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Plenary Address
Innovation through Intentional
Administration: Or, How to Lead a Writing
Program Without Losing Your Soul
Susan Miller-Cochran
A
Writing program administrators work in a conicted, liminal space. For
example, they sometimes are asked to enforce language norming that they don’t
support, and they often must facilitate labor practices that they also ght. In
spite of the transformations they advocate for, the long histories and stubborn
practices of writing programs reect and enact privilege. WPAs often have little
control over the scal decision-making that impacts the instructors and stu-
dents in their programs. Yet that conicted space is also complex, for even as
these issues likely sound familiar to many program directors, they manifest in
vastly dierent ways in the broad range of institutional contexts and job titles
that WPAs work in. Our rhetorical training, however, prepares us well for the
spaces in which we work, especially when we continually allow clear, consistent
principles and values to guide us. When we understand our institutional con-
texts and remain focused on our guiding principles and values, we can inten-
tionally, strategically move toward change. In this plenary address, I argue for
the importance of knowing our guiding principles to shape decision-making in
the conicted spaces where we work, and I describe my approach of compassion-
ate administration.
I know this isn’t news to anyone, but writing program administrators work
in a conicted, liminal space. We’re (often, but not always) in multiple
roles. In my case, I am both administrator and faculty. Some WPAs are
both students and administrators, and others are both sta and adminis-
trators. Some of us wear more than two hats, and many of us work in more
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than one unit. at means that we answer to multiple groups, and those
groups often have conicting goals. When I encounter these kinds of con-
icts, sometimes they’re minor; at other times, they are so intense that I
am left feeling angry, sad, guilty, and confused. I would like to illustrate a
few examples of how those conicts have manifested in my own adminis-
trative experience.
Conict 1. Even though I’ve explained many times to people across cam-
pus that rst-year writing is not an inoculation against what many faculty
and administrators see as writing “error,” I have struggled for over twenty
years now with an existential sort of crisis: trying to understand how to rec-
oncile that I spent six and a half years in graduate school studying, writing
about, and celebrating the importance of language variation, yet I work in a
system that often expects me to enforce language norming. As the director
of a writing program, I am now the default gurehead of language norm-
ing on my campus, regardless of how nuanced I may try to make the goals
of a writing course.
Conict 2. In one of my WPA positions, we had a potential budget reduc-
tion nearly every year. Even if it wasn’t certain that we would actually
receive a budget reduction, the dean asked us to participate in the “exer-
cise” of coming up with possible scenarios to deal with dierent percent-
age decreases in our budgets. Since our writing program budget was 98%
personnel, that meant that I was expected to do the unthinkable—go
through a list of faculty and determine who would be let go if our fund-
ing was reduced by, say, 3%, 5%, or 7%. And nearly every year, I would
avoid answering the question of what to cut by coming up with various
alternative solutions for saving money without cutting faculty lines. Or, if
I had no alternative ideas, I would argue for why we couldn’t cut anything.
My blood pressure would rise and I would feel indignant as I responded.
And as I wrote those emails and made those arguments, I felt the very per-
sonal conict that one of the people who has consistently helped me think
through the ethics of labor issues—my husband, Stacey—is also one of
the faculty members o the tenure-track. Yet even though I struggled each
year to nd new, airtight ways to make untenured faculty positions stable,
I couldn’t escape the fact that the unethical hierarchy of the university had
put one person (me) in a position to make decisions that aected so many
others. It was unconscionable that colleagues with decades of teaching
experience and multiple degrees beside their names (in some cases the exact
same degrees I had) were in such precarious positions while I enjoyed secu-
rity. e guilt and shame that accompanied those moments were intense.
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Conict 3. As a WPA, one of my primary goals is to be as transparent,
democratic, and inclusive as I possibly can be with the teachers in our writ-
ing program, even with some of the kinds of situations I’ve just mentioned.
Yet there are times when I have to decide how much to share. It is these
moments where I feel the internal conict of being both a faculty member
and an administrator most, and I have to decide where my alliances fall
and where the lines are drawn between being wise, being compassionate,
and being transparent. Most often, the crisis isn’t resolved, but I still have
to gure out how to move forward.
While my observation that WPAs work in conicted, liminal spaces is
fairly obvious, it’s one of the primary lessons that I’ve learned as a WPA.
Indeed, one of the rst lessons I learned about being a WPA might have
been when I read Laura Micciche’s (2002) article in College English, “More
than a Feeling: Disappointment and WPA Work.” In that article, Mic-
ciche wrote that from the outside, “the WPA seems to occupy a powerful
location. e truth, however, is that the WPA’s authority and power are
challenged, belittled, and seriously compromised every step of the way” (p.
