Interview with Jessica Winck, January 20, 2021

Ayaat Ismail: I am interviewing Dr. Jessica Winck who is currently the Writing Center Director at the University of Maine-Augusta. How are you?

Jessica Winck: I'm good. How about you?

AI: I'm good. It's nice, right? It's a transition period an adaptability period, so it's all of the above.    JW: Yeah, when did you all start the semester? All of this happening all at one time?   AI: Yeah, we started on January 11th, but this is my second semester as a graduate student, so it's been interesting, but I went to UofL for my undergraduate, so I'm thankful for that.   JW: Nice.   AI: I have a couple of questions. I'm sorry if any of them are boring or 1:00anything like that. I have a couple of questions, and just answer and if there's some that you don't want to answer. It's completely up to you. I'm not going to push anything on you, and then this will go to the Oral history archive, so you'll always have that little piece with you, and they'll send you more information about it once it's all transcribed and whatnot. OK, so when you worked at the University of Louisville. When did you work, and what was your position?   JW: So, I worked there when I was a Ph.D. student. And I was a Ph.D. student at UofL from 2012 to 2016, and it was my second and third year there that I worked as an Assistant Director in the Writing Center. So I did work as a consultant and with some administrative duties.    AI: So, as an 2:00administrator or as having those administrative duties, what were your responsibilities?   JW: So one of the most important responsibilities was being a resource and being supportive for the master student consultants who, many of them, were in their first year of the Masters' degree program and some new to tutoring and doing Writing Center consultations. So being a support for them was really important, and we also worked in the summers for the Dissertation Writing Retreat where we would support the writers who were a part of that also, and I could go more in-depth. [laughter]   AI: You are more than welcome to if you want. It is up to you. [clarification on this interview] So when you worked 3:00there as an Assistant Director, were you the only one with that responsibility? 4:00How did that go?    JW: When I worked, there was another Ph.D. student who was also an Assistant Director. So there were two different ones in the two years that I worked there because one graduated and then another started. Actually, we also had a graduate student who worked doing some online consulting, so we had that position. I'm not sure actually if that was an Assistant Director position or not, or maybe Assistant Director of online consulting. It's been so long I'm not sure. [laughter]   AI: No, you're OK. And at that time, since you guys were like the second tier right, and then there were the tutors who were the graduate students. Were they called tutors, and who were they?   JW: So when I worked 5:00there, they were called consultants, but I'm sure some people use the term tutor, but I remember it was familiar to me when I started doing Writing Center work when I was a master's student before coming to UofL. Consultants was the term, and if I'm remembering right, it was seven or eight master students. It was their first year, and they do the work in the Writing Center, and in their second year, they began teaching, if I'm remembering right now, so we're always working with first-year Masters' students.   AI: So that's kind of still how it is right now. This is, you know, my first year and the next year; hopefully, 6:00Covid is gone, but we can actually physically teach. But when those master students came in that first semester, how were they trained?   JW: One of the major supports was the class that Bronwyn taught on Writing Center Theory and Practice. I, unfortunately, I had limited involvement with that class, and I know it was common for the Assistant Director's to attend the class, but it just so happened that I had graduate courses that overlapped with that exact time. I think more than one semester that I wanted to be involved in the class. And Bronwyn gave me the go-ahead to take those classes, and so that was one of the important ways that they were trained. And other methods involved you know, even just having those side conversations during the day, when I was present in the 7:00Writing Center, sometimes they came to our office, the Assistant Directors', to talk to us about something that happened in a consultation or some ongoing pattern about something happening in the consultations like perhaps uncertainty about helping people with the sentence-level correctness or something, and so we'd have those one on one and sometimes group conversations which I think it made those conversations kind of ongoing and happening all the time is that we were all grad students and we're in the same boat but just kind of different stages of these degree programs.   AI: Do you feel like being in the Writing 8:00Center and then experiencing, let's say, a master's student or a consultant experiencing an issue. Do you feel like it was a better way to go about it, and for everyone to learn was having those physical interactions and discussions about that and kind of learning from those experiences? Do you feel like that was an optimal thing to have?   JW: Oh, so the interaction between the consultants and the Assistant Directors. Yeah, through like the experiences of let's say I had a problem, and I say hey, Jessica, this is what happened. 

