A Framework for Writing Programs

In Benz et. al’s (2013) cross-institutional study of the common reading program and its intersections with writing program work, the authors argue that understanding the program’s risks and benefits ultimately better informs writing program administrators to “respond to, strengthen, resist, and/or otherwise engage with” the retention initiatives taking place on their campuses. Indeed, although paying attention to retention rates has always been a responsibility of the writing program administrator (Hult et. al, 1992), writing programs are increasingly facing pressure by their institutions to more actively engage with retention initiatives, as exemplified by the climate at Georgia State and the growing body of persistence research coming out of writing

program and composition scholarship. It is imperative, therefore, for writing programs to develop a framework through which to negotiate their values, and the responsibilities they have to their students, with the goals of their institution. By appealing to the methods of facilitative and dictative initiatives, writing program administrators can approach conversations about student persistence with a specific focus on student agency and inclusivity, rather than simply a focus on attendance—an angle that can limit our ability to consider the numerous student narratives that conflict with a university’s preference for efficiency.

The above analysis on dictative initiatives offers insight to the conflicts that can arise when administrators design student support services with a preference for students to achieve success efficiently. By focusing entirely on getting students through each semester, a result of the widespread acceptance of Tinto’s Student Integration Model, universities risk limiting students’ options for how they can experience college. In the examples above, for instance, Georgia State’s fixed-scheduling system and out-of-class requirements make a number of specific demands on students’ time, such as summer bridge students must be available during the week for classes between 9:30 AM and 4 PM, and they must attend workshops with content

determined by the university as necessary for the success of all students within the program. For students who intend to work while going to college and for those who commute, these time constraints can impede greatly upon their ability to be successful. Likewise, Georgia State’s institutional emphasis on efficiency results in support programs that overlook or do not consider the very real financial struggles students face every semester; had the Panther Excellence

Program been more inclusive to low-income students, students like Destiny and Kennedy would have been given guidance up front for how best to pursue earning the Hope scholarship over the course of their first year of college. Most significantly, universities who prioritize efficiency

position students as feeling less in control over their own plans for higher education; for students working with external financial assistance (George), students who show awareness of their specific learning needs (Kennedy), and students who are interested in double-majoring (Maria), this limited agency over their individual pursuits toward a degree raise questions regarding who intends to benefit most from student support services that solely promote a four-year timeline toward graduation.

When retention initiatives are facilitative, students with various needs, goals, and life experiences are given the flexibility to capitalize on the initiative in way that works best for them. Because of this flexibility, students within freshman learning communities and students attending supplemental instruction can determine for themselves relationship between these resources and their end goal of passing a class. For these reasons, students are not only motivated to make use of the resources they have been given, in this case a cohort and mandatory tutoring, but are in charge of how they decide, or not, to leverage their resources in order to succeed. Eshan and Destiny capitalized on the GroupMe App for academic and social needs. Jason appealed to his cohort for motivation. Trisha, a commuter student interested in transferring schools, did neither of those things, but appreciated the course’s content because it helped her engage more critically with current events. George found motivation in the expectations he faced outside of the university. Facilitative initiatives, in other words, support students’ pursuit of success, but they do so while protecting students’ agency to negotiate just how the resource fits into their path.

The benefits of facilitative retention initiatives have the potential to transform how writing programs support students within composition classrooms as well as across the

or most supportive of students’ diverse pathways toward success, are those that bring students together into cohorts and provide supplemental learning to students’ classes, writing programs can capitalize on their history of field-specific research into collaborative pedagogy (Bruffee 1984; Trimbur 1989; Lunsford 1991; Bizzell 1994) and put that research into conversation with student persistence. Research coming out of writing center studies, particularly as it pertains to writing fellows program, is on its way to serving as one bridge between writing program and persistence scholarship. The special double issue on Course-Embedded Writing Support

Programs in Writing Centers(2014) in Praxis: A Writing Center Journal,by Russell Carpenter, Scott Whiddon, and Kevin Dvorak, and the forthcoming collection Writing Studio Pedagogy:

Space, Place, and Rhetoric in Collaborative Environments are examples of writing program

administration scholars seeking ways to support more students’ success by way of supporting writing courses and/or writing intensive couses with writing center pedagogy and classroom embedded tutors, not simply with a writing center space offered on campus.

Whether across the university or within the composition classroom, though, facilitative initiatives offer new reasons to support group work and one-on-one conferencing with students. While the field of composition has for decades researched and honored the benefits of

collaboration in the classroom, understanding collaboration’s relationship to students’ abilities to succeed in higher education more generally reinvigorates conversations regarding why and how we ask students to work together. Finally, the benefits students in this study gained from their first-year seminar course illuminate Reichert Powell’s notion of kairotic pedagogy in that if a course’s content can relate to students’ current goals, students will more likely find the course helpful in achieving success. While Reichert Powell makes this point to argue that composition instructors have a responsibility to serve students’ current needs, whether or not they end up

dropping out, my own analysis suggests that making clear the connection between a course’s content and students’ current goals will ultimately offer students an opportunity to negotiate, for themselves, how the course fits in with their overall pursuit of a success, regardless of their particular path. Overall, writing program administration and composition scholars possess a unique set of expertise that, combined with an understanding of facilitative retention initiatives, could help inform more inclusive support services for students at their institutions.

Chapter 4, the final chapter of this dissertation, applies the framework provided in this chapter to one example of a retention initiative that implicated the work of Georgia State’s writing program. Although the initiative was, in many ways, dictative, the writing program in collaboration with its writing center, appealed to writing center pedagogy to make the initiative more facilitative of students’ paths toward success. This example intends to serve as a model for how writing programs can counter the challenges posed by dictative retention initiatives by employing pedagogy that supports students’ agency.

4 BRINGING WRITING CENTER PEDAGOGY TO THE FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR