I seek to resolve a persistent challenge in writing center administration: decay of programmatic memory. Even though Muriel Harris has eloquently outlined the necessity for the administrators of writing centers and other writing programs to adopt the duty of programmatic research, that call has gone largely unanswered in our scholarship for nearly two decades. I answer this imperative with the creation, retention, and reiteration of the Reflective Center Archive Process, which is populated with a clear inventory of the data that matters to the historical and future operation of a writing center. The ReCAP organizes the past for review in the present, and then establishes a navigable plan for recording its future. The ReCAP is a new method designed not only to better organize and research the knowledge produced by a writing program locally, but also to enable the aggregation of data regionally and globally in support of the field’s search for replicability.

Publications

• “Review: A Synthesis of Qualitative Studies of Writing Center Tutoring.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. 11.1. December 2013
• “Review: ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios.” Journal of Teaching Writing. 30.1. July 2015

Presentations

• “Reifying the Center: Sustaining Writing Center Praxis, Status, and Development with a Digital Archive.” Colorado and Wyoming Writing Tutors Conference. Denver, Colorado. R. Austin. February 2019
• “Cultivating Programmatic Recall with Reflective Writing Center Archival Profiles.” International Writing Center Association Collaborative @ CCCC. Portland, Oregon. R. Austin. March 2017
• “Taking Action Through the Archives: Standardizing Writing Center Archive Profiles for Praxis, Knowledge, and Continuity.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. Houston, Texas. R. Austin. April 2016
• “Promoting Writer Authority in Online Tutoring Spaces.” International Writing Center Association Conference. Orlando, Florida. R. Austin. November 2014
• “Righting a Digital Wrong: Restoring the Writer to the Online Writing Tutorial.” National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing. Tampa, Florida. R. Austin. November 2013
• “Crafting Communities of Practice: Connecting Writing Programs with Writing Centers.” Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference. Savannah, Georgia. L. Gaillet, A. Myatt, S. Dyne, R. Austin. July 2013
• “Tutoring Across the Spectrum of Directivity.” National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing. Miami, Florida. R. Austin. November 2011
• “A Graduate Program Writing Fellows Project.” Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching. Traverse City, Michigan. M. Filter, J. Blumner, C. Creech, M. McFarland, and R. Austin. September 2011