AI: Do you feel like those were great opportunities for everyone to kind of learn? Because a lot of it is that theory class, so a lot of it is just like 9:00reading things. And then kind of learning from experiences I felt like were so much more helpful. Do you feel that way as well, or? 

JW: I really do. I'd have to think about it from the perspective of the master students, and wondering if it was helpful, but I know from prior experience that having this kind of community of practice is helpful for everyone and even for me. Now I direct a Writing Center, and I'm in the position of currently training and educating undergraduate tutors, and It was helpful for me during my Ph.D. to be in the position of trying to mentor new consultants, and so yeah, I think it was beneficial.   AI: So during your time at the Writing Center, what was the structure of the writing center, the space, the day to day kind of thing?   JW: 10:00So when I worked there in 2013 and 2014, we were on one of the upper floors of the library. I think there's a new space now. 

AI: Yes, it's on the first floor now. 

JW: Yeah, great location. We were in that other space when I worked there, and the overall structure, we had an administrative assistant at the front desk who would either schedule appointments and check people in then. Is that what you meant? Do you mean physical structure? 

AI: Yeah, yeah. I definitely just like the day-to-day kind of thing.   JW: Yeah, as far as the physical structure. Our clients would encounter at the time 11:00Robin who was at the front desk. And yes, she would greet people, check people in, or schedule appointments and call us when the appointment or when our client had arrived, and she would arrange if we had a drop-in or something you know that we weren't expecting. And we had a pretty big space and maybe some very large Writing Centers, by comparison, might not think of it as a very large space, but currently, I'm in my Writing Center, in something kind of like a closet large closet. So I remember the space the UofL Writing Center had been large. And the graduate student consultants had kind of like a room towards the back right where they could talk or do their work while they were waiting on appointments.

AI: Yeah, the space has really changed. It's like, you know, as soon as you walk in, there's this open space that we have currently not used because of Covid. We don't do face to face appointment, so that's kind of where we're missing that element, but they have side rooms with computers in them, and we do everything as live chats or written feedback. And then we have like the two offices for Bronwyn and Cassie. And then a beautiful space in the back for us and then for the Ph.D. Assistant Directors. So it's really nice the way there are spaces. However, we've all not been there at the same time other than class, so it's it does feel like an empty space, and it feels kind of draining as soon as you get 13:00in there because of that, but I'm assuming when you went, there were more physical interactions, and there was face to face appointments. What types of students did you have come to the Writing Center when you worked there?    JW: Yeah, there was a lot more face-to-face interaction that is sort of like a signature piece of Writing Center work, you know is being close to people. If I'm remembering right, we had like the round desks so we could sit right next to someone, we could still sit right next to someone at a rectangular shaped desk also. But that part of it was nice. You're right. So the students we would work with if I seem to remember, a fair distribution between undergraduate students 14:00and grad students. I worked with a lot of grad students who were finishing their thesis or dissertation and were kind of in the final stages of it. I worked a lot with a lot of students in the Sciences, and I remember just that feeling of, you know, lack of familiarity with content knowledge. And so that kind of stands out to me, and I think that's something that made the UofL Writing Center really interesting is that I did work with students who are in English classes or writing-intensive classes, but not always. And I don't know if the data pans out that way in the client's data on the clients and if it suggests more 100 level English classes or so, but I don't seem to remember working as much with clients 15:00in those classes. 

AI: So from the clients that you did get, what do you feel like was the most rewarding and then the most challenging? Obviously, you're indicating you know that genre of information/topics, that you were not comfortable or familiar with. But what was the rewarding part? Interactions with the students, etc.?

