SDC: A Journal of Writing Center Studies SDC began as the newsletter of the Southeastern Writing Center Association. Christine Cozzens revived the Southern Discourse newsletter in the spring of 1998, and in 2001 the SWCA board decided to designate SDC as the "publication" of SWCA after it began to include research articles, and in-depth works about writing center-related issues. "SDC" used to refer to "Southern Discourse in the Center," but is now just an acronym and our current name draws attention more to our role in the study of writing centers. Check out our archives page to read our current and past issues. Over the years the SDC review board has grown to include an extraordinary number of writing center scholars and professionals whose contributions continue to impact the teaching of writing and writing center administration. SDC has a new email! Please send all future communications to SDC.journal.editors@gmail.com. Check out our CFP for a special issue on empirical research (pdf); proposals due Nov. 30, 2025. SDC ResourcesScholars who submit articles do not have to be members of SWCA, but authors selected for publication may also be chosen by the SDC editor for a special panel for SWCA. Submission GuidelinesPlease submit your article via email to SDC.journal.editors@gmail.com. Generally articles should be between 3,000 and 5,000 words. If you have something longer, you should first send a query to the editor with an explanation of the project. We ask that all articles be documented in accordance with the MLA Style Manual, 9th Edition. Consistent with traditional writing center practice, SDC promotes a feedback model. Articles will be sent out to readers for blind review and reviewed by our editorial team.You should send two copies of your article—one without any identifying information and one with your complete information—in PDF format. We do our best to respond in approximately one month. If your article is accepted (or accepted with revisions), please plan to revise and resubmit (in MLA format) no later than three weeks from your notice of acceptance. Back to the Center GuidelinesAlongside scholarly articles, each issue of SDC will include an article of roughly 1,500 words that focuses on a specific writing center, speaking center, digital center or multiliteracy center. “Back to the Center” will share a center’s successes and hopes for improvement. By incorporating visual images, “Back to the Center” should give its readers an authentic sense of the ethos of the center and of the work done there. What is working in the center? What are the areas that need improving? What are the goals for the center? “Back to the Center” will also include a section titled “Center Insight.” In this section, we’d like to know the numbers: How many sessions are held in the center per semester? How many consultants are working in the center? How many hours a week is the center open? How does consultant recruitment occur? How long is the training process for consultants before they work in the center? Consultant Insight GuidelinesConsistent with the consultant-writer model of the mutual exchange of ideas, we invite consultants to provide insight into center experiences. This article of roughly 2,000 words can be research driven or can take a more narrative and personal approach that illuminates consultant experiences. SDC is interested in both struggles and achievements. The article may focus specifically on one aspect of consulting or it may provide a broader sense of center work. Book ReviewsSDC accepts reviews of books related to theory, practice, and pedagogy. Book reviews are typically in the range of 800 to 1,200 words. GenAI PolicyGenerative AI tools allow authors to compose in new ways and are becoming an important part of writing workflows in the academy and beyond. Recognizing this, SDC allows authors to explore the use of AI as part of their research, drafting and revision process, with the expectation that authors will do the following:
General Call for Papers: We invite submissions for future issues of SDC: A Journal of Writing Center Studies, the official journal of the Southeastern Writing Center Association. In this journal, you’ll find academic conversations about writing center consultation and administration, as well as the teaching and assessment of writing in all its forms. Every issue includes peer-reviewed scholarly research articles, book reviews, and special sections such as “Consultant Insight” and “Back to the Center,” which showcase the reflections of writing center consultants and administrators on the work we do.
Feel free to send queries, ideas, and proposals to SDC.journal.editors@gmail.com. * * * Call for Papers - Special Issue of SDC: A Journal of Writing Center Studies focused on Empirical Research Guest Editors: Dylan Maroney, Georgia State University; Andrea Jurjević, Georgia State University; and Michael Parrish, Georgia State University Contact: sdc.guest.editors@gmail.com "Charting Reflections and Refractions: Writing Center Advocacy and Innovation through Empirical Research”Overview Stephen North’s 1984 article, “The Idea of a Writing Center,” considered the state of writing centers to better understand how to correct misunderstandings about their purpose and processes, and how those who worked within them had started to gain legitimacy and scholarly recognition of their work and interests. And over the last 40 years, we have seen the fruits of that labor. But in a time of challenges and changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the rise of artificial intelligence, waning federal support for education in the US, and increasing institutional hurdles to delivering student-centered pedagogies and services, we think it is a good time to reconsider how best to advocate for and innovate within the writing center space. To accomplish this, we believe writing centers must be able to move beyond “lore” to persuade stakeholders by grounding their practices and value in empirical research. Thus, this special issue proposed by Georgia State University’s Writing Studio seeks submissions that employ or analyze empirical research methods to reflect upon writing center labor, research, assessment, policies, training, and other practices. Various scholars have called upon writing center studies to adopt RAD (replicable, aggregable, data-driven) research methodologies that provide meaningful, clear, and strategic insights into the work we do (Ligget et al., 2011; Lerner, 2014; Driscoll and Perdue, 2014; Ervin, 2016; Kastner et al., 2018). And the practical value of such work has been established by scholars such as Babcock, whose meta-analysis of existing literature on tutoring found that empirical research holds more value in shaping tutor pedagogy (2015). Our own center has found urgency in applying empirical methods to issues of accessibility, accommodation, and inclusiveness, and found inspiration in work such as that by Brizee, Sousa, and Driscoll, who have advanced collaborative user-centered research methodologies found in usability/accessibility research to assess their centers’ ability to accommodate students with disabilities (2012). Writing center scholars seeking to do empirical work have a host of other conversations to build on, including qualitative work in areas such as tutoring pedagogy, disability studies, postcolonial studies, queer studies, women and gender studies, race and ethnic studies, and so on. Articles such as Tang’s “Asians are at the Writing Center” (2022), Giaimo’s “Laboring in a Time of Crisis: The Entanglement of Wellness and Work in Writing Centers” (2020) and Dembsey’s “Naming Ableism in the Writing Center” (2020) may not adopt RAD research methodologies, but they are not to be dismissed by those seeking more data-driven scholarship. Rather, such works provide insights that can direct the trajectory of the RAD research that follows. As we face today’s challenges to writing center work, GSU’s Writing Studio wants to continue the blossoming tradition of empirical research in writing center studies and calls on writing centers to experiment with and assess their programs and institutions in a variety of ways. We provide guiding questions below to provoke invention, and we welcome your submissions and inquiries. Issue Timeline Due to the planning often needed to complete empirical research, we are asking authors to send us short proposals of up to 250 words by November 30, 2025, stating the planned focus and methodology of their proposed project. Guest editors will notify authors as to whether their project is appropriate for the special issue and we will plan to make ourselves available to help authors as they work through the research design and IRB process, with drafts not due until May 2026. Below is a tentative timeline for authors submitting work to be included in this special issue of SDC that will be published in fall of 2026.
