Horizon.

Sometimes professional inspiration comes when we least expect it – and from unlikely sources. One such unlikely source is the 1989 hip-hop hit “Ice Ice Baby.”  In the song, Vanilla Ice tells us to “stop, collaborate, and listen” – good advice, one might argue, for Writing Center tutors, directors, and staff.

Numerous questions about the work of our centers can be entertained as we look at Ice’s first verb: stop.

• What practices do traditional writing centers need to stop doing to better serve their clients?

• What assumptions should we stop operating under if we are to meet the needs of modern students?

• What might writing centers do to win back students who have stopped coming to the writing center?

• How might writing center administrators help tutors to stop thinking of themselves as experts, impostors, or editors?

• How might we think of the verb as a reminder to take heed of our present state?

We should also consider Ice’s second verb: collaborate. While at first glance it is obvious that writing centers are spaces ripe with collaboration, it becomes more complicated when we consider writers’ authority, issues of intellectual property and plagiarism, co-authoring, and faculty concerns. As writing center staff, we might consider the following questions:

• What does ideal collaboration look like?

• What are the limitations of collaboration?

• How does collaboration help writers to become stronger writers and not just produce better individual pieces of writing?

• How does physical space impact collaboration?

And how might we address Ice’s last piece of advice: listen? 

• What have you heard in your writing center that is essential for other writing centers to know or reflect upon?

• What listening practices best serve native and/or non-native speakers of English?

• Who at your university should be doing the listening and to what end?

• How might meditation and mindfulness play into the listening that tutors do?

• What does it mean to listen, and what does it look like?

• What narratives do writing centers mythologize, and how might the listening to them work against our mission?

• Can tutors listen if they have their own agendas (or plans to address higher-order concerns first)?

We invite proposals that address this theme directly, as well as writing center scholarship that focuses on post-colonialism, technology and online writing centers, assessment, tutor training, and working with specific populations. Ideally, presenters will find a way to connect their research to the conference theme.

Proposals should be thoughtful, well-researched, and polished. 

Submissions are due no later than December 15, 2017.