JW: Yeah, I think the rewarding part for me was how it's just so common to work with undergraduate students and at that Writing Center at UofL graduate students who struggle with recognizing how good they are at writing and that they are 16:00effective at what they do, but they've internalized some other narrative. And sometimes I remember working with students where it would be their first time coming to the Writing Center or one of the first times, and so they may not have had the experience of an interested reader, right? And even just having an interested reader can blow people's minds in terms of how they perceive themselves as writers. Because some people just assume that they are only bad at it, you know, and that's just not the case, so it was really rewarding for me to 17:00watch students recognize, you know, and it just was not building confidence or trying to convince people that they're good writers if they actually struggled a lot to be effective rhetorically. I remember students having a lot to contribute and what they were doing and making arguments, reaching certain audiences. I think those really important principles with writing that we teach in Writing Centers and in writing classrooms can be really undervalued, right? And so we're not really taught to look for those or evaluate our own work, and Writing Center 18:00spaces are where I think people can have their strengths affirmed. 

AI: So thinking about how you approach situations with writers or sessions in general, do you feel like you had strategies on how to go about certain, you know, consultations that you've had or specifically, different like we've said, genres or anything where there were certain approaches or strategies that you had when you started the session?

JW: Yeah, one of the strategies comes from a really important principle about allowing students or clients or any writer to retain control and ownership over 19:00their own work. So, we see this a lot in Writing Center literature. This suggestion you know I'm right-handed, so I would sit on the right side of the client so that my hand is the furthest away from their paper/the printed document so that there's no assumption that I'm going to be writing on their work so I always sit on the right side, which would sometimes be awkward because people might put their coat there or something on the chair to their right or something. But that's an important thing is even settling in, and I really value the idea of being welcoming and hospitable. Like espousing a kind of hospitality, and so I'm also really interested in like unconditional positive regard as it intersects with Writing Center studies and the strategies would 20:00come from those like the way that I greet someone if I'm being perceptive to the mood, they seem to be in it, which can affect how the consultation would go. Or could affect, you know what they end up saying about their work or how they are currently evaluating it in its current draft, and those are just a few that come to mind.   AI: No, that's great. We have our Assistant Director right now, Edward English. He's actually writing his dissertation on hospitality in the Writing Center, so that's great. 

JW: So nice!

AI: Yeah, be on the lookout for that. What do you feel like you gained from working at the Writing Center, and does that all affect the way that you 21:00teach/work in the Writing Center today?   JW: Yes, definitely all of those things like it. So my time at UofL was really rewarding in a lot of ways. So, the institution where I work now is an open admissions institution, a very small campus that used to be a military barracks in Maine, and we work with primarily adult students who are returning after being laid off at work or trying to build up more credentials and things. It's not a research University or very big at all, and so at UofL, I kind of ached to be at an institution like I had planned 22:00to work at this kind of institution for a long time, and UofL is very different, right? Being in the Writing Center with Bronwyn, I remember at the time was doing research on enclaves like the Writing Center as an enclave within an institutional structure. And I really saw the Writing Center like that for me personally, but also professionally. Because what we did in the Writing Center goes counter to so much of what is expected usually. And so I remember one thing I've been thinking about lately that it was kind of like a nugget in my mind, 23:00like the time that I was working in the Writing Center at UofL, but that the more we align our practices with research and Writing Center studies. Often, like the further away we move from what is considered like good writing help by people outside writing studies or Writing Center studies. But we know based on research that we have a particular notion of what we mean by help, and that's something that I've carried with me into this job and in the classroom also. So my time working in the Writing Center reiterated to me how much I want so much to separate the act of grading from learning and to design assessments that 24:00prioritize learning instead of sorting and evaluating. And so I tried to do labor-based grading now, and It seems to me now, like a kind of extension from what I was trying to do in the classroom when I worked at the Writing Center at UofL, but I just didn't have. The approach, yet you know, but I wanted that so much more of a connection. And for my classrooms to be like Writing Centers like what happens in Writing Centers.

AI: That's great. We don't do grades, so I completely appreciate the idea of feedback over grades as well. I think that's so beneficial just to anyone. A lot of times when you know you work with the writer, you have those moments where, 25:00as you said, they have no confidence at all in the writing skill, and just that little bit of feedback, or even just anything positive honestly and it would spark a whole chain reaction of enthusiasm, and understanding, and then I had a lot of people that was the main thing that I did last semester at least is give a lot of positive feedback. I had them coming back, and I really believe it was because of that, and I don't think it was me. I think it was the idea that they had someone who appreciated and respected their work. Do you feel like when you're able to do this, or are there types of issues that students had that you 26:00were able to respond to in a certain way and did this? Did these types of writing help you in the place that you are kind of going off already on what you said?

