Christopher LeCluyse | Westminster College (original) (raw)

Papers by Christopher LeCluyse

At the writing center where I began my career, every session ended with a conundrum. Our database... more At the writing center where I began my career, every session ended with a conundrum. Our database required us to complete the record for the consultation by checking one of some two dozen checkboxes indicating the topics covered during the session. Because most of the tutors were graduate students concurrently teaching first-year composition, some of these topics were drawn from the standardized curriculum for that course, including a tripartite division of the revision process into the separate stages of revising, editing, and proofreading. These categories were inherently redundant, since the tutor then had to check whatever other aspects of writing revising at each of these levels entailed. As time went on, we added additional categories to reflect the kind of language novice writers brought with them to the writing center, including “flow.” Now covering a single topic like organization might involve checking three boxes, one for revision, one for organization, and one for flow, ...

Unlimited Players: The Intersections of Writing Center and Game Studies, 2022

Empowerment. Collaboration. Equality. More than many academic departments and services, writing c... more Empowerment. Collaboration. Equality. More than many academic departments and services, writing centers are driven by their values. As writing center practitioners, we judge ourselves according to how we apply those values in working with writers. Much writing center theory focuses on expressing, developing, and interrogating such ideals and determining how they can be best realized in practice. In our eagerness to serve the needs of writers or to enter the theoretical conversation, however, we can skip over the most crucial component of any writing center: the writing consultants themselves. Focusing only on our services can confine values-based approaches to our clientele but not our staff: writers may be empowered, collaborated with, and approached on the level, but consultants may fall into a traditional student-teacher hierarchy. At the opposite extreme, professionalizing consultants by having them discuss and contribute to writing center theory may empower them as scholars but...

Community Literacy Journal, 2021

In 2013, Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, established Write Here: A Community Writing... more In 2013, Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, established Write Here: A Community Writing Center in collaboration with Promise South Salt Lake. In 2016 Write Here's operations shifted from a community center to the various spaces of Promise South Salt Lake after-school programs. The COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated this transition with the move to online workshops. The decentering of Write Here exposes the dynamics of place and practice inherent in both community literacy and writing centers. Occupying third space, Write Here consultants navigate changing locations, mentoring, and non-tutoring activities, challenging traditional writing center narratives. Accommodating community partners likewise requires dwelling in a rhetoric of respect. By remaining flexible and recognizing limitations, Write Here has opened channels of communication to reach shared understandings. This analysis models how other community literacy organizations can enter into more effective and meaningful partnerships and adapt to ongoing shifts of place and practice.

The Academic Minute, 2019

Writing Program Architecture: Thirty Cases for Reference and Research, 2017

_Writing Program Architecture_ offers an unprecedented abundance of information concerning the si... more _Writing Program Architecture_ offers an unprecedented abundance of information concerning the significant material, logistical, and rhetorical features of writing programs. Presenting the realities of thirty diverse and award-winning programs, contributors to the volume describe reporting lines, funding sources, jurisdictions, curricula, and other critical programmatic matters and provide insight into their program histories, politics, and philosophies.

Each chapter opens with a program snapshot that includes summary demographic and historical information and then addresses the profile of the WPA, program conception, population served, funding, assessment, technology, curriculum, and more. The architecture of the book itself makes comparison across programs and contexts easy, not only among the programs described in each chapter but also between the program in any given chapter and the reader’s own program. An online web companion to the book includes access to the primary documents that have been of major importance to the development or sustainability of the program, described in a “Primary Document” section of each chapter.

The metaphor of architecture allows us to imagine the constituent parts of a writing program as its foundation, beams, posts, scaffolding—the institutional structures that, alongside its people, anchor a program to the ground and keep it standing. The most extensive resource on program structure available to the field, Writing Program Architecture illuminates structural choices made by leaders of exemplary programs around the United States and provides an authoritative source of standard practice that a WPA might use to articulate programmatic choices to higher administration.

Contributors: Susan Naomi Bernstein, Remica Bingham-Risher, Brent Chappelow, Malkiel Choseed, Angela Clark-Oates, Patrick Clauss, Emily W. Cosgrove, Thomas Deans, Bridget Draxler, Leigh Ann Dunning, Greg A. Giberson, Maggie Griffin Taylor, Paula Harrington, Sandra Jamieson, Marshall Kitchens, Michael Knievel, Amy Lannin, Christopher LeCluyse, Sarah Liggett, Deborah Marrott, Mark McBeth, Tim McCormack, John McCormick, Heather McGrew, Heather McKay, Heidi A. McKee, Julianne Newmark, Lori Ostergaard, Joannah Portman-Daley, Jacqueline Preston, James P. Purdy, Ben Rafoth, Dara Regaignon, Nedra Reynolds, Shirley Rose, Bonnie Selting, Stacey Sheriff, Steve Simpson, Patricia Sullivan, Kathleen Tonry, Sanford Tweedie, Meg Van Baalen-Wood, Shevaun Watson, Christy I. Wenger, Lisa Wilkinson, Candace Zepeda

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2013

Rather than being mundane artifacts of daily practice, writing center forms reveal our fundamenta... more Rather than being mundane artifacts of daily practice, writing center forms reveal our fundamental assumptions about writing. Particularly instructive are forms that categorize writing into a series of checkboxes. Analysis of such forms from twenty-two writing centers demonstrates a disciplinary consensus about which aspects of writing are most salient and the pedagogies that underlie them. Seen as examples of Aristotle’s topoi, these checkbox categories play an important role in passing expert-defined concepts of writing on to writing tutors and the writers they serve.

