Having gone through the same painful process at U of Calgary seven years ago, I empathize with you wholeheartedly.
Regardless of the qualifications of the person upper admin chooses to direct the centre, there is still a fundamental problem inherent in moving the administration of writing centres from faculty
to staff positions, and higher-level administrators do not seem to grasp the issues. And upper-level university administrators forge ahead without consultation or without going through the democratic processes established in universities because it's easier
that way and they have the power to do so.
Perhaps what surprises me most is that nothing writing centres do seems to protect them from such moves. We've seen these moves happen to writing centres whose administrators are heavily involved
in research (which one would think would be valued in a university); to writing centres with strong, visible institutional academic champions; and to writing centres that generate enough revenue through various activities that they are essentially revenue-neutral
except for the fixed cost of the tenured director (which was our situation at U of C).
Best regards,
Jo-Anne Andre
U of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta (Canada)
From: European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing - discussions [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Fiona English [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2016 5:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: sad news from the University of Alberta
Sent: Saturday, April 23, 2016 5:10 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: sad news from the University of Alberta
Dear Lucie
So sorry to hear this - but unfortunately not entirely surprised. The same sort of thing started happening in the UK at the beginning of the 2000s - either with centres being taken over by external organisations such as INTO or being subsumed under student or library services. It is painful and frustrating and demonstrates, as you say, complete ignorance (or care) of the nature of the work such centres are involved in. I found that my colleagues other departments did have some appreciation as we had worked with them on various projects, but it was the mushrooming central administration who were the problem.
My own solution, after having built up the centre over 12 years, was to move on to work on a masters programme in TESOL and Applied Linguistics at another university - something I very much enjoyed - until that too was eventually tampered with by central administrators who had not a clue or care about what we did. In the end, we on the team all left!
My response to both cases, it seems, was to write a book! The first came out of the academic literacies work from the writing centre days; the second came out of my collaboration with a colleague on the MA. In both cases, the book writing process enabled me to work through my - yes - grief at what had been, and pleasure at what could be restored.
So it's great to see that you will be doing something along the same lines.
All the very best of luck for the future
Fiona
On 22 April 2016 at 16:34, Lucie Moussu
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear friends and colleagues,
It is with a broken heart that I share with you the news that the University of Alberta has decided to move the Centre for Writers, currently housed in the Faculty of Arts, into Student Services. As a result, I was told that I will no longer be Director of the Centre for Writers as of June 30th, 2016. An administrative director will be hired sometime this summer. I will retain my tenured appointment with the Department of English and Film Studies, with a yet-to-be-determined teaching assignment.
I won’t let this change affect my commitment to the CWCA and IWCA (and other professional organizations), or my writing centre scholarship. I will take the upcoming year to write a few articles about my writing centre research, attend conferences, get a bit of rest after 10 years of administration, and explore other employment opportunities.
In the meantime, I am grateful to be able to concentrate on our annual conference, and hope to see many of you next month in Calgary. I have no doubt that we will have a chance to discuss this recent administrative decision at the UofA further. Indeed, with such administrative decisions being made with increasing frequency (last year at Wilfrid Laurier, and more recently at UBC), perhaps the CWCA needs to develop a clearer strategy on how we might get ahead of future such announcements.
Best,
Lucie.
—Lucie Moussu, PhD
Director, Centre for Writers
Associate Professor in Writing Studies
University of Alberta
Chair, Canadian Writing Centres AssociationCWCA representative, International Writing Centers Association