The one-day Collaborative is an annual mini-conference the Wednesday before CCCC (Conference on College Composition & Communication) begins. Around 100 participants select from concurrent sessions on a writing center theme. Presenters and attendees are encouraged to use the Collaborative to get feedback and inspiration on projects that are in process.

IWCA Collaborative @ CCCC 2026

Seeking Stability: Fortifying the Pillars of our Practice 

Date: March 4, 2026 

Time: 8:00AM-6:00 PM

Check-in: 8:30 AM

Location: Corporate College Conference Center East at Cuyahoga Community College, 4400 Richmond Road, Warrensville Heights, OH 44128

Proposals due: February 10

Proposal acceptance notification: February 14

Co-Chairs: Madelyn Carroll, Erica Cirillo-McCarthy, Celeste Del Russo 

Co-Chairs Contact: carrollm6@rowan.edu, ecirillomccarthy@ucdavis.edu, delrusso@rowan.edu 

Register and apply for a travel grant here

(Travel grant applications accepted through February 23; registration closes February 27)

When we look back at the history of writing center work, we see disciplinary pillars that inform our practices. Pillars are grounded in our values, manifest in our everyday practices, and serve to support the field and its practitioners. However, while foundational, disciplinary pillars are not necessarily permanent; instead, they are adaptable structures continually forged through new ideas and ways of thinking. In the past, some pillars of writing center studies have been collaboration, conversation, and student agency. Writing center pillars have informed our development of writing center assessment tools with an emphasis on empirical-based practices in tutoring writing and understanding how writers learn to write (Driscoll & Wynn-Purdue, 2012; Schendel and Macauley, 2012). Our pillars have impacted tutor training across modes (Wisniewski, et. al., 2020), ability (Babcock, & Daniels, 2017), and language justice (Blazer, 2015; Krishnamurthy, et. al., 2022). Meeting the diverse needs of students is another pillar-in-progress, as we listen to students and administrators from historically oppressed communities (Faison & Condon, 2022; Faison & Treviño, 2017; Green, 2018; Haltiwanger Morrison & Garriott, 2023), and learn from practitioners in international contexts (Özer, 2020; Perdigón and Hutchinson, 2024; Thaiss et al., 2012). Tutors and administrators have constructed new pillars by sharing their embodied experiences and labor practices in working in writing centers, which inform how we understand labor and create inclusive spaces (Caswell et. al., 2016; Fields et. al., 2023; Giaimo & Lawson, 2024). 

But our pillars, both old and new, are under duress. From fiscal austerity to legislative oversight, our pillars, along with many others in educational institutions, are in need of restoration and fortification. While those of us in higher education encounter daily events and policies that shake us to the core, we call for all of us to re-examine our pillars of practice to potentially restore their efficacy, so that we have them at the ready when we encounter these crises that seek to change our values and our practices. Now more than ever, writing center practitioners need a buttressed, strong base from which to defend our practices and our values. To fortify our foundation, we invite participants to explore the writing center field’s pillars of our practice as we grapple with our precarious present. 

While writing center work is always local, what happens in higher education affects student support globally, and so we might consider how our conferencing experience could extend into the public sphere. We invite everyone to convene so that we can name and explore our discipline’s collective values and identify how our values inform our pillars. We can imagine how our pillars can affect public discourse on education, equity, inclusivity, and learning for a more just future around the globe. 

We offer guiding questions for exploration: 

• What are other pillars of our community? How might we restore or fortify our discipline’s pillars?

• How might returning to the pillars of our practice move our scholarship, administration, and pedagogy forward as we face uncertain futures? 

• How can we use our pillars to protect the most vulnerable members of our communities? 

• How do we maintain and enforce our values while working in constrictive and limiting contexts so that we can enact change? 

• How can we advocate for continuing to value the role of humans in the writing process, in an age of proliferating tutor chat bots and generative AI tools?

• What does collaboration mean for us as scholars, administrators, and tutors? 

• How have the contributions of scholars, tutors, and administrators from BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, First-Gen populations challenged the long established pillars of practice that may no longer serve the field? 

• How have we drawn from our collective knowledge to write our way into important conversations occurring in the public sphere? How might our words, experiences, and expertise reach a larger audience?

We welcome proposals from writing center administrators, faculty, instructors, consultants/tutors, or writing program administrators (WPAs) who work with writing centers, including graduate and undergraduate students as well as those working in settings outside of higher education, such as K-12 or community-based writing centers, and those who work in international writing centers. We welcome presentations that are bilingual, multilingual, and/or in languages other than English and invite presenters to imagine creative ways of working across and between languages with attendees.

Session Formats

The following session types highlight opportunities for collaboration, conversation, and co-authorship. All session types will be 75 minutes. 

Roundtables (75 minutes)

Facilitators lead discussion of a specific issue, scenario, question, or problem. This format might include short remarks from facilitators, but most of the time is devoted to active and substantive engagement/collaboration with attendees prompted by guiding questions. At the end of the session, facilitators will help participants summarize and reflect on their takeaways from the discussion and think about how they will translate these takeaways into action.

