“Mentorship, Affordability, and Equity: Ways Forward in Writing Program Administration”

by Amanda Presswood and Virginia M. Schwarz, Writing Program Administrators Graduate Organization (WPA-GO) | Xchanges 15.1, Spring 2020

About the Authors

Amanda Presswood is a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric and Composition program at Florida State University. Amanda is currently working on her dissertation “Epistemological Barriers in the Writing Center: Toward Language Difference as the Norm,” which seeks to identify the epistemological assumptions that govern the ways that multilingual and L2 students are constructed within the literature of the field of rhetoric and composition and how that informs the theoretical and pedagogical approaches that are taken to educate writing tutors about working with multilingual students. Amanda is also the current chair of the Writing Program Administrators Graduate Organization (WPA-GO).

Virginia M. Schwarz is a first-generation college student finishing her PhD in Composition and Rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Virginia researches assessment genres and the socio-rhetorical construction of merit. Her recent project investigates different forms of contract grading. Virginia returned to school after six years of teaching writing at multiple community colleges, and she currently teaches English and technical communication courses at Madison College. Her work appears in Critical Theory and Qualitative Data Analysis in Education, CCC, Composition Studies, and JWA. In the fall, she will begin her role as Assistant Professor of English at San Francisco State University.