Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal

This book offers readers theorized and nuanced understandings of how aspiring, early career, and experienced WPAs plan, lead, and (re)-build their careers and working lives.

Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal examines WPA journeys and journeying.

Designed for WPA graduate seminars and professional development workshops, this book addresses two questions:

• How do people develop readiness to serve as WPAs?

• How do experienced WPAs find or create renewal opportunities that help them move forward throughout their lives and careers?

Authors address these questions from their sometimes-intersecting identities as BIPOC scholars, LGBTQ+ people, graduate students, and adjunct faculty, as well as early, mid-, and later-career WPAs.

Authors draw on their experience teaching at a range of two- and four-year institutions to analyse the complexities, contingencies, and rewards of short and long-term WPA work. These scholars contend that understanding WPA "readiness" and "renewal" involves questioning inherited definitions of those terms and engaging in theorized, self-aware conversations that reflect, and reflect on, understudied fears and desires about WPA work from graduate preparation to preparing for leadership rotation and retirement.

Autorentext

Joseph Janangelo is Past President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators and teaches at Loyola University Chicago. His books are A Critical Look at Institutional Mission: A Guide for WPAs, Resituating Writing Programs: Constructing and Administering Writing Programs, and Theoretical and Critical Perspectives on Teacher Change. Mark Blaauw-Hara is Assistant Professor at University of Toronto Mississauga, former President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and current Treasurer of the Canadian Writing Centres Association. His writing has appeared in Composition Forum, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Composition Studies, Kairos, and many edited collections.

Klappentext

Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal examines WPA journeys and journeying. Designed for WPA graduate seminars and professional development workshops, this book addresses two questions: How do people develop readiness to serve as WPAs? How do experienced WPAs find or create renewal opportunities that help them move forward throughout their lives and careers? Authors address these questions from a range of perspectives, including their sometimes-intersecting identities as Scholars of Color, LGBTQ+ people, graduate students, adjunct faculty, as well as early, mid-, and later-career WPAs. Authors also draw on their experience teaching at a range of two- and four-year institutions to analyze the complexities, contingencies, and rewards of short and long-term WPA work. This book offers readers theorized and nuanced understandings of how aspiring, early career, and experienced WPAs plan, lead, and (re)-build their careers and working lives. It helps graduate students better understand the enticements and entanglements of their intended career's work. This book also offers mid- and later-career WPAs ideas for rekindling interest in work that may have become alienating, stagnant, or unrewarding. Chapter authors contend that understanding WPA "readiness" and "renewal" involves questioning inherited definitions of those terms and engaging in theorized, self-aware conversations that reflect, and reflect on, understudied fears and desires about WPA work from graduate preparation to preparing for intentional leadership rotation and retirement.

Inhalt

List of Illustrations and Tables Acknowledgments Joseph Janangelo: Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal: Of Preparation, Pipe Dreams, and Possibilities Melvin E. Beavers: Leadership Readiness: Becoming a Rhetorically Mindful WPA Gabrielle Isabel Kelenyi: (Re)Visioning WPA-GO: Finding WPA Readiness as a Graduate Student Leader Elise A. Green: How to WPA: Career Planning, Survival and NTT Power at the Convergence of My Professional and Personal Lives Mark Blaauw-Hara: Ready to be an Equity-Focused WPA: Reforming Community-College Developmental Writing Erin Lehman/Joanne Baird Giordano: Rethinking WPA Work for Open-Access Contexts: Preparing for Literacy Program Responsibilities Kaitlin Clinnin/Jennifer Eidum/Morgan Hanson/Mariya Tseptsura: Ready for a Career and a Family: Experiencing (In)Fertility as an Early Career WPA Amy Ferdinandt Stolley: Unlearning Writing Program Administration Jolivette Mecenas: Refusal as Renewal: An Asian/American Woman Saying No While WPA-ing Katherine Daily O'Meara: What Is Gained in Transition: Lessons from a WPA in Liminal Space Jacob Babb/Susan Popham: Revolving Doors: Programmatic Renewal and Regeneration through Leadership Reorganization Jeffrey Klausman: Composing your WPA Career: Pleasure, Responsibility, and Wisdom Colin Charlton/Jonikka Charlton: Renewal through Cartography: Designing Resilience amidst Persistent Ecological Change Beth Brunk: It's All About the Student: Advocating for Students at All Levels of Leadership Joseph Janangelo: I'm Still Here, Goddammit: Toward Irreverent Understandings of White Nostalgia, White Irreplaceability, and WPA In-Situ Longevity Carrie S. Leverenz: Getting Out of the Way: Antiracism and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being a WPA Susan M. Lang: Readiness and Renewal: Not Just a Point in Time, but Processes Mark Blaauw-Hara: Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal as Mindful Improvisation Patti Poblete: Readiness and Renewal: What Am I Even? Author Biographies Index.