Workshops (75 minutes)

Facilitators lead participants in a hands-on, experiential activity to teach tangible skills or strategies for data-collection, analysis, or problem-solving related to the Collaborative’s theme. Workshop proposals will include a rationale for how the activity can apply to a variety of writing center contexts, will involve active engagement, and will incorporate an opportunity for participants to reflect on the potential for specific future application.

Lab Time/Research Discussion Groups (75 minutes)

A lab time session is an opportunity to move your own research forward by either collecting data from participants or by using participants’ feedback to hone data collection instruments. You could use lab time to create and receive feedback on survey or interview questions, data collection, data analysis, etc. In your proposal, please describe what you want to do and how many and what kind of participants you need (ex: undergraduate tutors, writing center administrators, etc.). If seeking participants among attendees, facilitators will need to have institutional IRB approval as well as Informed Consent documentation for them.

Collaborative Writing (75 minutes)

In this type of session, facilitators guide participants in a group writing activity intended to produce a co-authored document or set of materials to share. For example, you might collaborate on a multi-writing center position statement or a plan for coalitioning with writing center allies on campus and in the community. You could also consider exploring writing for rhetorical situations beyond the writing center, or the production of separate but parallel pieces of writing (ex: participants revise or craft statements for their centers and then share for feedback). Proposals for collaborative writing sessions will include plans for continuing or sharing the work with the larger writing center community after the conference.

SUBMIT YOUR PROPOSAL HERE

Registration

Register at iwcamembers.org by logging in OR creating a free profile.

Early Registration rates:

Professional Member--$140

Professional-Non Member--$150

Student Member--$100

Student Non-Member--$110

**Registration prices will increase by $10 after February 25**

References

Babcock, R. D., & Daniels, S. (Eds.). (2017). Writing centers and disability. Fountainhead Press.

Blazer, S. (2015). Twenty-first century writing center staff education: Teaching and learning towards inclusive and productive everyday practice. The Writing Center Journal, 35(1),17-55.

Caswell, N., Grutsch McKinney, J. & Jackson, R. (2016). The working lives of new writing center 

directors. Utah State University Press. https://doi.org/10.7330/9781607325376-fm

Driscoll, D., & Wynn-Purdue (2012). Theory, lore, and more: An analysis of RAD research in 

"The Writing Center Journal," 1980–2009. The Writing Center Journal,2(2), 11-39. https://doi.org/10.7330/9781607325376

Faison, W., & Condon, F. (Eds.). (2022). Counterstories from the writing center. Utah State 

University Press. 

Faison, W. & Treviño, A. (2017). Race, retention, language, and literacy: The hidden curriculum 

of the writing center.” The Peer Review: Journal for Writing Center Practitioners, 1(2). 

Fields, A., Leahy, B., Del Russo, C. & Cirillo-McCarthy, E. (2023). Snapping from the center: 

Institutional absurdity and equitable writing center administration. Writing Program 

Administration, 47(1), 163-176. 

Giaimo, G. & Lawson, D. (2024). Storying writing center labor for anti-capitalist futures. The 

WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/PRA-B.2024.2401

Green, Neisha-Anne (2018) "Moving beyond alright: And the emotional toll of this, my life 

matters too, in the writing center Work," The Writing Center Journal, 37(1),  

https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.1864.

Haltiwanger Morrison, T., & Evans Garriott, D. A. (2023). Writing centers and racial justice: 

A guidebook for critical praxis. Utah State University Press.

https://doi.org/10.7330/9781646424573 

Hutchinson, Glenn and Torres Perdigón, Andrea (2024) "Decolonizing writing centers: An 

introduction," The Writing Center Journal, 42(1) 

https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.2074

Krishnamurthy, S., Del Russo, C. & Mehalchick-Opal, D. (2022). Linguistic Justice on Campus: 

Pedagogy and Advocacy for Multilingual Students. Lee, E., Johnson, J. & Schreiber, B. 

(Eds.), Blue Ridge Summit: Multilingual Matters. 

Özer, H.Z. (2020). “Tutoring creative writers in the writing center,” Praxis: A Writing 

Center Journal, 18(1), hpps://www.praxisuwc.com/181-ozer.

Schendel, E. & Macauley, W.J. (Eds.). (2012). Building writing center assessments that matter. 

Utah State University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt4cgkdp.6

Thaiss, C., Bräuer, G., Carlino, P., Ganobcsik-Williams, L & Sinha, A, (Eds.). (2012). Writing 

programs worldwide: Profiles of academic writing in many places. The WAC 

Clearinghouse; Parlor Press. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2012.0346

Wisniewski, C., Carvajal Regidor, M., Chason, L., Groundwater, E., Kranek., A., Mayne, D. & Middleton, L. (2020). Questioning assumptions about online tutoring: A mixed-method study of face-to-face and synchronous online writing center tutorials. The Writing Center Journal, 38(1.2), 261-295.