December 2025 - Proposals selected, and authors notified January – February 2026 - Guest editors available to assist with research design and IRB approval processes May 2026 - Drafts of manuscripts collected and reviewed June 2026 - Review of articles for special issue and revisions requested August 2026 - Revised manuscripts collected and prepared for publication October 2026 - Articles published! Guiding Questions The following questions are intended to provide inspiration for potential projects, but we are interested in completely original directions for research as well.
What specific tutoring strategies have proven most effective in improving the writing skills of students who primarily experienced online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic? How does tutor training in accessibility and inclusivity impact their ability to support students with various (dis)abilities? How do we reimagine our pedagogical processes in a new era? What theories and praxis might have a place in the writing center? How can we refine existing WC pedagogy to accommodate new and different tutee needs? How does tutor identity reflect in their tutoring practices and philosophy? How do non-cis/het/white identities facilitate positive change in writing center spaces, how can allies assist in facilitating these approaches?
What are the most effective administrative practices for maintaining engagement and morale among writing center staff in a post-pandemic educational environment? How has the shift to online and hybrid modalities impacted the management and operation of writing centers, and what data-driven adjustments have administrators made to adapt? What evidence-supported practices do/can writing centers use effectively, what are the results of applying these methodologies to your center? How does your writing center conduct assessment? What are the benefits, constraints, and reflections from this process? Why do you include certain readings in your training? How do these have palpable results on tutor praxis and center policy? How can administrators allow tutors to find balance between labor in the writing center and labor as a researcher, and what are the results of those opportunities?
What are the key factors influencing student satisfaction and success in writing centers that have shifted primarily to online services? How do students from underrepresented groups perceive the accessibility of writing centers, and what empirical evidence supports or challenges these presuppositions? How do you foster inclusivity in your center, how is this reflected by research into your student population and those that attend sessions? How does awareness of your writing center among students result in changes in utilization and how do you elevate the profile of your writing center in the age of AI? How do aging and non-traditional students present a unique challenge in the writing center, and how do we ensure they are served in similar capacities to our other tutees?
How can writing centers empirically assess the philosophical shifts in their approach to tutoring in the wake of the pandemic? What empirical evidence supports the integration of philosophical concepts such as social justice, accessibility, and inclusivity into writing center practices? How can we break the existing constraints of our tutoring spaces, what are the results from experimenting with exchange/observation programs? What is an urgent need in the field that is currently being ignored? How might you propose we begin to tackle it using RAD research methodologies? How do we continue to decolonize the writing center while engaging in research practices that privilege euro-centric ideologies about academia? Works Cited Allen Brizee, Morgan Sousa, Dana Lynn Driscoll. “Writing Centers and Students with Disabilities: The User-centered Approach, Participatory Design, and Empirical Research as Collaborative Methodologies.” Computers and Composition,Volume 29, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 341–366. ISSN 8755-4615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2012.10.003. Babcock, Rebecca Day. “Disabilities in the Writing Center.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, Vol. 13, no. No. 1, 2015, pp. 39–50, https://doi.org/doi:10.15781/T2SQ8R07Z. Driscoll, Dana Lynn, and Sherry Wynn Perdue. “RAD Research as a Framework for Writing Center Inquiry: Survey and Interview Data on Writing Center Administrators’ Beliefs about Research and Research Practices.” The Writing Center Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1, 2014, pp. 105–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43444149. Ervin, Christopher. “What Tutor Researchers and Their Mentors Tell Us About Undergraduate Research in the Writing Center: An Exploratory Study.” The Writing Center Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2016, pp. 39–75. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43965690. Kastner, Stacy, et al. “RAD Collaboration in the Writing Center: An Impact Study of Course-Embedded Writing Center Support on Student Writing in a Criminological Theory Course.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, Vol 15, no. No 3, 2018, pp. 34–53, https://doi.org/doi:10.15781/T23N20Z8Q. Lerner, Neal. "The Unpromising Present of Writing Center Studies: Author and Citation Patterns in the Writing Center Journal, 1980 to 2009," Writing Center Journal: Vol. 34, No. 1, 2014, pp. 67–102. https://doi.org/10.7771/2832-9414.1786. Liggett, Sarah, et al. “Mapping Knowledge-Making in Writing Center Research: A Taxonomy of Methodologies.” The Writing Center Journal, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2011, pp. 50–88. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43442367.Editors: Eric Mason and Jamie Garner Advisory Board
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