Updated April 2, 2015 at 5:00 a.m.
The search for a new director of the Writing Center recommenced March 20 following an unsuccessful search effort in the fall. The University hopes to place the director by the start of next academic year, said Kathleen McSharry, associate dean of the College for writing and curriculum.
The position has been vacant since the May 2014 departure of former director Douglas Brown. Since then, the Writing Center’s programming has continued efficiently and without disturbance, said Rachel Toncelli, director of English language learning. McSharry has unofficially taken over as director since Brown’s departure.
The University narrowed down the search to four candidates in September 2014. Chosen from a pool of 45 applicants, these candidates were invited to campus for interviews in the fall, but two applicants to whom the University eventually offered the position decided to “remain where they were,” McSharry said.
The earlier job listing described the post as “Director of Writing Support Programs and Assistant Dean of the College,” but after applicants expressed confusion about the position’s responsibilities, the University decided to remove the assistant dean title, McSharry said. The search committee originally included the title with the hopes that it would make the position more attractive, “but it seemed to work in the opposite way,” she added.
The current search committee — which comprises a Department of English faculty member, a graduate student writing associate, an undergraduate writing fellow, Program Coordinator for the Writing Center Janet Peters, Deputy Dean of the College Christopher Dennis, McSharry and Toncelli — will rely on student feedback and on-campus visits with University personnel to determine whether a candidate is an appropriate fit for Brown, McSharry said.
The University will use candidate feedback gathered from the first trial to optimize the ongoing search, McSharry said.
“The candidates in whom we were most interested were able to secure more attractive packages at other schools, which meant we needed to look at our criteria,” McSharry said. This time around, the University has scaled back the years of experience required for the position.
“Quite a few centers use people in a director-type role who are just a year or two out of graduate school,” McSharry said. The preferred candidate will need to have earned a PhD, managed a writing center and taught composition at the college level, she added.
The director will play a critical role in shaping the future of the Writing Center, McSharry said.
Over the course of this academic year, the Writing Center has expanded to include two sixth-year doctoral students from the Graduate School to develop Writing Center resources for graduate students, McSharry wrote in a follow-up email to The Herald. Because most of the current Writing Center programming is targeted at undergraduates, graduate students tend to be “under-supported in terms of their writing needs,” she added.
But the University is “not forgetting about the undergraduates,” McSharry added. The Writing Center’s proposed programming will offer workshops to students writing their senior thesis proposals in the spring and will provide “touch points” for students to further develop their ideas in the fall.
The new director will interact closely with undergraduates when teaching a section of English 1110: “On Writing,” a course required for all undergraduate writing fellows intended to sharpen their skills as critical editors of peers’ writing, McSharry said. This fall, McSharry taught both sections of the course.
McSharry stressed the importance of the candidates’ understanding of a liberal arts education. The candidates need “to be able to communicate effectively with faculty across the curriculum about what writing looks like in their departments, how to embed it into their curriculum and how to assess it.”
The search committee will also evaluate the candidates on their personal characteristics in order to select someone who will work well within the program.
“One of the things that’s really special about the Writing Center is that we have a really terrific culture and welcoming feel,” Toncelli said. “We’re looking for a candidate who can jump right in and fit right into that culture … someone who is not only a great writer but also a great teacher — someone with vision.”
Toncelli said she is confident that candidates will not need much convincing that Brown students are especially exciting to work with. Students “want to come to the Writing Center not just because they want to make their paper better but because they want to be better writers,” she said. “We want someone with the energy and enthusiasm to approach that.”
Sienna Zeilinger ’15, a student assistant director of the Writing Fellows program, said the fellows hope the new director will feed into the Writing Center’s “culture of love.”
“The fellows will talk about what we expect from a leader, but it also follows a lot of what we expect from ourselves,” she said. “We want someone who is honest about what our job entails … someone who is committed to the program and able to make hesitant or reluctant writers feel comfortable about their writing.”
It is possible that timing will have an effect on the number of applicants, McSharry added. “Some people at this time of year aren’t able to move because of family or other commitments,” she said, adding that she originally thought the search committee should wait until the fall to garner a stronger applicant pool.
The committee will begin to review applications May 15, she added.
