ABSTRACT
The relationships between writing centers and writing program administrators (WPAs) vary significantly. For example, some campuses designate a single person as the WPA to whom all other writing program directors report; this WPA may direct first-year composition (FYC), the writing center, writing across the curriculum (WAC), or other writing programs. In contrast, other campuses have several faculty and staff who direct a number of loosely connected writing programs, each reporting to a different department chair, academic dean, academic vice president, student services dean, or provost. Thus writing center directors may have direct, indirect, or nonexistent relationships with other campus WPAs, or they may be the chief or sole WPA. These configurations grow out of composition theory as well as campuses’ specific histories and cultures, some of them open to change and others not. However, as this book complicates our views of WPAs as more than schedulers of FYC and of the different ways writing program directors are positioned both by themselves and in relationships with others, it offers greater understanding of the terrain. The WPA roles that writing center directors play as they shape programs, educate staff, and secure budgets is one piece of this complicated whole, the piece that this chapter will explore.
