Peer Reviewed Articles by Kara Poe Alexander
Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2025
Writing center scholars have long been interested in the configuration of administrative leadersh... more Writing center scholars have long been interested in the configuration of administrative leadership, often focusing on the roles and designations of writing center administrators (WCAs), whether faculty or staff. This article builds on existing scholarship by examining the affordances—capabilities and limitations—of a mixed-designation administrative team composed of both faculty and staff. Using our writing center as a case study, we highlight the benefits and limitations of a leadership team composed of both faculty and staff. We outline our center’s transition to a mixed-designation leadership model and use affordance theory to delineate the potentials and constraints of such teams, exploring how this configuration impacts functionality, effectiveness, and reach. Capabilities of this model include institutional visibility and legitimacy, access to information and resources, institutional reach, tutor education and training, and mentorship. Limitations include time constraints and a split focus, communication challenges, role ambiguity, and potential reinforcement of hierarchical structures. We conclude with practical recommendations for WCAs seeking to enhance their team structure or add faculty or staff administrative roles. By exploring the unique potentials and limitations of mixed-designation teams, we aim to contribute to ongoing conversations about equity, inclusion, and effective leadership structures in writing center administration.
Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2025
This article reimagines writing center anniversary celebrations as powerful acts of epideictic rh... more This article reimagines writing center anniversary celebrations as powerful acts of epideictic rhetoric. Applying Sheard’s six characteristics—educative, ritualistic, elicits judgment, initiates, supports, and influences discourse, participates in reality at critical moments, and inspires new realities—we analyze celebrations at three institutions: a private R1 university, a small liberal arts college, and a public institution. Our analysis reveals that these events function as strategic rhetorical acts rather than mere commemorations. Writing center anniversary celebrations affirm institutional value, strengthen community identity, and advocate for continued support. Moreover, through commemorating past achievements, reflecting on present work, and envisioning future directions, these events reinforce the writing center’s institutional identity and showcase contributions to student success–all of which can help to secure ongoing support. Ultimately, we argue that approaching anniversary events as rhetorical opportunities rather than neutral commemorations enables writing center administrators to create celebrations that honor tradition, affirm communal values, and advance strategic aims.
Multimodal Composition and Writing Transfer
Multimodal Composition and Writing Transfer, 2023
College Composition and Communication, 2024
I propose spatial affordances as a tool for assessing pedagogical writing spaces such as writing ... more I propose spatial affordances as a tool for assessing pedagogical writing spaces such as writing centers. I outline a heuristic I used to evaluate the opportunities and limitations of two spaces and emphasize its adaptability to other learning spaces. Spatial affordances are useful because they underscore how place/space/location structures and facilitates writing practice.
Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2023
In this article, we discuss how participating in a writing group during and after the COVID-19 pa... more In this article, we discuss how participating in a writing group during and after the COVID-19 pandemic helped us reimagine what scholarly productivity means for us as writing center professionals (WCPs). Drawing on our experiences in an online writing group for almost three years with WCPs from four different institutions, we identify three themes that emerged across our experiences: (1) writing center work as scholarly and intellectual; (2) professionalization and mentoring; and (3) social support. Identifying these themes made visible for us a broader notion of scholarly productivity. It also helped us think more strategically about the complex and layered work we do as WCPs as we consistently juggle competing work demands. We hope this article can help WCPs not only re-conceive what it means to be productive as writing center scholars but also to integrate a broad range of scholarly work more fully into what they are already doing.
Computers and Composition, 2023
The literacy-as-success myth is prevalent in print-based literacy narratives but how students rel... more The literacy-as-success myth is prevalent in print-based literacy narratives but how students relate to this dominant myth in modes beyond print is still unknown. To learn more about how students characterize literacy in a non-print-based mode, I analyzed 170 audio literacy narratives (ALNs) from students who uploaded their essay to the Digital Archives of Literacy. Findings show that students ignore the literacy-as-success myth and instead offer a capacious view of literacy as an ongoing, fluid process of experimentation, communal connection, and play. Students promote literacy not as an end point but rather as a place to invent and reinvent oneself and to rethink previously held definitions of literacy. They also utilize creative and innovative composing approaches that not only expand the literacy narrative genre but also facilitate reimagination of their literate lives. Ultimately, audio literacy narratives provide a valuable means to disrupting the literacy myth and promoting a more expansive understanding of literacy development that breeds curiosity, creativity, and invention. As a result, it is an important assignment in writing classrooms. 1 See Faris et al. (2022) for a list of reasons to assign sound projects in classrooms.
College English, 2022
This essay examines the social byproducts of a faculty writing program for women associate profes... more This essay examines the social byproducts of a faculty writing program for women associate professors. Drawing on three years of survey and observation data, we highlight how investment mentoring, cross-university networking, and social support function as valuable benefits and essential elements of a faculty write-on-site group whose goal is increasing the number of women at the rank of full professor. We argue that cultivating supportive networks like a write-on-site group can help women faculty maintain active research agendas while also mobilizing them to reshape academic institutions into more equitable, supportive, and cohesive places.
Composition Studies, 2020
In this article, we discuss the three-year process of redesigning our writing major at Baylor Uni... more In this article, we discuss the three-year process of redesigning our writing major at Baylor University. In tracing our process, we discuss the decisions we made with regard to the redesign of our major and contextualize our decision-making process in relation to existing scholarship on the writing major. Additionally, we highlight the range of sources we examined in our efforts to understand how the various dimensions of each context might influence the redesign process. Finally, we distill key insights from our redesign process and provide practical guidance for writing scholars who plan to undertake similar redesign efforts. Through this essay, we aim to provide writing scholars with an approach for navigating-in thought and in practice the complex processes of decision-making and research central to (re) designing a writing major. On the whole, we hope our article will be a useful tool for helping others in their major-building efforts and serve as one possible response to an exigent and perennial question in writing major (re) design: How is a writing major developed or redesigned?
College Composition and Communication, 2020
Women continue to be underrepresented at the highest academic rank of full professor. Studies sho... more Women continue to be underrepresented at the highest academic rank of full professor. Studies show that once women earn tenure, they are inundated with teaching, service, and administrative responsibilities, which take time away from research and publication-the primary criteria for promotion. We believe that rhetoric and writing studies (RWS) faculty are uniquely situated to confront this challenge because of our disciplinary expertise, our experience administering writing programs, and our interest in equity. With the goal to increase the number of women full professors at our university, we created a year-long writing program for women associate professors. Based on results from this pilot study, we argue that RWS faculty can use their expertise to decrease the disparity at the highest academic rank and make the university more diverse and equitable. Moreover, we believe that RWS scholars can use their disciplinary expertise to address a range of other institutional and systemic challenges. The WFWP [Women's Faculty Writing Program] helped me set aside time, strategize how to achieve more writing time, and grasp the larger structural implications of the status of women faculty at Baylor University. The idea that I could set my time and largely keep it for writing was wonderful. I was accustomed to squeezing in writing when I could as opposed to
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Peer Reviewed Articles by Kara Poe Alexander