Friday and Saturday, April 18 and 19, 1997
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

The 1997 conference of the East Central Writing Centers Association will be held on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh in Oakland.

Writing center administrators and staff, university or high school administrators, graduate and undergraduate writing consultants and tutors, and teachers of writing in composition programs and across the disciplines will meet to discuss the multiple ways that writing centers work to enhance the culture of writing instruction in their own institutions; to share insights, strategies, and practices; to celebrate the work we do in writing centers and challenge us to imagine what else we might be doing; to foster communication across disciplines, between institutions, and among ourselves. Local writing teachers will be featured: Mary Broglie, Bethel Park High School; Lea Marsiello, Director of Liberal Studies English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania; and Gary Stoehr and Maria Piantanita, School of Pharmacy, University of Pittsburgh.

The speaker at dinner on Friday will be Patricia Stock, Associate Executive Director of the National Council of Teachers of English and Professor of English at Michigan State University. The speaker at lunch on Saturday will be John Trimbur, Professor of English and Director of the Technical, Scientific and Professional Communication program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Speakers:

PATRICIA STOCK is Associate Executive Director of the National Council of Teachers of English and Professor of English at Michigan State University. She has taught English literature and composition in high schools and universities. She helped to establish the Center for Educational Improvement through Collaboration at the University of Michigan, a writing program at Syracuse University and was the founding director of the Writing Center at Michigan State. In 1993, she was awarded the James N. Britton Award for her article "The Function of Anecdote in Teacher Research." Her most recent book, The Dialogic Curriculum, has just been awarded the Richard A. Meade Award. Patti's Friday evening talk, "Project Connects: A Programmatic Vision for Education in a Democracy," will describe the work of the MSU Writing Center.

JOHN TRIMBUR is Professor of English and Director of the Technical, Scientific, and Professional Communication program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He has directed writing centers and peer tutoring programs at Rutgers in Camden, Community College of Baltimore, Rhode Island College, and Boston University. His article, "Peer Tutoring: A Contradiction in Terms?" won the National Writing Centers Association Article of the Year Award. He has also published on collaborative learning and cultural studies. The Politics of Writing Instruction: Postsecondary, which he co-edited with Richard Bullock, won the CCCC Outstanding Book Award in 1993. John's Saturday talk is entitled "Do Writing Centers Have a Politics?"

Additional Attractions:

For those able to arrive Friday morning, site visits are available to local area high school, middle school, and college-level writing centers. Speakers from local area schools and college will be featured.

Other area attractions are available within walking distance: The Carnegie Museum of Art, the Nationality Rooms in the Cathedral of Learning, and the Phipps Conservatory. Within a short drive are The Andy Warhol Museum, The Heinz History Center, baseball, and Frick Park and Museum.

Additional support for the conference is provided by the University of Pittsburgh Office of the Provost, the Composition Program, and the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project.