434). I’ve found that often those challenges to power and authority come
from the conicted spaces in which we work, and at least for me, I nd I
am challenging my own decision-making and positionality. e challenge
is not just external—it is also internal. And sometimes those conicts can
hit very close to home—in my own experience, they can be personal, and
they can be extraordinarily challenging as I weigh options with aspirations,
reality with hope. I’ve just nished my 11th year of directing a writing pro-
gram (at two dierent institutions), and the implications of this lesson are
always becoming at the same time clearer and also more complicated. It’s
how to navigate (and perhaps not only survive but thrive in) this conicted
space that I want to talk about this evening.
I also want to acknowledge that I don’t claim to have all of the answers.
e title of my talk, which seemed both amusing and an act of adminis-
trative desperation at the time that I wrote it, makes the grandiose claim
that I am going to give denitive answers. But I am fully aware that my
experiences are not identical to anyone else’s, and that we all live and work
in unique institutional contexts. With that said, and with humility, I want
to share some of what I have found that grounds me in the moments when
those competing interests and demands seem more than I can handle. How
do we innovate in the midst of conict and move from where we are to
something new and better?
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I
I nd that much of the conict we deal with comes from the fact that
WPAs are in unique administrative positions. Our positionality is an inter-
section of interests and commitments, based on the liminal space in which
we live. Yet we are also uniquely prepared for the administrative work that
we do. As Doug Hesse (2005) pointed out, “No other administrative posi-
tion so commingles agency with disciplinary knowledge” (p. 503). Osten-
sibly, we do our administrative work in programs where we can focus
exclusively on the kinds of things that we studied as graduate students and
that we research and write about as faculty. But it is also this personal and
scholarly investment that we have in our administrative work that can make
dealing with the conicts so challenging. What we decide and how we solve
problems can have implications on our scholarly work and our relationship
to the work of our colleagues in the discipline. ese are, at the same time,
some of the reasons why the CWPA conference has always felt like a home
to me; it’s the one place where I know other people understand the conicts
and challenges that I’m dealing with. It’s a safe space to vent, seek advice,
and understand that you’re not alone. It’s also a space where I can think
through how I want to respond to some of the bigger challenges I know I
will be facing in the coming academic year.
is brings me to what I see as perhaps the most important word in
my title: intentional. What does it mean to respond to administrative
challenges with intentionality and to engage in what I am calling “inten-
tional administration”?
Let me start with an example of what I mean. In February 2017, I met
virtually with Elizabeth Wardle’s WPA graduate seminar at Miami Univer-
sity of Ohio. In preparation for the conversation, Liz sent me some notes
about what the class had been reading and what she hoped I would share
with the students. Specically, she asked me to share any guiding prin-
ciples that inform my decision-making as a WPA. Liz’s prompt was an
important one, and it points to one of the most important things I believe
a WPA needs to know: What are your guiding principles? is is the key
to intentional administration and to navigating the conicts that we inevi-
tably experience. To determine how to move forward, we have to know our
guiding principles.
One of the ways that I encourage the students in my own WPA graduate
seminars to identify their guiding principles is to start with a related ques-
tion: What is your metaphor for administrative work? One of my former
colleagues at North Carolina State University, Casie Fedukovich, uses the
metaphor question when she teaches pedagogy courses for graduate stu-
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dents (Fedukovich, 2013). I learned by adapting her activity that starting
with metaphors can help us dig beneath the surface to understand what our
own guiding principles are.
Another powerful example of metaphors in composition comes from
Jay Dolmage’s (2007) chapter “Mapping Composition: Inviting Disability
in the Front Door.” In that chapter, Dolmage introduces the metaphors of
steep steps, the retrot, and universal design to help readers understand
how composition excludes, how it can be redesigned, and how it can be
more inclusively conceived from the beginning. Metaphors can help us
understand concepts—and ourselves—on deeper levels.
So what is your metaphor for administrative work?
