09/15/2025

September 2025 Update for CWPA Members

Dear Members: Hello again, and happy fall! We are hoping that you are doing well in this busy start-of-term season.

Here are the updates we’ll be covering in this email:

• CWPA Special Elections
• Fall Sessions
• CWPA Committee Sign-ups 
• Save the Date: CWPA Conference 2026

CWPA Special Elections

The Nominating Committee will hold a special fall election to fill three seats on the Executive Board. The current Executive Board is understaffed, but this election will bring the Executive Board to its full roster of nine members, as called for in CWPA’s bylaws. Elected members of the Executive Board serve a 3-year term; however, since this is a special election, the three members who join the board will serve for two and a half years, their term running January 2026 through June 30, 2028. Nominees should represent, when possible, the diversity of the members of the organization in such areas as gender, race, ethnicity, geography, type of institution, and size of institution. Executive Board members are expected to attend all meetings of the Executive Board during their term of office and to serve as members or chairs of CWPA committees.

The Nominating Committee will select candidates for the ballot based on their credentials, professional experience and background, and prior service to the organization. Nominees should submit a current CV and a nomination letter to the committee chair no later than Wednesday, October 1. Self-nominations are encouraged. Finalists will be chosen by October 15. Finalists will be asked to submit a bio and statement upon notification of being chosen and will have two weeks to submit these materials after notification. Voting will commence shortly thereafter, in early November.

Please send any questions and/or nomination materials to the chair of the Nominating Committee, Jacob Babb, babbjs@appstate.edu. If you are nominating another person, be sure to secure their permission to nominate them prior to submitting the nomination.

Fall Sessions

We have several CWPA virtual events scheduled for fall, and most are free for members. View the events and register here: https://www.wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/pt/sp/events 

September 19: “CWPA and TYCA Event: Mapping Programmatic Responsibilities"

How can we partner across institutions and organizations to identify our commonalities and reframe how we discuss our labor? During this event, CWPA and TYCA leadership will collaborate with participants to reflect upon and map their programmatic literacy labor so that we're better prepared to support and acknowledge the programmatic work that is actually taking place across organizations and institutions. 

• Facilitators: Joanne Baird Giordano, Cassandra Phillips, and Erin Lehman
• Date and time: 9/19, 60 minutes, 3:00-4:00pm ET
• Meeting platform: Zoom
• Cost to members: Free for members and nonmembers

September 29: “Coffee Corner: Best Book Award"

Join us for our Coffee Corner event, an informal, synchronous discussion of WPA-related topics. For this event, we will start to read CWPA's Best Book Award winner this year: Disruptive Stories: Amplifying Voices from the Writing Center Margins, edited by Elizabeth Kleinfeld, Sohui Lee, and Julie Prebel (Utah State University Press, 2024). 

• Facilitator: Mary Lourdes Silva
• Date and time: 9/29, 60 minutes, 5:00-6:00pm ET
• Meeting platform: Zoom
• Cost to members: Free for members 

October 30: “Disruptive Stories: Amplifying Voices from the Writing Center Margins"

At this event, we will discuss CWPA's Best Book Award Winner for 2025, Disruptive Stories: Amplifying Voices from the Writing Center Margins, edited by Elizabeth Kleinfeld, Sohui Lee, and Julie Prebel.

CWPA's Best Book Award Committee selected Disruptive Stories for its transparent structure, responsive writing, and the intentional inclusion of diverse voices. Reviewers consistently praised the book’s approach to storytelling as both a methodological and rhetorical strategy. By centering the lived experiences of writing center  administrators (WCAs), the book sheds new light on the often-overlapping and underexamined dimensions of WPA labor. While the book’s primary focus is on writing centers, reviewers noted that the insights readily translate to broader WPA contexts, especially as WCAs frequently engage in curricular design, assessment, labor negotiations, and equity work—all core concerns of WPA scholarship.

• Facilitator: Daryl Lynn Dance
• Date and time: 10/30, 75 minutes, 4:00-5:15pm ET
• Meeting platform: Zoom
• Cost to members: Free for members

CWPA Committee Sign-ups 

Committee Sign-ups will be coming shortly! Serving on one of the committees is a great way to get to learn more about CWPA’s mission and goals. Any person in the field–member or non-member of CWPA–is invited to serve. In the past, we’ve had over 80 volunteers for committee service, and we’d love to see this trend continue.

Save the Date: CWPA Conference 2026

Join us in beautiful Laramie, Wyoming, to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the historic 1986 Wyoming Conference Resolution next year! Please save the date for our on-site conference: July 19-25, 2026.

Thanking you for being a part of CWPA and engaging with this organization. 

Cheers,

Erin Lehman, CWPA President

David Green, CWPA Vice President

Amanda Presswood, CWPA Secretary

Christal Seahorn, CWPA Treasurer