Dana Driscoll, professor of English and director of the Jones White Writing Center, recently delivered a writing center-related workshop and keynote address at the International English Conference at North South University in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Driscoll has spent the last two years consulting with the staff at North South University on establishing a writing center for their campus, one of the first on the Indian subcontinent. As part of this initiative, she offered a workshop focused on writing center development during the International English Conference. This presentation, titled "Writing Centers as Sites of Change: Starting, Staffing, and Running Your Writing Center," focused on five facets related to writing center development: writing center goals, purposes, and histories; how to start a writing center, including resources, staffing, space, and policies; how to reach the campus community to promote a new writing center; the different models that writing centers around the globe use to offer services; and the kinds of services writing centers may offer.
During her visit, Driscoll also delivered the conference keynote address, titled "Cultivating the Resilient Learner: Practices to Support Literacy Development in Times of Change." The conference, attended by approximately 200 scholars, discussed ruptures and resiliencies within English studies and considered the ways that English departments may support students into the future.
Driscoll's address focused on how to help students become resilient learners by extending and adapting their knowledge to changing circumstances, overcoming adversity, and engaging in reflective learning and literacy practices and exploring how English studies can support resiliency.