C A
My administrative metaphor shifts over time, but the one that I often come
back to is a rocking chair. Some of you have heard the story of how I inher-
ited a rocking chair for my rst WPA oce from Michael Carter at NC
State, and I used to joke that I would oer the rocking chair to people when
they would come to my oce to vent—about a grade, about a classmate,
about a teacher, about a policy. Rocking chairs are soothing. But the rock-
ing chair really had meaning to me. Perhaps part of its meaning originated
in the fact that it was given to me by one of the kindest, most generous col-
leagues I’ve ever worked with. e rocking chair reminded me that one of
my biggest responsibilities as an administrator is to listen to others while
they share with me their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. When I listen, I
understand more. And as I listen, I might see possibilities for convergence
that I hadn’t seen originally. I grow, change, and innovate by listening. And
sometimes I need to just sit with the discomfort that I’m feeling and think
through how to respond—quietly, and sometimes slowly—which can be a
dicult thing for a generally impulsive extrovert like me to do. Rocking
chairs are good for that, too. And that metaphor connects with one of my
guiding principles as an administrator: to act with compassion. e only
way I can act with compassion is if I am listening to and paying attention
to a range of perspectives.
Ultimately, I believe it is important to know your guiding principles
and to set strategic plans and make decisions accordingly. Our rhetorical
training prepares us well for the conicted spaces in which we work—we
know how to pay attention to context, audience, and to focus on our pur-
pose. And that rhetorical training really pays o if we allow clear, consis-
tent principles to guide us. When you are in the midst of a moment where
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competing interests make it dicult to gure out how to move forward,
your guiding principles can point the way.
When we understand our context and remain focused on our guiding
principles, we can intentionally, strategically, move toward change.
Saying that my guiding principle is compassion isn’t really sexy or dra-
matic. But then again, my favorite movie so far this year has been the
documentary about Mr. Rogers (Neville, 2018). I nd that compassion
provides a compelling way to move forward—to work toward equity and
understanding. As a teacher, I have also been drawn recently to instruc-
tional approaches that showcase compassion, or what Carson and Johnston
(2000), Jansen (2008), Patel (2016), and others call a “pedagogy of com-
passion.” Compassionate administration also aligns with how Linda Adler-
Kassner (2008) described the “activist WPA” as having
a commitment to changing things for the better here and now
through consensus-based, systematic, thoughtful processes that
take into consideration the material contexts and concerns of all
involved
... and a constant commitment to ongoing, loud, some-
times messy dialogue (p. 33).
Compassionate administration doesn’t mean always seeking easy consensus
or avoiding conict. e conict and discomfort are sometimes essential
to gure out how to move forward. And compassionate administration
doesn’t mean being quiet or taking a back seat. Sometimes it means being
the squeaky wheel and making people uncomfortable. It means listening,
but it also means acting.
Acting on what is compassionate, fair, and equitable is part of how I
address the subtitle of my talk. I invoke the soul, and I imply that doing
administrative work can potentially put you at risk of losing yours. Talking
about the soul is far more touchy-feely than I usually get in my own schol-
arly writing, but I’m learning that it is something that is incredibly impor-
tant for me to address. I have to align what I say I believe as a WPA with
what I do as a WPA. When these are in conict, I experience cognitive dis-
sonance, and I am uneasy. But when I can align them, I can move forward.
O E I
It might help if I provide an example of the kind of conicted space I’m
talking about. Our writing program is housed in a large department of
English, and one of the conicts that has circulated for a long time—and
that is likely unsurprising to many of you—is what the content of the rst-
year writing course should be and how to prepare graduate students to
teach that course when rhet-comp is not their area of interest. I myself was
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a graduate student who was assigned to teach rst-year writing without ever
having taken it, and I came to graduate school to study applied linguistics,
not rhet-comp. I empathize with multiple sides in the conict.
Yet as the director of the writing program, I have fairly well-formed
(and what I believe are well-informed) ideas about what the content of the
class should include, what the goals of the course should be, and how to
prepare new teachers of writing. We have a large administrative team and
faculty in the writing program with a wealth of experience in teaching and
studying writing, and I’m following in the footsteps of a line of writing
program administrators in the same program who have been active in the
eld of rhet-comp. Yet one of the rst conicts I dealt with on campus was
the question of whether graduate students could teach literature in their
classes (in other words, teaching what they had come to the University of
Arizona to study) and why they had to read composition theory when this
was not what they were interested in. Part of what puzzled me was that I
had not banned literature from writing classes; rather, we had begun to
move toward a much more open approach in the curriculum that focused
on outcomes and allowed instructors to use a multitude of ways to reach
those outcomes. Yet while I rmly believe that a range of dierent kinds of
literature can be used to teach students principles of writing and meet the
outcomes of our courses, I would have protested a class that had essentially
turned into an introduction to literature.
e conict came to a climax in the spring of 2017, when I and one of
our associate directors were called to a meeting with the literature faculty in
the department to discuss the writing program. At rst I refused to attend
the meeting, but I was convinced by my department head that it would be
in the best interests of resolving the conict if we were willing to respond
to questions and explain our perspective.
