The Council of Writing Program Administrators is having its Summer Workshop, Institute, and Conference July 3-10 at the University of Alaska at Anchorage. Topics to be covered include:

* writing with, for, and about the writing programs WPAs lead

* writing about the work of writing program administration

* writing research and scholarship that is informed by their work as WPAs

* writing with and for other WPAs

* other issues of shared interest and concern to WPAs in programs for first-year composition, professional writing, writing centers, and writing across the curriculum.

[. . .]

* Writing effective program documents, memos, and reports

* Developing program-based inquiry into published scholarship

* Developing a writing program website

* Documenting the intellectual work of writing program administration, building a tenure/promotion case

* Making time to write: managing ideas, choosing priorities, sustaining reflection

* and additional workshops in which participants work collectively to draft and develop documents for the Council of Writing Program Administrators (e.g., Standards for TA Training) or work collaboratively to develop inter-institutional/ cross institutional grant proposals

I'll confess, I don't know jack about WPA, but I'm sure it's good to know a little something about it as I'm looking ahead to going on the job market. From what I've heard, it has a lot to do with course design, making the sequence of courses coherent and not redundant, making sure there's consistency across sections of courses (and making decisions about required textbooks and individual instructors' degree of freedom to make course design decisions). I'm guessing there are other, big-picture issues to deal with as well, like program objectives: Preparing students to write in corporate settings? For academia? etc. Can anyone recommend a good introduction to WPA (book or article)?