VENUE CHANGE!  The symposium will now be online on Zoom.

New!  Fees are eliminated for those in financial need.

Writing Center personnel and pre- or post-transfer students are invited to attend the RMWCA Inter-Institutional Transfer Students and Writing Centers Symposium on June 10, 2022 via Zoom to learn about and discuss what Writing Centers at both universities and two-year colleges can do to support transfer students in their transitions. 

Discussion at the symposium will lead to written vision, policy, and best practices statements for the support of transfer students and Writing Center work. A key goal of the symposium is that these statements be put to practical use at participants’ institutions. As researchers who focus on community colleges and transfer students, Dr. Romeo García (University of Utah), Clint Gardner (Salt Lake Community College), Dr. Christopher LeCluyse (Westminster College, Salt Lake City), Dr. Lizbett Tinoco (Texas A&M University San Antonio), and Dr. Christie Toth (University of Utah) will facilitate discussion. The day will start off with a special panel featuring  students who have experienced inter-institutional transfer. Students’ lived experiences of inter-institutional transfer will shape the rest of our discussion during the Symposium.

As alternative educational spaces that provide support to students from across the institution, writing centers seem to be a good location to assist students in easing their institutional transfer. However, little research is available regarding both transfer student identities and transfer-and-receiving institutional partnership and writing centers. Only two studies (Ellis, 2013; Gere et al., 2017) mention writing centers as sites of both difficulty and access for transfer students. This lack of research into transfer students and writing centers leads directly to the critical question that drives this symposium on inter-institutional transfer and writing centers:What policies and best practices can writing centers adopt in order to assist transfer students to successfully transfer and complete bachelors degrees?

Symposium attendees will benefit in four distinct ways:  

1. They will learn the conditions of transfer students at various institutions in general and in our writing centers in particular.

2. They will be apprised of the relevant research on institutional transfer and writing centers.

3. They will participate in the collaborative development of policies and best pedagogical practice statements that can be taken back to their home institutions.

4. They can build relationships with other institutions to help support students who are transferring.

5. They can develop ideas for further research leading to publication on writing centers and inter-institutional transfer.

The symposium is hosted by Salt Lake Community College, the University of Utah, and Westminster College, via Zoom.