When we arrived at the meeting, we found a standing-room only crowd
of faculty and graduate students. We were given seats at a conference table
in the middle of the room, surrounded on all sides in what felt—to me—
like an antagonistic space. e director of the program began the meet-
ing by saying that the literature and writing programs had long enjoyed a
good relationship under the direction of the four former WPAs (whom he
named), but for the past two years (which incidentally coincided with my
arrival on campus) GTAs were reporting more distress in their work with
the writing program and that faculty nd their distress understandable
and justiable.
I was, to put it mildly, caught o guard.
We had just conducted a CWPA consultant-evaluator visit the semes-
ter before, and we had made a point of having a time when GTAs could
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meet with the consultant-evaluators to share their perspectives. I had to work
very hard not to be reactionary and defensive in that moment. Instead, after
very briey highlighting some of the things we had accomplished to support
teachers in the program, I responded that the associate director and I would
listen carefully and take notes.
Among other things, we were told at the meeting that:
• We should fire any faculty mentoring GTAs who seemed to
be anti-literature.
• The writing program should be designing its curriculum to recruit stu-
dents into the major.
• The writing program needs to get back to basics, to include more of an
emphasis on grammar and on literary texts.
• Graduate students shouldn’t have to take a rhet-comp theory course
when their workload is already too high.
• The writing program requires too work much in the annual self-assess-
ment and review of GTAs.
• Any change in the writing program’s curriculum must be approved by
the Department Council (which at the time had no mandatory rep-
resentation from the writing program, but did from the four gradu-
ate programs).
• And ultimately, administrators in the writing program were anti-literature.
After an hour and a half of listening to complaints and being asked almost
no questions, the meeting was dismissed. I felt as if we had just survived
an ambush. I was angry following that meeting. Indignant. My emotional
response was intense. But how was I going to respond?
I can’t say I was 100% consistent, but compassion compelled me to
try—as best I could—to understand the perspectives of my colleagues and
their students. Granted, the compassionate response wasn’t my rst impulse,
and my fellow administrators in the program can certainly attest to that.
But when I tried to look at the issues through the lens of empathy, I could
see that:
1. the numbers in the major were dwindling;
2. the faculty who were retiring in their program weren’t consistently
being replaced;
3. the workload for GTAs was far too high; and
4. the department wasn’t offering literature courses for GTAs to teach
(for a range of complicated reasons) and they desperately wanted
some experience teaching what they were studying.
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To be fair, I was very clear with my department head and upper administra-
tion that the way the concerns were brought to me and the associate direc-
tor was inappropriate and unproductive. But ultimately, what could we do
to respond to the actual issues?
Personally, I had to gure out how to resolve how I felt about what had
happened and what I could learn from it. So in an eort to experience more
alignment between what I believe and what I do—in essence, to be mindful
and pay attention to my soul—I made a set of “Academic New Year’s Reso-
lutions as a WPA” at the beginning of the following school year (2017–18).
I wanted to set specic intentions for my administrative work. ey were to:
1. Practice radical transparency.
2. Demonstrate strategic incompetence. You really can’t do more
with less, and sometimes that needs to be visible.
3. Practice self-care.
4. Be proactive, not reactive.
5. Listen more than I speak because I’ve got a lot to learn.
During the following academic year, following that spring 2017 meeting,
our administrative team tried to focus on what we saw as the causes of the
problems instead of the symptoms (which seemed to be primarily the things
being voiced at the meeting). We worked on streamlining the GTA self-
evaluation process and reducing teacher workload (both for GTAs and our
faculty). We reduced GTA teaching loads during their rst semester, and
we reduced course caps across the board to 19. We also tried to communi-
cate more clearly the ways that disciplinary and scholarly interests could be
incorporated into the curriculum, and we paid a small group of graduate
students (with equal representation from each program in the department)
over the summer of 2017 to develop curricular outlines using all of the
textbooks on our lists that provided examples of how to meet the outcomes
through a range of approaches. I conducted a workshop with those gradu-
ate students at the beginning of that eort to talk to them about construc-
tive alignment and reinforce that we wanted to provide them the space to
innovate in the classroom. e undergraduate program director has also
worked to nd ways to provide teaching opportunities for GTAs outside of
the writing program, so it has certainly been a team eort.
