Kiara Walker
The University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

Emma Conatser
The University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

As the Writing Center finds itself facing a changing landscape of questions and challenges, centers are tasked with re-evaluating the role of writing support in an institutional setting. In this issue of Praxis, authors deploy survey methods to investigate traditional writing center practice and consider potential avenues for change. Each article contemplates the way writing centers stand as institution-facing entities and reconsiders centers’ roles. Whether regarding centers as navigators of student stress, presenters of instruction, or sources of support to creative and STEMM writers, each article gauges traditional practice and provides insight into the unique challenges centers face today.

Our issue opens with Lizzie Hutton’s article,“ ‘There Is No Rubric for This:’ Creative Writers’ Bids for Writing Center Support,” exploring the tasks and requested feedback that creative writers bring to the center. By analyzing the type of support creative writers ask for in their appointment forms, Hutton finds that creative writers’ requests are more evaluative, open-ended, and have fewer rhetorical constraints. These “bids” signal a different writing process that may destabilize and challenge a consultant approach reliant on genre or rhetorical awareness.

In their article, “STEMM Student Writing Center Usage at a Health Sciences University,” Alison O’Keefe and Candis Bond use their experience at an institution with an emphasis on STEMM programs to consider the support the writing center can provide to STEMM students. The authors share a survey of these students’ use of the writing center, their writing rationales, and their attitudes toward the writing center, highlighting new efforts to be made as centers consider how to best support writers from STEMM programs.

Grendell et al. follow, exploring the implications for writing support on student stress levels in their article, “Effects of Writing Center-Based Peer Tutoring on Undergraduate Students’ Perceived Stress.” The authors’ model for understanding perceived stress is split between general stress and writing-specific stress, with both types of stress addressed in the authors’ questions about the outcomes of a writing session. The survey presented here seeks to understand the relationship between these perceived stressors and support provided by peer tutors in writing center settings.

We close our issue with Garahan et al.’s study of a common promotional strategy for writing centers: the introductory presentation. In “Developing Purposeful Practices for Writing Center Introductory Presentations,” Garahan et al. advocate for using evidence-based practices to better understand how introductory presentations shape students' understanding of writing center services. Based on their open-ended survey, the authors find that while both introductory presentations and mock sessions are able to communicate writing center services, such promotional strategies can be improved through offering students a positive framework around writing and scaffolding and meta-language to better understand what occurs in a session.

We want to take a moment to thank our readers and our review board for their continued support. And finally, I (Kiara) want to take a moment to say goodbye. I have been proud to serve as an editor for Praxis for the past three years. In that time, I have had the great and wonderful opportunity to participate in the conversations pushing our field forward. And I am excited to see the work that Praxis’s new and in-coming editors, Emma Conatser and Tristan Hanson will accomplish.