JW: Could you say that again?

AI: Yes, I can. [laughter] Obviously, you told me you know your strategies and types of ways of handling writing situations. Were there specific types of writing that came to you from the writers that had you where you approach it in a certain way, as opposed to the multiple different writing styles, and how to approach certain things on those types of writing?

JW: Yeah, um. So I remember working often with students who were non-native speakers of English and there's the common assumption in Writing Center studies that we don't edit, right? We're not editors or proofreaders, and we teach 27:00editing and proofreading in the larger context of writing processes and practices and but often you know the biggest contribution I could make for someone like, say, a student in a STEM field like Chemistry or something like and they have their dissertation. I don't how to pronounce or even recognize a lot of the discourse in their field. But I know how sentences are constructed, and often for these multilingual writers and speakers that sentence-level concern it was a higher-order concern for them. And they may have even been 28:00advised to visit the Writing Center for help on that, and so normally I have a thing where you know a student says I need help with grammar, but it's the first draft, and I notice that maybe we need to attend to some other priorities around organization and arrangement of their ideas and things. And so I'll say we should. You know, I'll try to convince them, let's talk about some of these things too, and then we will touch on grammar. But grammar should come last, you know. When I would work with students with advanced degree programs or dissertations and chapters, have been approved by their advisors and things like 29:00that. You know, my approach had to change for that population of students.

AI: Do you feel like it was easy for you to kind of shift the conversation? You know when they come in with their concerns, and you're like, "hey, though this is concerning, you know those higher-order issues are where we need to focus." So do you have a strategy on how you kind of went about that? Is that where hospitality kind of works in?

JW: Yeah, um. I'm trying to recall those instances. It's been so long since I've done a live consultation because of COVID. But you're right that I think it is 30:00part of hospitality, so it's really challenging if a student says they want help on something sentence-level and dealing with grammatical correctness. Because what if they know they're going to be penalized heavily? If you know more than three mistakes on a page, or you know, whatever kind of like requirements we might see on some assignments, and so it's a big concern for them. I guess I can't recall what I might actually do in those instances except to try to gently mention some other concerns, and I wouldn't even call them concerns. A lot of times like my approach is to say, "I noticed," you know something like that. "I 31:00notice" a lot of things in consultations. I realize I use that quite a bit as I'm just an observer and a reader. But I want to attend to those higher-order concerns first because my belief or my philosophy about Writing Centers is that we are there for writers specifically, and we are not there to assist professors who are teaching students and who send them to the Writing Center. We are there for writers, and I wouldn't be helping this writer if I focused only on grammar, even though it may help their grade or something, and that's like that's an ethical conflict, though, because grades are associated with opportunities, and 32:00it's a big conflict.

AI: I completely agree with you. Kind of going back on to a previous question about how you guys trained those graduate students in the first year of their program, were there any strategies or advice that you would give them or methods for them to kind of, you know, help them better about types of situations? Where you're dealing with a difficult writer or a writer whose only coming because it's a requirement was there certain types of things you would say that would kind of help those graduate students or consultants?

JW: Sure. I know one thing that came up in many conversations with the cohort, I 33:00got to work with or the two cohorts I got to work with, but I remember particularly my first year with these grad students. We talked a lot about disposition. I remember this coming up quite a bit. How we relate? Right to our clients and to writers and I think depending I know some other like scholars have talked about this as sort of like the role you play or the hat you put on or like the kind of identity you espouse in relation to a client. But I thought of it as disposition, because that's what I was writing about in my dissertation. So that kind of that was sort of at the front of my mind. And so if we have that kind of welcoming disposition, then it may be easier to invite people to do something they weren't expecting, or to attend to something in 34:00their writing that they hadn't planned to attend to. I can't recall a lot of specifics about those conversations with the consultants.

AI: No, you're okay. [laughter] I don't want you to go too far back, so I guess I know another way to go about this. As you mentioned, when you were in this position, you had two different cohorts. Was there a major change between the first cohort that you worked with to the second one, or was it kind of the same in all aspects of physicality and technology, anything like that?

