News

Former WRaCS student Alex Rockey has published a new book, The Mobile Course Design Journey, with Routledge. The Mobile Course Design Journey provides practical strategies to college and university educators and faculty support professionals looking to develop accessible mobile learning experiences.

Kendon Kurzer's co-authored article "Embedded vs. Drop-in Tutors in Developmental Writing Contexts: Course/Tutoring Perceptions and Impact on Student Writing Efficacy" has been published in volume 41.2 of the Writing Center Journal. The article reports on the results of a quasi-experimental study comparing 100 students in basic/developmental courses that featured embedded peer tutors with 78 students who experienced tutoring via a walk-in writing center.

Mikenna Leigh Modesto (neé Sims), a third-year WRaCS Ph.D. student, published the article “Shifting Perceptions of Socially Just Writing Assessment: Labor-based Contract Grading and Multilingual Writing Instruction” in the July 2023 issue of Assessing Writing. Her study presents cases of two instructors to learn more about how labor-based grading contracts are used in sheltered multilingual first-year writing (FYW) courses, as well as how these instructors perceive labor-based contract grading.

Neha Gondra, a second year double major in NPB and Managerial Economics, won 3rd Place in the 2023 Norma J. Lang Award for Undergraduate Information Research from the UC Davis Library. Her essay, “Evaluating the Influence of the Mediterranean Diet on Reducing Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors in Obese Individuals,” was awarded a monetary prize in the category of Science, Engineering, and Mathematics. Her review of literature was a revision of a research project that emerged from a UWP 104F class taught by Brendan Johnston.

WRaCS Alumna Mary K Stewart has published the article "How and What Students Learn in Hybrid and Online FYC" in the June 2022 volume of College Composition and Communication. Mary and three co-authors conducted a multi-institutional study to examine the difference between students' perceptions of student-teacher relationships in fully online and hybrid first-year composition courses. They use a Community of Inquiry (CoI) Framework to analyze the responses from nearly seven hundred students who took part in their study.

WRaCS Alumna Michal Reznizki has published the article "What Can We Learn from the Online Representation of Our Graduate Programs’ Curricula? A Comprehensive Online Survey of PhD Programs in Rhetoric and Composition" in the December 2021 volume of College Composition and Communication. Michal examined the online representation of the ninety existing PhD programs in rhetoric and composition in the United States and collected information on the courses offered in the programs, their home departments, and the programs’ mission statements.

Trish Serviss's article co-authored with Julia Voss and Meghan Sweeney, "A Heuristic to Promote Inclusive and Equitable Teaching in Writing Programs," was published in the Spring 2021 edition of the journal Writing Program Administration. The article presents a heuristic WPAs can use to engage their faculty in collaborative, peer-based analysis, dialogue, and revision of writing course design (embodied in syllabi) to study and strengthen the programs’ inclusivity and equity related to literacy standards, assessment, and accessibility.

Dan Melzer's book Sustainable WAC, coauthored with Michelle Cox and Jeff Galin, has won the 2021 Association for Writing Across the Curriculum/WAC Clearinghouse award for Best Authored Book.