The Undersea World of Clint Gardner

Since I’m cycling off the Executive Board of the International Writing Centers Association this coming November, I’ve come to be a bit nostalgic about it. My involvement in the Executive Board first started back when Eric Hobson was President and he gave me the opportunity to engage in committee work. I then took on the role of the first Wed Editor of writingcenters.org, and then was elected to be Community College Representative. I threw my hat in the ring for Vice President (the leadership track in IWCA is V.P. to President to Past President–a six year stint!) and was stunned to actually be elected. My “platform” (it seems a bit pretentious to call it that) was to build on IWCA’s excellent history of outreach by allowing for more opportunities for people to be involved in the organization.

That’s the nice thing about the IWCA Executive Board and IWCA itself–we try to involve our membership as much as we can in official committees and other activities of the organization. I think it is a great way to grow the organization and give others leadership opportunities. It also makes IWCA truly a member-driven organization. I’ll probably write more about my experiences as November approaches and I grow more nostalgic.

In any case, I started out this post intending to write about a completist project I want to take on: getting all the minutes of N/IWCA in one place on writingcenters.org (in cooperation with the current IWCA Web Editor Chris Ervin) as well as getting all our official documents (like IWCA Update) there as well.

I know that official IWCA minutes were published in Writing Center Journal but I can’t check it due to a server move on the part of its archive. I don’t know, however, if all the minutes were published there. I am very interested in our history as an organization, and think our members need to be more aware of our past. It may be interesting to propose to the Board that we appoint an official historian. I don’t think that position need be elected by the membership and shouldn’t have term limits.

Here’s the call I mentioned yesterday: WAC/WID in the Community College–Call for Proposals

I’m excited to be involved in this project!

I need to remind myself to reflect upon the following articles here at UWCG:

Shor, Ira. “Why Teach about Social Class.” Teaching English in the Two-year College. 32:2 (December 2005). 161-170.

Lerner, Neal. “Rejecting the Remedial Brand: The Rise and Fall of the Dartmouth Writing Clinic.” CCC. 59:1 (September 2007) 13-35

I found both compelling and highly relevant to my work at a community college.

More later.