"Voice Through Non-Belonging: Community Building and Writing Instruction"

Author John Poole makes a compelling point about "contingent identity": It's common among many adjunct faculty, part-time university employees, and students who live mostly in "the real world."

Like other universities throughout the country, Madonna's population of nontraditional students keeps growing. Many are returning students, many have families, many are part of an ethnic, racial, or religious minority. Most of them work.

In composition classes, we frequently make the distinction between "academic writing" and other types of writing. But after four years--or however long it takes to graduate--most of our students will never write another academic paper (and they'll be glad of it).

As present and former students, what do you think about this? How do we empower our cautious writers? How do we foster a sense of belonging in our academic community? How do we help our students discover their unique and powerful writer's voice?

"Work in Progress: Publishing Writing Center Scholarship"

You can probably guess why I chose this article. In fact, Cari Ann D., Ann Russell, and Ellen Harcourt are already working on a research project about the link between peer tutors' relationships with our lab-based students and those students' progress as writers.

We have such a smart and creative staff, and some--such as Marian and Susan--are already published academic writers. What would you like to find out more about? What would you be interested in writing about? Why not do a group article?

I'd love to hear some writing center-related topic ideas that would be general enough to apply to other writing centers. "Work in Progress" mentioned at least one that might be intriguing: How do we, as tutors, help change student writers' attitudes toward writing?

What else haven't we seen enough of in the Writing Center literature?