Clint Gardner

The IWCA Summer Institute (an annual gathering of writing center professionals from around the world which focuses on writing centers and writing center development) will conduct a live webcast this year: How Did We Get Here? Finding and Mapping Writing Center Literature Presenter(s): Neal Lerner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, Southwestern University Status: Not Started During this interactive webcast session, originating from the 2008 IWCA Writing Center Summer Institute, we'll survey the field of writing center literature, identifying and discussing key texts and ideas that helped define and continue to shape the field. We'll do this, in part, with game playing to examine participants' knowledge of writing center literature. Next, we'll move beyond surveys and games to take a critical look at writing center literature and consider such questions as, have some of our founding texts become codifying and limiting, ...

I've been a member of the SLCC's Thayne Center for Service & Learning Service Learning Advisory Board (SLAB) for several years now. It is a great place and offers SLCC students and faculty many opportunities to engage in service, and learn from those experiences. In order to engage more faculty, the Thayne Center is starting up a new blog: The Engaged Campus . I'm looking forward to helping them out with getting the blog set up and contributing ideas and posts. It should be a good opportunity for faculty to share ideas. Each month it will have a theme. This is to spur commentary from faculty and drive the blog forward. I suppose contributors could write on what they like, but the theme does keep it focussed.

Pardon my silence, but this has been a rather busy semester. It is sad when I can't even make time to write. I recently returned from CCCC at New Orleans. The conference was excellent, and I was lucky to attend some very good sessions. I also had the opportunity to be at the IWCA booth with Michele Eodice, as well as to attend the IWCA SIG on Friday evening. I did break away from the conference a couple of times to indulge my passion for photography. I did record a session with Andrea Lunsford, Lisa Ede, Michele Eodice, Kami Day, Michael Spooner, and Kathy Yancey about collaborative writing. It was one of those sessions that gets you thinking, and I've been thinking about what it is we mean by "collaboration" in writing. The idea behind the session was to hear what authors who write together think about collaboration, but, of course, this quickly branched into the notion of what collaborative learning and writing are for our students. I'm hoping to do som...

Unfortunately, my old and beautiful Undersea template was vunerable to hacking. I've found a new one which allows me to post my own images in the header image. It is a functionally stylish template, but my goldfish image does not convey the breadth that the other one did. Oh well, at least it conveys the limitations that I often feel.

It seems proper to bookend my rather sporadic blogging by posting a binary title for you. In any case, as you might imagine, I've been rather busy this first month-and-a-half of spring semester 2008. Mostly I've been dealing a great deal with class stuff. I've been out of the classroom for nearly two years due to professional, campus, and Student Writing Center commitments, save working with tutor education, and I was feeling a bit rusty at first. It wasn't that I didn't know what I was doing--I am pretty diligent, some might say obsessive about class planning, but I did feel a bit out-of-sorts since it seemed all new to me again. In all I was a bit nervous about that feeling, but then I fell into enjoying it again. I also realized I needed to review my teaching style to reach this particular group of students. They are a bright group who have an interesting perspective on things. In any case, that's why the long silence. In other news, I've gone a...

Well I feel compelled to write something, given that it is the end of the semester. I will, therefore, make notes: One can tell the student who has been working on her or his paper for a long time by the state of their attire. Sweats and bad-hair-day beanies mean the student is pulling an all-nighter to hopefully get the paper done. The well-dressed student who does not have that desperate look in her or his eye is the one who took more time or (I hope this is not the case) such students just don't care. Something or someone must be trying to hack WordPress, as my administrator account was deleted. Time to upgrade, I suppose. The end of the semester is notoriously unpredictable. Our rush days came early this week. Now it is relatively quiet. I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom next semester. I feel scatter-shot at the moment. I have a peer review to write that I thought I had finished. I understand why the editors want more now, but at the time I ...

The International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) of which I have the honor of being president for a week and 3 days has adopted the following mission statement: The International Writing Centers Association, an NCTE affiliate founded in 1983, fosters the development of writing center directors, tutors, and staff by sponsoring meetings, publications, and other professional activities; by encouraging scholarship connected to writing center-related fields; and by providing an international forum for writing center concerns. It was the work of a very productive committee lead by Nita Meola. While IWCA's focus has always been on the issues stated, it is nice to have it put down so concisely.