By: Sarah Tinker Perrault, WIC Director
Winter is a relatively quiet quarter for WIC. However, we did have two excellent winter events, we have some exciting work going on behind the scenes, and we have set a spring workshop series that offers a lot.
Regarding the winter events, on February 24th, the internationally renowned scholar Vershawn Ashanti Young of Waterloo University gave a public talk, “Teaching to Redress: Using the Myth of Canadian Exceptionalism to Pursue Anti-Racist Writing Instruction in Rhetoric and Composition,” and on the 25th he led a workshop on “Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and Black Standard English: Implications for Classroom Writers.” You can read synopses of these events here.
While winter is quiet in terms of events, a lot goes on behind the scenes. On the WIC team, we welcomed Olivia Rowland as the WIC graduate assistant for the remainder of the year, and we welcomed Faye Stone as an undergraduate assistant. With Faye’s help, we have started scanning files. Creating digital copies is a large project, but one well worth undertaking. WIC is one of the earliest, longest-lasting, and best-supported programs of its type, and for that alone its history is worth preserving. In addition, digitizing the files will make them available to scholars via the WAC Program Archives at the WAC Clearinghouse. As of late February, Faye has scanned 112 files, and we have just gotten started. Other projects include revising the WIC course proposal checklist, and working on revamping and adding resources to the WIC website.
Finally, the spring workshop series will cover a range of topics including how to integrate academic reading instruction into your courses, how to best tap into the strengths and abilities of multilingual students, and a similar workshop on working with and understanding the strengths and abilities of transfer students. In addition to these events, which will be led by faculty and staff experts from OSU and Oregon community colleges, we also will have a panel of writing center tutors offering advice on how to craft effective writing assignments, and taking questions from faculty. At the end of the quarter, I will facilitate a discussion in which faculty can reflect on changes they would like to make in their teaching next year, and develop plans for how they might revise curricula, exercises, and assignments over the summer. To read more about and register for these events please see our events page.
