2905 program into a more robust support opportunity for students at the U, Writing Center Director Anne McMurtrey traveled to two leading institutions in studio-style courses – Miami University (MU) in Oxford, Ohio and Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Washington.
On July 15-16, McMurtrey met with numerous members of the MU writing department including ESL Composition Coordinator Tony Cimasko and various studio leaders. There, Director McMurtrey learned about their studio courses, mainly geared toward English language learners, and compared their administrative, funding, and training models to those of the U. Then, on July 16, she met with well-published John Tassoni at the branch campus in Middletown, Ohio. John was eager to share how he created and promoted the studio program at their regional campuses and invited her to join the very useful listserv for studio coordinators and directors.
On July 25 and 26, McMurtrey met with WSU Writing Center Director Lisa Johnson-Shull, Studio Coordinators Brooklyn Walter and Hailey Roemer, and two undergraduate studio facilitators to discuss their university’s “Small-Group Tutorial Program.” McMurtrey saw how effective, successful studio models can differ from each other, as the WSU program’s model differed from that of Miami University.
These visits provided McMurtrey – and in turn the leadership of the University of Utah’s Writing & Rhetoric Department – ideas for funding the WRTG 2905 program, training its facilitators, and partnering with departments, centers, and programs that serve particular student populations on campus who might benefit most from such a writing support course.
The second part of our project included inviting a guest scholar to educate WRTG 2905 instructors and Writing Center tutors in antiracist practices. On September 27, 2019, Dr. Frances Condon, professor at the University of Waterloo, gave an address entitled, “And the World Won’t End:
Rewriting the Racial Imaginary in the Writing Centre and Classroom.” Originally, the intended audience for her talk was WRTG 4020 students, the undergraduate tutors in the writing center; however, the audience extended far beyond the writing center and indeed the department.
Participants from across campus – and the city – attended Dr. Condon’s talk.
After her address, Condon ate lunch with a few selected undergraduate students from the U and SLCC. Then participants were invited to attend Dr. Condon’s workshop, where attendees explored what antiracist institutions look like. This topic inspired conversations between Salt Lake Community College tutors and both undergraduate and graduate tutors from the University Writing Center, resulting in reflections about their interactions with student clients – how they challenge or are complicit in the hegemony, how language and power are intertwined, and how they can best support writers wanting to succeed within the hegemony – and push beyond it.
On October 17 – approximately three weeks after the event – Director Anne McMurtrey, graduate student Nina Feng, and Associate Professor Romeo Garcia co-facilitated a reflection session to discuss the issues addressed in Dr. Condon’s presentation and workshops. They led discussions based on antiracist theories and action-forward, concrete applications of Condon’s ideas.
That workshop, attended by approximately fifteen members of the Writing & Rhetoric Department, was rich in content. The leaders used Dr. Condon’s handout entitled “Making Anti-Racist Commitments Actionable,” charts on personal and institutional multicultural identity development, and a bibliography for further reading to guide the discussion. Attendees asked for clarification about systemic racism in the classroom and worked toward changes in their syllabi and their communication to integrate anti-racist pedagogies into their own classroom practices.
To recap our proposal, the Department of Writing & Rhetoric Studies (WRS) created two initiatives that were funded by this grant: 1) piloting a small-group tutorial course where all students – particularly at-risk populations, international and first-generation college students, and underrepresented populations – receive supplemental writing support in a studio-style environment, and 2) the improvement of the tutor-training course to include topics of race, power, privilege, and antiracist approaches to students and texts.
The results of our initiatives show how valuable this grant was in strengthening two of the programs offered in the WRS department. The WRS continues to offer the WRTG 2905 course and strives to increase its enrollment with the knowledge acquired by McMurtrey’s trips to Ohio and Washington. Further, the writing center tutors enrolled in WRTG 4020 in Fall 2019 benefited from Dr. Condon’s visit, but more than that, the syllabus for that course was revised after Condon’s visit to include more texts about race and rhetoric, code-switching, and antiracist pedagogies for tutors. The ripple effect created by this grant will continue to be positively felt by undergraduate students, tutors, and faculty for many semesters to come.