Research and Creative Achievement Week 2023

Each year, the Graduate School hosts the Research and Creative Achievement Week (RCAW) to showcase the work that students across campus are investing their time and effort into. This year, the University Writing Center (UWC) was featured in a few presentations by students that work at the UWC. These students — Steven Amador, Elizabeth Gagne’, and Joshua Wade — each presented at RCAW with a focus on promoting the research they have done around writing center research.

Amador, the current Graduate Assistant Director at the UWC, presented “A Survey of a Co-Evolutionary Review: Strategy for Writing Center Exit Forms/Session Notes.” This presentation focused on what happens to session notes when consultants and students draft them together. Amador traces the history of session notes in writing center research and noticed historically collaborative writing was the norm, but there’s been a recent shift toward consultant-only writing.

Gagne’, a current consultant at the UWC and a previous Graduate Assistant Director at another writing center, presented “Emotional Labor in the Writing Center: A Pilot Study.” Her poster presentation focused on how consultants at the writing center understand emotional labor and express emotions while working with students. This research centered on the types of emotions that consultants express while they are present within the UWC and if they think they can express themselves emotionally when dealing with emotional labor. This presentation also focused on whether or not consultants felt that they had interventions in place to allow them to express their emotions when dealing with emotional labor, whether it was the students expressing emotions or themselves expressing emotions.

Wade, a current consultant at the UWC, presented “Training ECU Writing Center Consultants in Suicide and Crisis Intervention Assessment and Response” with fellow peers Adam May, Amai Hagans, and Brandon Higson. Their poster presentation highlighted a community initiative project focusing on supporting the mental health and safety of ECU undergraduate and graduate students by offering crisis intervention training to writing center consultants. This training helped prepare consultants recognize, intervene, and refer students to appropriate resources if the consultant is concerned a student may be thinking of self-harming or having suicidal ideations.

All of these presentations showcase the active work that the student staff of the UWC does to offer their campus peers high impact support during writing center sessions. These presentations also highlight how the UWC student staff is continuously researching and developing practices to better help our ECU community.