My RAD Research Journey
Sherry Wynn Perdue, Director, Oakland University Writing Center
Thursday, February 12, 2015

My thoughts about research and the research agenda for our center occur at the nexus of two important themes: 1) the need for more empirical research to sustain writing centers’ claims to best practices and 2) a growing awareness of the important role that sponsorship plays in WC research. In today’s post, I reflect upon the etiology of my own research and how it has shaped opportunities for my own center’s undergraduate- and graduate student writing consultants.

My RAD research journey commenced when my colleague Dana Lynn Driscoll and I launched a content analysis of all research articles from 1980-2009 in The Writing Center Journal. This was soon followed by a large-scale survey of writing center professionals (WCPs), follow-up interviews with a selected sample of WCPs, and a focus group of WCPS attending a national conference. (Thank you writing center colleagues for being so generous with your time!) Our first publication demonstrated that of the articles classified as “research,” less than five percent would meet the conditions for empirical research or RAD Research (Haswell, 2005), meaning that most of this research was not replicable, aggregable, or data-supported. Despite this disappointing finding, we determined that research scores were rising over time, particularly over the last decade. More important than our findings about research production was our growing attention to the question, “Why?” As such, we next turned to the conditions that potentially hindered empirical research in and on writing centers.

In two follow-up articles we have shared six themes that appear to influence WCPs’ research: 1) education and training, 2) labor and institutional oversight, 3) financial resources, and 4) sponsorship as well as our field’s 5) definition of and politics of research and its 6) research practices. Of these, the linchpin is sponsorship.

Shortly after completing the interviews and surveys and while helping our own department to build a new undergraduate major in writing and rhetoric, we realized that sponsorship needed to occur on all fronts; we needed to BOTH address conditions affecting the situation of our professional colleagues AND prepare the next generation of scholars to do empirical research. While we already taught research and we certainly mentored our WRT majors and consultants, we needed to hone the sponsorship continuum by inviting students, the primary WC practitioners, not only to study with us and work for us but also to collaborate with us on publications and on research projects that we envisioned together. Our first effort yielded an article for Perspectives on Undergraduate Research and Mentoring in which Dana, I, and three UG consultants (Enrique Paz, Jessica Tess, and Jacob Matthews (two who are now graduate students doing exciting work at other institutions)) reflected on our participation along the sponsorship continuum—moving to and fro among teaching, mentoring, collaborating, and coauthoring. While it did not describe a collaborative empirical research project, it did 1) empower three UGs to articulate their process of becoming researchers in their own words and via their own projects and 2) share a sponsorship framework for future collaborations.

In our current project, Dana, I, and a UG colleague have I have extended that sponsorship into a truly collaborative empirical research project that examines WCP job descriptions. With undergraduate researcher Sam Boyhtari, we are coding 10 years’ worth of position descriptions culled from the MLA jobs’ list, the WPA Job Board, and job posting shared on WCenter. This project was motivated by a wave of recent job announcements that shocked our community in different ways. One type appears to describe two jobs in one, with expectations for research, a heavy teaching load, and full-time writing center oversight. Another type, which entrusts the leadership and training of an academic service to someone with limited education—a B.A.—carries an embarrassingly small salary and a laundry lists of duties . . . . With this study, we hope to determine how institutions understand the WCP’s role and how this might further affect WC research as well as to make recommendations for a WCP position statement . . .

Well, I’ve penned too much for a blog post and now run the risk of composing a biography of my scholarship . . . . And, while I share the need for kudos, I don’t think you are reading this just to learn about me . . . .

In sharing today, I hope to demonstrate the rewards inherent in research—for me, for the center, for the future of the field—even research conducted when not a part of one’s job description, even when I’m coding during the wee hours, even when simple numbers of clients might have been deemed enough. I’m thankful for the research sponsorship extended to me (Thank you Dana (yes, we can learn from younger colleagues), the late Linda Bergmann, Eileen Johnson, and Julia Smith) and for the opportunity to pay it forward.

This moment of gratitude leads me to my last point of reflection. I would not be positioned to help my co-editor Rebecca Hallman bring her vision for IWCA’s new journal The Peer Review: A Journal for Writing Center Practitioners to life if it were not for this journey, my sponsors, and the lessons I continue to learn from and with my writing center colleagues—directors, graduate students, undergraduate students, and high school students.

A Day in the Life of an OUWC Consultant

My shifts this semester are Monday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. and Tuesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. Currently, I am working close to the maximum allotted hours at the OUWC, and because of the amount of hours I work at the writing center during the week, I believe I am more exposed to a larger variety of clients and assist students, faculty, and staff with different types of assignments--no week is ever the same as the last one!

This week is half way over and I have already assisted students with papers for nursing, history, business, writing/composition, and even doctoral literature reviews. Because we serve clients from multiple disciplines each session must be approached differently from the last session, not only because the topics vary, but for the more important reason: each client has different writing needs. Assessing students' needs is challenging at times, especially in instances where the client is not a regular client of mine. If this is the case, I generally start the session by asking specific questions about what he/she hopes to accomplish in the 40 minutes we have together. Once we have established the initial needs I focus primarily on those needs in the initial meeting. This is not to suggest that I ignore larger concerns like assignment adherence (because a lot of times clients need help unpacking the assignment at hand), but rather that I do not lose sight of the clients' wants and needs; remaining perceptive and ensuring that you address the  "bigger" concerns that pop up in the session that may not have been noticed by the client is important.

Perhaps my favorite part of working at the OUWC is establishing a professional relationship with my regular clients. It is not uncommon for a whole shift to be comprised of regular clients. I love meeting new clients, too, but there is just another level of personal reward and satisfaction when you can visually see a client's writing progress over a semester, or even after a few weeks.

It is difficult to write about a "typical" day because there are no "typical" days in the writing center, and that is part of the reason I enjoy it so much. I usually browse my scheduled appointments online the night before in order to prepare myself for the next day, but I often find that while I can go into a session "prepared" to go over certain techniques, citation rules, etc. (based on the client's description of what they want to work on/complete in the session), this often changes in the actual session. The client might change the direction of the session by shifting focus and attention to other aspects of the assignment, or I might suggest another course of action in addition to the initial requests provided by the student on our online scheduler. In any case, a consultant's job largely requires him/her to think on his/her feet, which not only keeps the job fresh and exciting, but personally rewarding as well.

#IWCAWeek : The Daily Delights of Oakland University's Writing Center

Bright orange walls and lively greenery fill the space that is our writing haven and collaborative learning environment. We are indeed the Write Space on campus. The flow of clients ranges from ESL writers to devoted graduate students, who feed the buzz of brainstorming, grammar discussions, and organizational feedback. This is the daily activity that continues to inspire all of our consultants and keep the stream of knowledge bubbling in the epicenter of Oakland University that is Kresge Library.

International Writing Centers Week

Show us your support!

Monday, Feb. 9: Show us your staff!

Tuesday, Feb. 10: Show us your space!

Wednesday, Feb. 11: A day in the life of your center

Thursday, Feb. 12: Research and publishing spotlight

Friday, Feb. 13: Put your center on the map

Saturday, Feb. 14: Love your center!

We have a chance to win a pizza party! Let's do this!