Join Our Executive Board as an At-Large Board Member!

Nominations (or Self-Nominations) Due September 1, 2026

The MWCA Executive Board is seeking nominations for five board members to serve on the board. With a big election this time around, we are all the more excited to hear from many who are interested, and to share ideas and camaraderie as we move forward into another term together, continuing existing initiatives and developing new ones, including our biennial conference, our new brand kit, our monthly workshops and solidarity groups, and beyond.

Nominations are open until September 1. If you are interested, don’t hesitate—please email a 150-word bio or statement about yourself and your interests to me, Vice Chair Jennifer Park (kangjenn@grinnell.edu). If you are nominating someone else, please send me their name and email address, and I will reach out to them individually to request their bio.

Once I have received the bios, I will send them to our membership, and voting will take place for approximately two weeks, from the first week of September through mid-September.

The terms for the elected board members will begin in September 2026 and end in late summer 2029.

The MWCA Executive Board especially encourages graduate students, colleagues of color, and colleagues from underrepresented parts of our region, such as Kansas, Illinois, and the Dakotas, to apply as we work to embed our equity and anti-racist commitments in our governance and systems.

We also welcome applicants who are newer to our profession. Neither previous experience nor prior membership in MWCA is required for board service. There is no need to be a member when you apply.

We also hope to see nominations from colleagues who have run in past elections. Each election is shaped by our changing membership, and new constituents vote each time. If you have run in the past and have not been elected, please consider running again!

Why Serve on the MWCA Executive Board?

• Make positive professional connections: Work with committed educators from all over our region.
• Low time commitment: Initial commitments for at-large board members are just one hour-long Zoom meeting a month. 
• Opportunity for leadership roles: Board members can transition into a leadership role at any point in their three-year term. 
• Make a difference for colleagues in our region: While we host our regional conference every other year, there are many opportunities to build community and expand access to professional resources while serving on the MWCA executive board. Here are a few examples of committees an at-large board member may opt to serve on: 

• Outreach committee: Build resources and increase membership for underserved institutions in the Midwest region.
• Newsletter committee: Collect and disseminate information about member organizations and important updates for our community.
• Website committee: Members of this committee will advise on revisions to the website, including organizational, aesthetic, and archival concerns. 
• Conference committee: Even in non-conference years, there is plenty of preparation work to do for our next opportunity to come together! 

If you are unsure what to include in your bio, please check out the samples below, or feel free to email me (kangjenn@grinnell.edu) or Luke Morgan (luke.morgan@metrostate.edu) with any questions.

Bio Samples

Sample 1:

XXXXX is English faculty and Writing Center Coordinator at XXXXX Community College in MN, and has been involved in Writing Centers for most years since becoming a peer tutor at XXXXX University in 1986.  In 1988, she was the first peer tutor representative on the MWCA board. She later served 11 years on the ECWCA board (1992-2003) while directing Writing Centers at XXXXX in Indiana and then XXXXX in Ohio.  XXXXX earned an MA and a PhD in Composition & Rhetoric at XXXXX. She is a past treasurer of the IWCA, a past host of ECWCA and NCPTW conferences, and the author of Composing Research: A Contextualist Research Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition. On her campus, her current efforts include strengthening the WAC focus of XXXXX’s Writing Center, improving the visibility of community college Writing Centers, and partnering with DEI initiatives. 

Sample 2:

XXXXX directs the writing center at XXXXX, where she works one-on-one with student writers, teaches the writing tutor education class, and helps support and educate faculty teaching writing-intensive courses. She has presented at IWCA, MWCA, 4Cs, and the Watson conference on writing center-related topics ranging from why theory matters in tutor education courses to why students like using the word “flow” to talk about writing. Before joining XXXXX, she was the writing center director and an associate professor of English at the XXXXX. She earned her PhD at the XXXXX, where she worked as a writing center instructor and as assistant director of the Writing Fellows program. XXXXX would bring to the Board a keen interest in helping to develop and manage the MWCA conference websites and a commitment to both maintaining the MWCA conference and exploring how MWCA can best connect and support members in non-conference years.