Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal

Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal examines WPA journeys and journeying.

Designed for WPA graduate seminars and professional development workshops, this book addresses two questions:

• How do people develop readiness to serve as WPAs?

• How do experienced WPAs find or create renewal opportunities that help them move forward throughout their lives and careers?

Authors address these questions from their sometimes-intersecting identities as BIPOC scholars, LGBTQ+ people, graduate students, and adjunct faculty, as well as early, mid-, and later-career WPAs.

Authors draw on their experience teaching at a range of two- and four-year institutions to analyse the complexities, contingencies, and rewards of short and long-term WPA work. These scholars contend that understanding WPA "readiness" and "renewal" involves questioning inherited definitions of those terms and engaging in theorized, self-aware conversations that reflect, and reflect on, understudied fears and desires about WPA work from graduate preparation to preparing for leadership rotation and retirement.

Joseph Janangelo is Associate Professor of English at Loyola University Chicago and Past President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. His books are A Critical Look at Institutional Mission: A Guide for WPAs, Resituating Writing Programs: Constructing and Administering Writing Programs, and Theoretical and Critical Perspectives on Teacher Change.

Mark Blaauw-Hara is Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, at University of Toronto Mississauga, Past President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and current Treasurer of the Canadian Writing Centres Association. His book is From Military to Academy: The Writing and Learning Transitions of Student-Veterans.