Writing Center Earns 2024 Martinson Award for Innovation
Hartwick College has been recognized by the Small Liberal Arts Colleges-Writing Program Administrators (SLAC-WPA) with the 2024 Martinson Award for Innovation. The award recognizes the equity initiative efforts of the Charlotte Orr Hotaling Writing Center and Writing Program, which aims to make writing development more equitable at Hartwick from the curricular level to tutoring support to pedagogical development.
“As I think about the center’s 45th anniversary, the equity initiatives that are going on this year really build off what we have been trying to do for the past half-century,” said James Cochran, director of the Writing Competency Program and Writing Center.
According to Cochran, the award committee was particularly impressed by how resourceful and innovative he and his colleagues had been in using current research to inform writing assessment and the teaching of writing as ecological or interconnected with people, places, and material objects. With this holistic analysis, the College was able to shift funds from programs like timed writing exams that assess and categorize students toward classes that create supportive learning environments–through lower class caps, increased faculty development opportunities, and enhancing physical spaces with welcoming messages and decor. These changes help signal the equity initiative’s larger purposes of anti-oppression, inclusivity, and linguistic justice to students and other campus community members.
Cochran will accept the Martinson Award and share highlights of his equity initiative work at the
upcoming annual conference of SLAC-WPA on January 10, 2024, at Lafayette College, PA. The Martinson Award was created to honor the accomplishments of Deborah Martinson, who passed away in 2014. Martinson was an active member of SLAC-WPA, having served on the executive board, and in efforts to build and support writing communities within and beyond the organization.
The Writing Center also recently secured a grant from the Community Literacies Collaboratory to purchase over 50 anti-racist and equity-focused books for its resource library.