I wish I could report that we all lived happily ever after, but that is never
reality. What I can say is that there have been no conict-driven follow-up
meetings about these issues, and the new graduate literature program direc-
tor has reached out to me with specic ideas about how she would like to
work together in the coming year to help graduate students see the value of
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the work they are doing in the writing program. In that last example, she is
also extending compassion, and I honor that.
ere have certainly been other conicts that have come up over the
past year, primarily dealing with issues of labor in the writing program
and the rights of faculty o the tenure-track. In many ways, 2017 and the
spring of 2018 were the most challenging, heart-wrenching semesters I’ve
ever experienced professionally. Did identifying my intentions through
those resolutions make the year easier? No. Did it matter that I set inten-
tions ahead of time? Absolutely. I am convinced that, as I had named in
my resolutions, being intentional in administration means being proactive,
rather than just reactive.
I C A
But what might (in my case) being an intentional, compassionate adminis-
trator look like on a day-to-day basis? If I pay attention to the research in
our eld and listen wholeheartedly to voices such as Sharon Crowley, Seth
Kahn, Tony Scott, and others about the problematic and often unethical
hiring practices in writing programs; to Asao Inoue, Collin L. Craig and
Staci M. Perryman-Clark, and others about racism in writing programs,
curricula, and CWPA itself; and to Melanie Yergeau, Jay Dolmage, Mar-
garet Price, and Amy Vidali about ableism in WPA work, then how do I
respond in my day-to-day decision-making as a WPA?
In my experience, I have identied three broad approaches to adminis-
trative work that are grounded in compassion and that are intentional and
proactive. I have found that they can help shift the atmosphere of a writing
program to be intentionally inclusive and open, laying the groundwork for
solving some of the big challenges we face.
First, I advocate letting instructors and students lead and guide as much
as possible, facilitating their leadership and supporting their ideas. In a
publication I co-authored with Maria Conti and Rachel LaMance (2017),
we called such initiatives “grassroots eorts,” specically in the context
of developing an assessment plan. Most recently, we have tried to provide
more autonomy to instructors in our curriculum at the University of Ari-
zona, and we have taken a hard look at the opportunities that we provide
for instructors at dierent ranks (both faculty and graduate students) to
participate in decision making. We have included an undergraduate stu-
dent on our writing program advisory and policy-making committee. ese
kinds of initiatives aren’t necessarily ecient; it’s much more expedient to
just make decisions in a hierarchical manner, following the authoritative
WPA model. But the payo of a grassroots approach is incalculable. e
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ideas circulating around the program are better because more perspectives
are included, and instructors and students are naturally more invested in
the work that they do when they know their voices and experience matter.
A second strategy that I rely on is related to the rst, and that is fol-
lowing a model of collaborative, distributed administration. Many scholars
have both advocated for and critiqued a range of collaborative administra-
tive models, perhaps most notably Jeanne Gunner (1994; 2002). Eileen E.
Schell (1998) also complicates the responsibilities and roles in a collabora-
tive administrative structure for untenured faculty and graduate students
in her article about the “possibilities and pitfalls” of collaborative admin-
istrative structures. ese critiques oer important guidelines for embark-
ing on collaborative administration, and I remain convinced that a truly
collaborative model that distributes authority instead of merely attening a
hierarchy or rotating the “boss compositionist” (Sledd, 2000) can be a com-
passionate move. Similar to grassroots initiatives, collaborative administra-
tion incorporates a range of perspectives, histories, and experiences, leading
to more informed decision making and leadership. And if we think about
self-care, the collaborative structure also gives everyone the opportunity to
take space to breathe and recharge, something that is impossible to do if
you are always the one on call.
A nal strategy that is essential to compassionate administration is hav-
ing clear boundaries. Compassion does not mean an absence of boundar-
ies; rather, it involves at least two kinds of clear boundaries: boundaries
that preserve time and energy for the things that are important instead of
always bowing to “the tyranny of the urgent” (a phrase I rst heard from
David Schwalm) and boundaries that maintain integrity by standing up to
practices that are unreasonable and unethical. Sometimes it means setting
protective boundaries necessary for the program itself, for the curriculum,
for the teachers, or for the students. And at other times the boundaries need
to be for the WPA, to self-preserve and continue on. Sometimes I have to
verbally remind myself not to jump into an issue or initiative and not to
take responsibility for problems, initiatives, or challenges that are not mine.
