Oral histories of the National Writing Center Association: A look at group dynamics

One way of understanding the progress that writing centers have made since the early 1900s is to look at the individual milestones that have occurred in the field. One of the most prominent of these milestones is the inception and continued success of the National Writing Centers Association. While a chronological history of the inception of this organization has been documented by various scholars, this dissertation explores the period leading to the NWCA formation using oral history methods to enrich our knowledge of this event through several points of view. Using the qualitative method of oral histories—researching founding board members, constructing interview questions, audiotaping and transcribing interviews—to examine how this group's shared stories helped to bring its members to a common consciousness about the needs and goals of this organization.;The implications of these findings is that for writing centers to become a more thriving part of academic institutions in the future, a better understanding of the field's process of growth thus far must be researched and established so that administrators may have a more solid foundation from which to work. These administrators must also realize the importance of history on a personal level and strive to develop their own local histories for the advancement of individual writing centers.;Divided into five chapters, this dissertation explores the oral histories of the founding board members of the NWCA and utilizes group communication theory to examine how a national organization was formed. Chapter One outlines the current state of writing center history as means of an introduction to the topic. Chapter Two explores a written history of writing centers, and the place of oral history in contributing to already established histories. Chapter Three discusses the research methodology and introduces Ernest Borrman's Symbolic Convergence Theory, a group communication theory that provides a vocabulary by which to discuss the dynamics of the NWCA formation. Chapter Four focuses on an analysis of the data, particularly common themes between individual oral histories, in the context of overall writing center history and lore.