Dear PWPA Members and Friends,

We are pleased to announce that Jefferson University will be hosting our fully online Spring 2022 PWPA event on Friday, April 29, 2022.

For our Spring 2022 meeting, we will focus on writing in the disciplines and professions. Many of us teach in writing classrooms in which students have become increasingly pragmatic, vocational, and concrete in their goals for attending college. COVID intensifies these pressures and desires. In this meeting, we’ll center the discussion on how to more specifically tailor the writing classroom so that it responds to these practical, professional, and disciplinary motives. What are the institutional, academic, and affective needs of the professionally-oriented classroom? Does “learning for its own sake” still fit into such a classroom? What are the roles of canonical texts, genres of writing, and conventional modes of learning such as lectures?  Consideration of projects and assignments, texts and modes of classroom discussion are all significant.

Our Zoom-based gathering will feature a variety of sessions for learning and conversation.


Proposals
We invite proposals from writing programs or groups of colleagues to facilitate roundtable conversations, interactive workshops, or lightning talks related to any issues of teaching writing in the college classroom.

- Roundtable Conversations (50 minutes). For Roundtable Conversations, we invite proposals for structured conversations co-facilitated by two or three colleagues focusing on a shared theme/question/issue. Proposals should detail the theme/problem/issue under discussion; the goals and structure of the roundtable conversation; and methods for engaging the audience.

- Interactive Workshops (50 minutes). For Interactive Workshops, we invite proposals for “hands-on” activities co-facilitated by two or three colleagues focusing on skills or practices related to the Spring 2021 meeting theme. Proposals should detail the goals and structure of the workshop and the methods for engaging participants in “doing” or “creating.”

- Lightning Talks (5 minutes). For Lightning Talks, we invite individuals to propose brief talks focused on one aspect of the Fall 2021 meeting theme. This is a good opportunity to share an assignment, an emerging research question, etc.

We encourage colleagues from multiple institutions or within the same institution to collaborate on these proposals. We encourage proposals from part-time faculty and graduate students.

RSVP and/or Submit Proposals
Registration is completely free and open to all writing program administrators, writing instructors, and related colleagues in the region.

We are especially interested in meeting faculty from two-year colleges, minority-serving institutions, and those located in our wider regional geography beyond the Philly area: Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware.

You’re welcome to drop in for part of the day or to stay for everything. We’ll send the Zoom and other information to all registered participants as we get closer to the date of the event.

You can register for the event here: https://forms.gle/NrrXVjay3ukqX6Ys7
   
Questions about the event can be sent to Abby Orenstein (local host): Abigail.Orenstein@jefferson.edu

Questions about PWPA can be sent to Gabriel Cutrufello (gcutrufe@ycp.edu) or Liz Kimball (ekimball99@gmail.com).