As Director of the University of Massachusetts Boston Writing Center, I prioritize creating more equitable educational contexts and cultivating a culture of writing grounded in racial, linguistic, and social justice. Administrative work gives me a chance to do something of real consequence every day. From providing professional development opportunities for consultants, graduate teaching assistants and faculty, to creating lasting partnerships with other programs, I view my role as an administrator as another opportunity to create lasting relationships and shape how the university engages and supports students. At UMB, my goal is to create a writing center that supports a more just and equitable culture of writing on campus. Such work requires centering the experiences and needs of students and faculty of color, first-generation and multilingual students, and students with disabilities.
Furthermore, my administrative work is directly connected to my research and goals as a teacher-scholar. As such, the administrative decisions that I make are both informed by research and also shape my research agenda. For instance, my previous administrative and consulting experiences led me to an interest in the challenges graduate student writers often face in relation to their writing, especially navigating advisor relationships and maintaining writing routines. Preliminary findings from that research are available in Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. As an extension of my research on graduate writes, I’m currently conducting a research project that explores how the writing center can support faculty of color, who tend to carry heavier service and administrative loads. In response to local data that demonstrates that women and faculty of color have higher service loads and face additional barriers when working towards tenure and promotion, I established UMB’s first writing group for faculty of color. We meet weekly when classes are in session to write in community. Since this group has been beneficial to faculty of color across UMB, we’ve added a second writing group for faculty to our writing center programming. Recognizing the importance of accountability writing groups, we now run writing groups and retreats in the summer, providing faculty and graduate students community and accountability almost all year long.