Announcement
We were so sorry to not get to see all of you in person at the SCWCA conference at OSU this March, but hope you are all staying safe and well. In order to be able to share the great work you all are doing and be able to engage in these important conversations surrounding Mindfulness of Difference and the Need for Transformative Listening in Writing Center Work, we are happy to share that we will be utilizing the conference website https://writingcenter08.wixsite.com/scwcaconference for presenters to have the opportunity to share their work in the form of a blog. These blog posts can take on many different forms, from all written text to incorporating videos and other multimodal mediums. If you are interested in sharing your work in this format, please let us know! We are excited to hear about your work and for all of the productive conversations that will take place.
Tutor of the Year
The 2020 South Central Writing Centers Association Outstanding Tutor of the Year is Katherine Villarreal, from Texas A&M University Kingsville. Congratulations Katherine!
In the Writing Center, Katherine is a tutor, Administrative Assistant, and peer mentor. At her university, she is a star student who leads writing workshops and other campus-wide events. In her community, she is an advocate for human rights, works multiple jobs, and even managed to find the time to organize a community project that matches abandoned dogs with a suitable human adopter. (Committee Chair’s note: ARE YOU KIDDING ME.) It’s no surprise, then, to see one of her peers describe her as, “by far the hardest working individual in my office.”
According to Steve Corbett, her nominator and Writing Center Director, Katherine, “has demonstrated many dispositions and actions that characterize who she is as a writing mentor to fellow students: she is a good listener, a thoughtful reader and responder, and she gives great practical advice to her peers.”
Well-known to anyone who has attended one of her conferences presentations at SCWCA or the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, Katherine is a dynamic speaker and thoughtful researcher.
We’d also like to recognize our other finalists:
Kimberly Scott, Abilene Christian University. Nominated by Cole Bennett.
Kaci Cawlfield, Langston University. Nominated by Mick Howard.
Katherine, Kimberly, Kaci, and all the other writing center tutors across the SCWCA region, we hope that you continue to be a part of the writing center community. As you plan your steps ahead, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions about graduate school. And yes, this is a direct effort to recruit you to our programs:
This year’s awards committee included previous years’ award winners, former conference chairs, and previous — and future — conference keynote speakers.
Thanks, again, to the nominees, nominators, and everyone involved. We’ll look forward to seeing y’all next year!
How we see blog moving forward
We’re hoping that this blog allows us to dialogue about important issues we face as writing center professionals and practitioners, as well as be an opportunity for us to share our work in a digital setting. While we look forward to the blog posts from presenters and authors, we equally look forward to the conversations they will inspire and we encourage you all to leave comments and questions for the authors. If you are interested in presenting your work in blog form, please email writingcenter@okstate.edu. From there, you will be in conversation with one of us at OKState Writing Center and we will discuss any questions/concerns you have, as we know a blog post is a different genre entirely. We will then put our writing center hats on and work with you to get your post up and running, and for it to be a piece you are proud of! We think this digital archive of posts can lead to future projects, such as a possible SCWCA journal or perhaps a special issue of a journal.