‘If you want to lead the people, you must learn how

to follow them’: Collaborative Leadership &

Empowerment in the Center

Jaq Davis, Joe Zeccardi, Madeline Bell, Reyna Olegario, Tereza Joy KramerSaint Mary’s College of California

Northern California Writing Centers Association Conference 2015

1. Brief description of Saint Mary’s College and Center for Writing Across the Curriculum (CWAC)

2. Our Director’s evolution and a philosophical perspective on center structures

3. Service-learning, student leadership, and risk

4. Leadership in the Center and Beyond

Outline of Panel

● Small, private college in Moraga, CA○ Student to faculty ratio of

13:1● Liberal arts○ Seminar program

● Social Justice oriented

Saint Mary’s College of California

● Also known as CWAC● All writers, all disciplines● Minimalist pedagogy● Highly collaborative, both in

work with students and with each other

Center for Writing Across the Curriculum

Lead Adviser is ...

‘a role model who mentors other Writing Advisers and helps the director manage CWAC in these ways’:● go-to person for all sorts of questions by

other Advisers● observes peers’ sessions and gives

detailed feedback● creates or manages projects● plans and collaboratively leads weekly

Staff Workshops.

Activity!

Brainstorm/freewrite/list the many roles people occupy in your Writing Center. How would you describe the structure of those roles? Is one role innately more privileged than another?

A Machiavellian Model

The Director as Prince(ss)■ Knowledge, ability,

authority flow one way: top-down

■ Linear, clear, efficient, practical

Evolution

‘If you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow them’

~Lao-tzu

Transition

Machiavelli needs cooperation: agreement, acquiescence, obedience

Aristotle proscribes collaboration: partnering, synergistic interaction

Collaboration ...

‘involves the power of shared vision mutually developed. … It’s one thing to go it alone, working toward an established end, and something else altogether to pursue a mutual vision with other people you work with and respect.’

~ Morris

Activity!

Place a few of your most prominent “roles” on tree at the front of the room.

How did you interpret the tree model? How did you choose where to place your leaves? What does this show you about your center?

Director

CWAC

Minimalist Pedagogy

Writing Specialist

Admin. Assistants

Lead Advisers

Adjunct Circle

Facilitators

Leads in Training

Veteran Adviser Circle

Facilitators

Veteran Advisers

New Advisers

Advisers in Training

Service-Learning

‘Service-learning should include a balance between service to the community and academic learning… The hyphen in the phrase symbolizes the central role of reflection in the process of learning through community experience.’ ~Eyler & Giles

Server-served dichotomy

‘ … the danger that well-meaning volunteerism can unwittingly replicate the social structures that are part of the problem, defining some people as the knowledgeable server while casting others as the clients, patients, or the educationally deficient.’

~ Herzeberg

Leader-Led Dichotomy

‘Server-served’ - a lot like ‘leader-led’● One party possesses agency and bestows

on the other something it does not and could not attain on its own

● Little adaptation or growth - largely because of the lack of reflection, which leads to a lack of learning

The way that advisers work with students should be replicated, not challenged by the way we lead.

Practical Problem Solving

Creating Leads in Training position:● Bigger staff, Leads struggling to keep up● Negotiated tentative solution● Hired, further developed positions

Implementing reflective evaluations:● Scheduling problems and tough decisions● How could we evaluate performance?● Proposed new program and brainstormed

additions/revisions

Risk and Uncertainty

“We can try to control the uncontrollable by looking for security and predictability … But the truth is we can never avoid uncertainty. Not knowing is part of the adventure.” ~Chodon

Risk and Uncertainty

“I fear that a low-risk/low-yield model for [advising] encourages a framework of mere competence, of error-avoidance. I don’t want [advisers] to fear mistakes--because they will make them. The real skill lies in figuring out what to make of those mistakes … I think we do our [advisers] a disservice when we ‘train’ them in ways that suggest that we are more concerned with their being competent than with their being truly exceptional--which will involve some horrible mistakes no doubt.”

~ Elizabeth Boquet, Noise from the Writing Center

Collaborative Minimalism

While uncertainty and risk are often scary, writing advisers take this risk every day as minimalist advising spreads throughout our field.● Traditional tutoring mimics the top-down

leadership model: an editor fills an essay with his or her knowledge

● Collaborative minimalism recognizes both parties as having authority to shape and learn from one another

Developing Leaders Who Are Already Leaders

As Wallace and Wallace write, the center is not just about helping others grow as writers: “The writing center is also a hot house of development for the peer-tutors.’

Motivating Advisers

Bandura states that self-efficacy is increased when “people’s beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives’ ~ qtd. in Woolfolk

Brainstorming

What does leadership look like?

What should it?

Sources

Boquet, Elizabeth H. Noise from the Writing Center. Utah State UP. 2002. Print.

Einfeld, Aaron and Denise Collins. "The Relationships Between Service-Learning, Social Justice,

Multicultural Competence, And Civic Engagement." Journal of College Student Development 49.2

(2008): 95-109. Web. 2 Dec. 2014.

Eyler, Janet, and Dwight E. Giles Jr. Where’s the Learning in Service-Learning? San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,

1999. Print.

Herzberg, Bruce. “Community Service and Critical Teaching.” College Composition and Community

Development. (October 1994).

Geller, Anne Ellen, Michele Eodice, Frankie Condon, Meg Carroll, and Elizabeth Boquet. The Everyday

Writing Center: A Community of Practice. Utah State UP, 2007. Print.

Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Lab Newsletter

16.4-5 (1991-1992): 1-6. Print.

Lao-tzu and Stephen Mitchell. Tao Te Ching: A New English Version. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. Print.

Morris, Tom. If Aristotle Ran General Motors. Holt, 1998. Print.

Murphy, Christina, and Byron L. Stay, eds. The Writing Center Director’s Resource Book. Mahwah, NJ:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. Print.

Woolfolk, Anita. Education Psychology. 12th ed. San Francisco, CA: Pearson Education Inc., 2013. Print.