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SORRY FOR CROSS-POSTING! Dear Sir or Madam, we are pleased to announce the call for papers for the EWCA conference, which will be held in Freiburg, Germany, June 19-22, 2008. Conference topic: Initiating Writing Center Work - Connecting Secondary, Higher, and Professional Education Writing centers are still rather rare in the different educational landscapes within Europe. Nevertheless, the acknowledgment of a growing diversity of learners in primary, secondary, higher and professional education has forced politicians, administrators, and teachers to demand new forms of individualized support for students. In many institutions, so-called learning centers, academic training units, communication centers, and competence centers have been set up. However, in their attempts to support a wide variety of student needs, such centers often fail because of their remits are far too broad. In contrast, some centers have begun to recognize the importance of focusing on key competencies - such as writing and reading, and presentation skills - in their service. Based on such a focus, highly specialized and therefore effective work with students can become possible, and as a result, specific needs and institutional standards can be made more visible. This Conference Call encourages discussion of concepts of institutional development to set up writing centers and to integrate writing center work into discipline-specific and cross-disciplinary instruction and learning. This call also looks for training programs for writing/reading experts who work in the writing center and beyond. In addition, presentations on experiences with genre-specific support and the facilitation of writing/reading work aiming for the needs of other educational fields outside of the writing center's institutional home base are strongly encouraged. Proposals should not only present practical ideas on writing center pedagogy but also show how these ideas are emerging from current writing center theory and research. Schedule: June 19: Pre-conference workshops (full day: 9 a.m.-5 p.m./half day: 2-5 p.m.) Evening: Cocktail party June 20 (all day): Opening, Keynotes, individual presentations, poster session Evening: Freiburg city tour and dinner June 21 (all day): Keynotes, individual presentations, workshops Evening: Tour to Staufen, a nearby medieval town, dinner June 22 (half day): Individual presentations, round table(s), closing session (until 1 p.m.) Afternoon/evening: Trip to the countryside of Freiburg and wine-tasting More information about the conference is available at www.ph-freiburg.de/ewca2008 <http://www.ph-freiburg.de/ewca2008> Please submit your proposal online any time before January 15, 2008. Please find the full call for papers attached. Kind regards Erdmuthe Schiller Local organizing committee