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This case study shows what shared documents can make possible—not just alignment, but community, visibility, and programmatic change.
Read the full article in Composition Studies 53.1
🔗 bit.ly/CS53-1
A question for your program:
If your outcomes statement vanished tomorrow
• What would actually break?
• Which courses or assessments would feel it first?
• Who on campus would notice—and who wouldn’t?
These two campuses thingified the same document differently.
That’s part of the article’s point: shared outcomes don’t erase difference. They can amplify it, if WPAs treat them as living documents rather than boundary objects.
At UM, faculty used the outcomes to rethink the portfolio assessment rubric, recalibrate how they talked about evidence of learning, and refine how rhetoric fit into the program’s identity.
The statement didn’t sit still—it reshaped practice.
At USM, the shared outcomes became a lever for change—a three-course writing sequence, a reimagined approach to first-year writing, and even a new writing center.
A single document helped make writing newly visible across campus.
So they began with snapshots: Who are our students? What courses do we teach? What constraints shape our programs?
Those conversations led to a system-wide outcomes statement designed to be flexible—and genuinely shared.
The pressure was real: system consolidation, calls for efficiency, and worries about losing local control.
WPAs across the system were asked to "align"—but not flatten the real differences in their programs.
Most outcomes statements just sit in a PDF. This one didn’t.
In their article, Aligning with and through Difference, Jessica Ouellette and Ryan Dippre trace how a shared outcomes statement reshaped two campuses in the University of Maine System.
🔗 bit.ly/CS53-1
Taken together, these choices treat virtual conferencing not as a compromise, but as a way to live out our commitments to access, equity, and global dialogue.
Read the full article in Composition Studies 53.1
🔗 bit.ly/wwa-living
Accessibility isn’t an add-on here.
The conference builds in a living accessibility guide for presenters, auto-captioned sessions, time-zone-aware scheduling, and volunteer committees that mentor presenters and moderate sessions.
Their case study: the Global Society of Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE).
GSOLE’s all-virtual conference uses low-cost registration, IDEA-supported funding, and global scheduling to bring more online literacy educators into the conversation.
The authors point out that virtual conferences are often treated as “less than.”
But when travel costs, caregiving, disability, and contingent pay keep people out, virtual formats can widen the room—who speaks, who listens, and who can afford to be there.
In “Living Our Principles: Designing an Accessible and Inclusive Virtual Conference,” Theresa Evans, Kevin E. DePew, Amy Cicchino, and Cat Mahaffey share how GSOLE builds an all-virtual conference around equity and participation.
Are “real” conferences excluding people?
For years, conferences have meant flights, hotels, and steep fees. What if our most inclusive, connected professional spaces are intentionally online?
🔗 bit.ly/wwa-living
Working at the intersection of rhetoric, migration, and teaching? Katie Silvester reviews Cruz Medina’s Sanctuary, tracing how geopolitical forces shape literacies, citizenship, and belonging—vital for scholars and instructors alike.
Read the full review: bit.ly/review-sanct...
The Why:TYCA National isn’t just a conference.
It’s a blueprint for more equitable, more humane professional development—one that centers belonging across institutional lines.
Read the full article in Composition Studies 53.1
🔗 bit.ly/WWA_TYCA
The Challenge: The “great divide” between community-college and four-year institutions still shapes our field.
TYCA National models what it looks like to bridge that divide through care, coalition-building, and advocacy.
The Shift: Then the pandemic hit.
TYCA went digital—and access widened: lower cost, fewer travel hurdles, more space for contingent, caregiving, disabled, and rural colleagues.
The Origin: TYCA National didn’t start as a national conference.
It grew from regional meetups into a 2019 launch designed by and for open-access literacy educators—community first, titles second.
What if professional conferences built belonging—not barriers?
Joanne Baird Giordano & Charissa Che trace how TYCA National became an open-access advocacy space for two-year college educators.
🔗 bit.ly/WWA_TYCA
What does it mean to “write the race” in America? Kimberly A. Bain reviews Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s The Black Box, tracing how language shapes—and constrains—Black identity. A sharp read with big stakes for our classrooms.
Full review: bit.ly/review-black...
Conferences build our field, but they don’t have to build barriers.
Read Adisa & Condon in Composition Studies 53.1: bit.ly/www-future
💬 What’s one thing you love about conferences—and one thing you’d change to make them more equitable?
Freestanding conferencing could happen right where we already gather:
YouTube, Substack, Bluesky.
It’s time to meet audiences where they are and keep ideas circulating beyond the convention hall.
Or regional and pop-up conferences expand reach while lowering barriers.
They’re quick, nimble, and grounded in community needs—a return to conferencing as conversation, not competition.
Imagine a one-day, co-sponsored conference between nearby colleges—recorded talks, shared workshops, open access to ideas.
That’s professional validation without the price tag.
They propose four ways to rethink conferencing:
1️⃣ Sponsor local, campus-based gatherings.
2️⃣ Go regional to go further.
3️⃣ Think small, move fast with pop-ups.
4️⃣ Meet where we already are—on digital platforms.
