[This is a guest post by Dr. Leigh Graziano, who is an Assistant Professor of English and Writing Program Administrator at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Her work focuses on writing program administrator, first-year composition pedagogy, and assessment. She teaches first-year writing classes as well as upper-level classes in visual rhetoric, classical rhetoric, and convergence culture. You can find her online at leighgraziano.net.--JBJ]
I love being a WPA, but it’s a little challenging as a junior faculty member. The collision between the two means having enormous power—and enormous opportunity to make mistakes—with none of the protection that tenure provides. As noted ethicist Peter Parker often reminds us, “With great power comes great responsibility.” The network of a writing program administrator weaves through the entire campus, shaping student writing and the professional development of writing teachers, improving the delivery of writing instruction, and fostering allies for writing across the campus.
As I’m coming to the end of my second year in this position, I’ve been thinking about what advice I’d give to someone else starting in a similar role. Graduate school often does little to prepare us for this kind of administrative work, but I’ve found six strategies that have helped me through two successful years. Some of them are advice that others gave me, the rest are tips I wish they’d given me.
- Don’t change anything. Taking a couple of semesters to get to know the program as it was when I arrived helped me make better choices about how to go forward. Learning about the strengths and teaching methods of the writing faculty and the needs and interests of the students not only helped me figure out what changes to make, it also helped me figure out how to go about making them.
- Build relationships. While I was avoiding any big changes, I had many chances to connect with people all over campus. I met with department heads, deans, faculty in my department and across campus, and students, letting them tell me what they wanted from a writing program. As a WPA, you don’t just impact the way writing is taught as part of the general education curriculum; rather, you shape the campus-wide writing culture, especially with the help of others. Taking the time to build these relationships helps open avenues of future collaboration on writing related projects. Taking the time to build these relationships makes everything you do on campus easier. And, you might make some friends.
- Don’t be afraid to jump in. In my first semester, the dean asked me to run an assessment of the first-year writing program. It was a huge project, and I had no preparation outside the theoretical. I did some research and then reached out to other local WPAs. I jumped in. It might not be a good idea to plan major projects in your first year, but they hired you for a reason. You may face new and difficult tasks while you’re still getting acclimated. Embrace the challenge.
- Pace yourself. I started my job fresh from graduate school with three hundred and eighteen amazing ideas to make my department and university better. It became clear to me very quickly that I wasn’t going to get to start on all of them immediately. And thank goodness, too, because trying might have killed me. Try to prioritize the changes that need to happen, and consider making a five-year plan for your writing program. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and they had had an entire empire to do the heavy lifting. Unless your institution has some seriously unethical labor practices, your writing program won’t be built in a day either.
- Make time for you. Managing a writing program requires a tremendous commitment of time and energy and can leave little time for research and writing. I started my first semester teaching four classes, serving on seven committees, and tackling a major assessment project. That ate up about thirty-two hours a day, and I hadn’t even started trying to write. Finding time for research isn’t easy, but it can be done. Carve out a distinct time for writing. You’ll be tempted to try this during office hours, which is a great way to accomplish nothing at all. Find a time to shut the door and do the work, and protect that time from intruders. To help myself, I reached out to other junior faculty and started a writing group. We exchanged work and gave each other feedback. Being accountable to my colleagues pushed me to make time for myself and to protect my writing time as sacred.
- Ask for help. This should be obvious, but it’s important enough to bear emphasis. You are not alone, even if you are the lone rhetoric and composition specialist in your department. When I began, I was one of two rhetoric and composition faculty in a department of literature faculty. I expected to receive little interest and even less help conducting an assessment of the writing program. I underestimated my new colleagues. My faculty rallied around me. I had plenty of volunteers to grade student papers. The project moved quickly and smoothly. The moral of the story is that other people in (and outside) your department care about writing. If you ask for help, you’re likely to get it.
So that’s how I’ve made it through my first two years, through four semesters of excitement, terror, joy, and work.
What were your strategies for starting work as a WPA? Share your tips in the comments.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.