I am convinced that we can work toward innovative approaches that
can transform our programmatic spaces. But compassionate administra-
tion also means that the conict that I mentioned at the beginning of my
talk doesn’t necessarily go away just by listening, or by being inclusive and
collaborative, or by setting boundaries. Even though you may work toward
equity, social justice, and well-being, being a compassionate administra-
tor also means that you will recognize—vividly and clearly—the moments
when those values are not realized, especially when it seems there is noth-
ing you can do to change the circumstances. ose realizations are painful,
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and they can be disheartening. I have found, though, that they can also
be galvanizing.
S Y A I
So perhaps my own answers to Dominic DelliCarpini's engaging confer-
ence theme are these:
• What if we tried leading not just with our heads, but also with
our hearts?
• What if we were guided not just by our research but also by compassion?
• What if we could find ways to bring research and compassion togeth-
er to come up with answers to questions that we have not yet been
able to answer in writing program administration?
• In other words, what if we engaged in compassionate administration?
Administering with compassion and intentionality is not simple, though.
What does it mean, for example, to be a compassionate administrator in a
context where so many faculty are treated as second-class citizens? Where
students are subjected to decit-based models of instruction, even when
we teach with the best of intentions? When faculty and student well-being
come second to an administrative bottom line, especially when those fac-
ulty and students are people of color; or have physical, mental, or neurologi-
cal dierences; or speak varieties of English that have been marginalized;
or are faculty who have not been oered the security of being on the tenure
track? Although I certainly don’t have all of the answers to these questions,
I am convinced that a focus on compassion can help us do better than we
have been. And being a compassionate WPA also means recognizing that,
while our power and authority may be compromised in the kinds of ways
that I referenced from Micciche (2002) at the beginning of this talk, we
also have a position of inuence that compels us to speak out for equity,
even when it is uncomfortable and painful.
is past week, I was taking a hike in the Colorado mountains with my
husband, Stacey. I kept rewriting parts of this plenary in my head and talk-
ing through ideas with him to seek his feedback. During that hike, I came
across a cluster of wildowers in the middle of the trail somewhere above
12,000 feet of elevation (see gure 1).
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Figure 1. A cluster of Colorado wildowers. (Courtesy of the author)
I was struck by them—by how they are at the same time vulnerable and
fragile yet also tough survivors. People who are compassionate are some-
times mistaken for being weak or fragile, but the opposite is often true of
them: they possess a quiet, enduring strength that comes from a clear sense
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of who they are and what they value. Opening yourself up to compassion,
and to compassionate administration, requires equal parts vulnerability and
resilience. What I am calling for is at odds with a system of academic capi-
talism that does not generally reward selessness and service.
Some of the most eective examples I have seen of academic leadership,
though, have reinforced this guiding principle for me. I can’t help but won-
der what kind of a dierence it could make if our programs, departments,
universities, and professional organizations were consistently guided by
compassion and by a concern for the well-being of others. In our current
political climate, and given the current state of higher education, it seems
downright revolutionary. How might compassionate administration help us
think through solutions to some of the big, persistent challenges we face in
writing programs? Continuing to work through this question has been my
way to continue to do administrative work without losing my soul.
For me, intentional administration is compassionate administration. So,
I invite you to set your intention as you think about and listen to innovative
approaches at the conference over the next few days. What matters most to
you? And what does intentional administration look like for you?
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A
e author would like to thank Stacey Cochran for his careful reading of
and feedback on this manuscript. His comments and support helped shape
its direction and clarify its message. In addition, the author thanks Shelley
Rodrigo for her helpful comments on an early draft of the manuscript as
well as Dominic DelliCarpini and Mark Blaauw-Hara for their encourage-
ment about the overall theme of the talk.
Susan Miller-Cochran is professor of English and director of the writing pro-
gram at the University of Arizona, where her research focuses on the intersections
of technology, multilingual writing, labor issues, and writing program adminis-
tration. Her work has appeared in several journals, and she is also a co-editor of
WPA: Writing Program Administration, Volume 42, Number 1, Fall 2018
© Council of Writing Program Administrators
WPA 42.1 (Fall 2018)
122
Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity (Utah State University Press, 2018); Rhe-
torically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press, 2009); and Strategies for Teaching
First-Year Composition (NCTE, 2002). Additionally, she is a co-author of An Insid-
er’s Guide to Academic Writing (Macmillan, 2019), e Cengage Guide to Research
(Cengage, 2017), and Keys for Writers
(Cengage, 2016). She currently serves as
Immediate Past President of the CWPA.
WPA: Writing Program Administration, Volume 42, Number 1, Fall 2018
© Council of Writing Program Administrators