JW: I think there was consistency. If I'm remembering right, but I know. I'm 35:00trying to recall if it was the first or second year as an Assistant Director, but Bronwyn had the opportunity to work in and to go to England for a semester. I'm trying to remember that year, but so we that year or that semester when he was gone, that was definitely different, right?  I remember being more involved with the other Assistant Director, and I also got to attend the class I remember because I didn't get to attend it the previous fall. And I think that may have been the last year that we were in the space on the 3rd or 4th floor?  I can't recall now the library. 

AI: Yes.

JW: Yeah, that may have been the last year that we were there, but I think there 36:00was still consistency. I'm trying to remember something about the first cohort is like Ultra memorable for some reason because they were so eager about helping. Like being able to help, and I'm still good friends with a few of them on Facebook and like still in contact with them because as they moved into teaching our relationship we maintained a kind of relationship as colleagues and yeah, I have kind of gone off on that topic. 

AI: No, this is great. So since Bronwyn had that opportunity to go to England, 37:00were there more responsibilities that shifted onto you guys in a way, right? 

JW: Well, sort of, but I think in actuality I think we were ready to do that. But Adam was the Associate Director, I'm trying to remember, but his position was to assist Bronwyn with a lot of the administrative things, and so he took on the directing role in his absence. Adam is the kind of person like I don't know we were ready to do it, but it's like he had it covered. He didn't want to burden us, you know?

AI: Yeah, did you feel like in your position as an Assistant Director did you 38:00feel like since Adam had that associate director position and he dealt with more of the director roles and the administrative roles, did you feel like you were more mentors for the graduate students in a way? Then maybe even Adam was? Or how do you think that kind of transition played out? 

JW: Yeah, so as far as some of the duties is, a director like Adam had those covered. And I'm grateful for that. I don't want to attend to things like budgets, but that's something I do now. But, it's pretty simplified where I am because it's very small, so I didn't do that at the time. But you're right that our role as Assistant Directors involved, like mostly mentoring for the 39:00consultants, but we were also I  think it was about 10 hours a week where our jobs were split between being present as an Assistant Director and offering support and then being on the schedule at certain times. Which to me is a really nice mix right for this work?  

AI: OK, I only have a couple more questions, and I will leave you alone, I promise.

JW: Sure, no problem. 

AI: If we can go into more of the technical aspects of it, we kind of briefly touched on it in the beginning. But what type of I know you guys had face-to-face interactions, but what type of technology was available or used in 40:00the center during that time? And what was it, and how was it used? Was it for writing? Administration? Did you guys just use pen and paper? How did that go?

JW: Yeah, so as you mentioned that I recall some other things that had slipped my mind earlier, so we had desktop computers present, I remember in the previous space. Often clients would prefer to work at those stations, and we would sit with them and work with them on the computers. But we also had like, so that wasn't in terms of the aspect of working with clients, but so often I remember printed documents that we would work with when clients would come to their 41:00appointments. I remember a lot of printed documents, and I don't recall if that was something we encouraged or not. And sometimes, people just prop up their computer, but this reminded me that the Assistant Director also maintained the social media for the Writing Center. When you mentioned technology, I could recall our blog where we would get consultants to develop posts related to their work as consultants, and I would maintain that. Yeah. Does that answer your question about technology?

AI: Yes. So kind of expanding or going off on that how did students sign up for 42:00appointments and did they walk in because right now our platform, especially with Covid, is they just sign up on line. They create a whole account profile, and then everything is done online. But prior to this, they still signed up online even if they came in physically. But we did have walkins, but they always had to create a profile on our WCOnline is that something that you guys did?  

