Dr. Lauren Fitzgerald, associate professor of English and director of the Wilf Campus Writing Center, delivered the keynote address at the International Writing Centers Association Conference in San Diego, October 25-27. Her talk, “Undergraduate Writing Tutors as Researchers: Redrawing Boundaries,” considered the contributions of peer writing tutors to the undergraduate research movement and to writing center scholarship. The conference was attended by 750 administrators, faculty, and students from around the world.

In addition, Lane Anderson, assistant director of the Wilf Writing Center; Andrea Rosso Efthymiou, associate director of the Beren Writing Center; and (in absentia) Adina Kay-Gross, faculty tutor at the Beren Writing Center, presented a roundtable discussion entitled “Sacred Identity: The Intersection of Religion and Gender in Writing Centers,” that examined the ways that gender and religious identity is enacted, and sometimes avoided, in college writing and writing centers. At a roundtable on “Crossover Identities: Professional Creative Writers on Their Roles as Writing Center Directors,” Anderson joined a discussion led by two poets, a fiction writer, and a nonfiction writer about how their creative writing background influences their academic teaching and roles as writing center administrators. Efthymiou presented her dissertation prospectus, titled “ ‘Do you wish THIS was you?!?!?’: Rhetorical Education in an All-Women’s Writing Center,” with other Writing Center professionals at the IWCA Works-in-Progress Workshop.

Among presenters at the conference was also Dr. Sipai Klein ’02YC, a former tutor at the Wilf Writing Center who is now Writing Center director and an assistant professor at Clayton State University.