At the writing center where I began my career, every session ended with a conundrum. Our database... more At the writing center where I began my career, every session ended with a conundrum. Our database required us to complete the record for the consultation by checking one of some two dozen checkboxes indicating the topics covered during the session. Because most of the tutors were graduate students concurrently teaching first-year composition, some of these topics were drawn from the standardized curriculum for that course, including a tripartite division of the revision process into the separate stages of revising, editing, and proofreading. These categories were inherently redundant, since the tutor then had to check whatever other aspects of writing revising at each of these levels entailed. As time went on, we added additional categories to reflect the kind of language novice writers brought with them to the writing center, including “flow.” Now covering a single topic like organization might involve checking three boxes, one for revision, one for organization, and one for flow, ...

Unlimited Players: The Intersections of Writing Center and Game Studies, 2022

Empowerment. Collaboration. Equality. More than many academic departments and services, writing c... more Empowerment. Collaboration. Equality. More than many academic departments and services, writing centers are driven by their values. As writing center practitioners, we judge ourselves according to how we apply those values in working with writers. Much writing center theory focuses on expressing, developing, and interrogating such ideals and determining how they can be best realized in practice. In our eagerness to serve the needs of writers or to enter the theoretical conversation, however, we can skip over the most crucial component of any writing center: the writing consultants themselves. Focusing only on our services can confine values-based approaches to our clientele but not our staff: writers may be empowered, collaborated with, and approached on the level, but consultants may fall into a traditional student-teacher hierarchy. At the opposite extreme, professionalizing consultants by having them discuss and contribute to writing center theory may empower them as scholars but...

Community Literacy Journal, 2021

In 2013, Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, established Write Here: A Community Writing... more In 2013, Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah, established Write Here: A Community Writing Center in collaboration with Promise South Salt Lake. In 2016 Write Here's operations shifted from a community center to the various spaces of Promise South Salt Lake after-school programs. The COVID-19 pandemic has further complicated this transition with the move to online workshops. The decentering of Write Here exposes the dynamics of place and practice inherent in both community literacy and writing centers. Occupying third space, Write Here consultants navigate changing locations, mentoring, and non-tutoring activities, challenging traditional writing center narratives. Accommodating community partners likewise requires dwelling in a rhetoric of respect. By remaining flexible and recognizing limitations, Write Here has opened channels of communication to reach shared understandings. This analysis models how other community literacy organizations can enter into more effective and meaningful partnerships and adapt to ongoing shifts of place and practice.

The Academic Minute, 2019

Writing Program Architecture: Thirty Cases for Reference and Research, 2017

_Writing Program Architecture_ offers an unprecedented abundance of information concerning the si... more _Writing Program Architecture_ offers an unprecedented abundance of information concerning the significant material, logistical, and rhetorical features of writing programs. Presenting the realities of thirty diverse and award-winning programs, contributors to the volume describe reporting lines, funding sources, jurisdictions, curricula, and other critical programmatic matters and provide insight into their program histories, politics, and philosophies.

Each chapter opens with a program snapshot that includes summary demographic and historical information and then addresses the profile of the WPA, program conception, population served, funding, assessment, technology, curriculum, and more. The architecture of the book itself makes comparison across programs and contexts easy, not only among the programs described in each chapter but also between the program in any given chapter and the reader’s own program. An online web companion to the book includes access to the primary documents that have been of major importance to the development or sustainability of the program, described in a “Primary Document” section of each chapter.

The metaphor of architecture allows us to imagine the constituent parts of a writing program as its foundation, beams, posts, scaffolding—the institutional structures that, alongside its people, anchor a program to the ground and keep it standing. The most extensive resource on program structure available to the field, Writing Program Architecture illuminates structural choices made by leaders of exemplary programs around the United States and provides an authoritative source of standard practice that a WPA might use to articulate programmatic choices to higher administration.

Contributors: Susan Naomi Bernstein, Remica Bingham-Risher, Brent Chappelow, Malkiel Choseed, Angela Clark-Oates, Patrick Clauss, Emily W. Cosgrove, Thomas Deans, Bridget Draxler, Leigh Ann Dunning, Greg A. Giberson, Maggie Griffin Taylor, Paula Harrington, Sandra Jamieson, Marshall Kitchens, Michael Knievel, Amy Lannin, Christopher LeCluyse, Sarah Liggett, Deborah Marrott, Mark McBeth, Tim McCormack, John McCormick, Heather McGrew, Heather McKay, Heidi A. McKee, Julianne Newmark, Lori Ostergaard, Joannah Portman-Daley, Jacqueline Preston, James P. Purdy, Ben Rafoth, Dara Regaignon, Nedra Reynolds, Shirley Rose, Bonnie Selting, Stacey Sheriff, Steve Simpson, Patricia Sullivan, Kathleen Tonry, Sanford Tweedie, Meg Van Baalen-Wood, Shevaun Watson, Christy I. Wenger, Lisa Wilkinson, Candace Zepeda

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2013

Rather than being mundane artifacts of daily practice, writing center forms reveal our fundamenta... more Rather than being mundane artifacts of daily practice, writing center forms reveal our fundamental assumptions about writing. Particularly instructive are forms that categorize writing into a series of checkboxes. Analysis of such forms from twenty-two writing centers demonstrates a disciplinary consensus about which aspects of writing are most salient and the pedagogies that underlie them. Seen as examples of Aristotle’s topoi, these checkbox categories play an important role in passing expert-defined concepts of writing on to writing tutors and the writers they serve.