JW: Yeah, I can't recall what software we used at the time. I remember we had a schedule online. And it's not coming to mind whether the clients had the ability to put their name in open slots or whether they had to call or email us, and maybe this is because Robin handled so much of that I can't remember. Yeah, exactly, but I remember we had to schedule appointments that started at the top 43:00of the hour. And yeah, I just can't recall the software we used.    AI: No, you're good. Did you guys having that Assistant Director position as well as the other individual? Did you guys have certain responsibilities? Like you did the media. Did you also do workshops or create handouts or class presentations or anything in that realm?   JW: Yes, thanks for reminding me. [laughter] Yes, actually, I do remember being involved with the University community quite a bit and doing classroom presentations, either promoting and advertising, the Writing 44:00Center, or giving a workshop or presentation related to some aspect requested by the instructor. I remember doing quite a bit of like citation style workshops and presentations for different classes across disciplines that were always fun. And at the time that I worked there, we also were revising handouts, so that was kind of like a project we maintained during the time I was working there. We wanted to update them with the most current research and practices related to the different elements we were suggesting. Yeah, I do remember that now.

AI: Do you recall if the handouts were available and accessible online, or were 45:00they something that you were just able to grab as you know you walked out of the Writing Center after an appointment or something you can grab on the outside of the Writing Center?   JW: Yeah, I remember them being like we had some shelving for the handouts. So we had physical handouts and then say if something came up during a session, and we have some handouts related to it, like some aspect of writing that came up. We could go retrieve the handout, give it to the client, and they would be able to take it with them. I don't recall them being online. They may have moved online, but I don't know if they were... actually, yes, they were when they were on our website. Yeah, I remember that now. Yes. 

AI: No, that's great. We have, at this point in time, our Associate Director, who's wonderful. She has the handouts online, and she does this beautiful job of doing a video of the 6th edition of APA and describing all the elements that are specific to that through audio and visual, right? So I think that's a nice thing to have and I really do think it's so beneficial for students to have something written because even though we're telling them these things, they're not necessarily going to grasp it in the first, you know, round, nor do I ever feel like they quite understand where I'm going, at least, and I'm like just look at the handout. But yeah, no, that's great that it was on the website at that time. Do you feel like you remember anything else important or anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to tell me? I would love to hear anything you have 47:00to say.

JW: Yeah, I think so. I mentioned Bronwyn a couple of times in some of my responses to your questions, and I think it in my memory Bronwyn was very present as a director. In our old location, we'd come in, and his door was on the right, and most of the time, it was open, and he was in there and happy to see people. I think that it's really great for Writing Centers to have the presence of him. His function, though, was really complex, like he was advising Ph.D. students, directing the center, mentoring graduate students, Assistant 48:00Directors, and mentoring Masters Student Consultants, and there was a lot there. But he was always a friendly presence, and I'm really biased because he was my dissertation director and a friend still. So yeah, I just wanted to make sure that's included too because yeah, his presence was a big part of my memory of the Writing Center there. 

AI: So ending on Bronwyn, do you feel like Bronwyn as the director of the Writing Center. How big of an influence did he play in your position as an Assistant Director and on your position today at the University of Maine?

JW: Right. Yes, so a big influence. I got to see Bronwyn in a lot of different 49:00situations, and it reflected kind of like how multidimensional faculty roles are, right. And now I'm not just a Writing Center director, I'm a faculty member, and I've taken a lot of my experience from UofL into this position. But I think what has really stayed with me as far as his influence is that he was very uncompromising about the attitude that we espoused towards students, and writing and their writing in particular. But that was... it's not up for negotiation. The kinds of discourses we use, and we see it, you know I can 50:00understand why and it's a position like I hold as a teacher today and Writing Center director. Because the impulse for people in education to complain about students and their work is pretty irresistible, and that this was what my dissertation was actually about. Yet I admired how uncompromising he was about that and it kind of emboldened me to be a little more vocal and to be vocal now. I feel very justified when I stand up for students when I need to in my faculty 51:00position now and having a model like that early on is really important for growing professionals, that's for sure. 

AI: Well, I will let him know that. He will read my transcript right now but thank you so much, Professor Winck, you have given me such good information, and I appreciate you taking time out of your day. I know you're busy in your position, and congratulations again on everything that you've achieved. I think it's just so amazing to see the way that you guys have evolved and literally taken on positions that you know you were next to in a lower tier, and I think that's just so amazing. I appreciate you taking time out of your day for me.

JW: No problem. Thanks.

[End of recording]