Our Charge to Keep: Writing Center and Writing Program Administration at Historically Black Colleges and Universities

The first book to explore writing center (WC) and writing program (WP) administration in HBCUs, Our Charge to Keep nuances ideas of ethical tutoring, explores Black college students’ beliefs about using Black Language in academic writing, provides new theories about tutoring, and gives insights into infrastructure and challenges facing WC and WP administrators in HBCU settings.

Many writing center directors have taken up the challenge to interrogate the impact of systemic racism on writing center theory, research, pedagogy, praxes, and daily operations, but the focus has largely been on predominantly white institutions (PWIs). As a result, writing center theory and research has unintentionally excluded the practices of everyday HBCU writing centers―their pedagogies, praxes, theories, and research. This edited volume rectifies this marginality by centering the epistemologies, practices, and wisdom of HBCU writing administrators, theorists, and practitioners. Chapters examine antiracist pedagogy, first-year writing challenges, the role of the larger HBCU community, and more.

Our Charge to Keep is a collection of writings that ultimately demystifies the administration of HBCU writing centers and inspires critical curiosity about them. Dr. Wonderful and Kendra Mitchell frame and showcase the resilience of HBCU writing center directors in combating the residual impact of systemic oppression and point the way forward for PWIs to shift toward new HBCU-centered perspectives on how to institute true antiracist policies and initiatives.

Dr. Wonderful is the director of the Richard Wright Center for Writing, Rhetoric, and Research at Jackson State University. She has published several articles and book chapters on topics including race, language, and antiracist writing assessment. She is the winner of the 2023 IWCA Outstanding Book Award for Counterstories from the Writing Center, coedited with Dr. Frankie Condon.

Kendra Mitchell is the director of the Florida A&M University Writing Resource Center (FAMU WRC) and associate professor of English and modern languages. She has taught composition, literature, and historical linguistics in ways that undergird the genius of FAMU and other HBCU student writers. Serving as the WRC director is a full-circle moment as she worked in the WRC as an undergraduate and paraprofessional, completed her dissertation research on the language interactions of the students in the WRC, and continues to move the needle forward in research on writing and communication for her staff, students, and campus partners.