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Writing Program Administration (WPA) refers to the work done by writing program administrators in writing programs in postsecondary education situations in traditionally U.S. institutions. WPA refers both to a research tradition (a set of texts, methodologies, and research questions) as well as a community of practitioners who do WPA.

The scope of work of a WPA largely depends on their institutional context yet scholars have surmised that “the main issues a WPA deals with are curriculum and pedagogy, assessment and accountability, staffing and staff development, and professional and personal issues of various stripes, including tenure and promotion” (p. 4)^[1].

Writing program administration emerged from the field of Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies in the mid-20th century. WPA scholarship draws from the fields of composition, writing assessment, writing pedagogy, design thinking, higher education, organizational communication, rhetoric and linguistics. WPA research also frequently draws from and contributes to conversations related to faculty development, labor issues, and curricular and programmatic design.

A series of organizational statements (citations) outline the values and goals of WPAs as scholar-leaders as well as core premises. Core premises include: 1) WPA work is intellectual work as well as service to the campus community; 2) WPAs are advocates for students and faculty; 3) WPAs ought to maintain generalist knowledge across several domains (pedagogy, curriculum, faculty development, assessment, leadership, higher education policies and politics, etc.) so they can be effective advocates and ethical leaders.

Writing courses were historically misunderstood as “remedial” courses. This understanding of writing education miscued institutions to assign the least experienced instructors, often graduate teaching assistants in English departments studying literature, to teach first-year writing or composition courses. This tradition established the WPA as tenure-line supervisor of less powerful instructional staff--first GTAs and then adjunct labor.

There are various histories of writing program administration in the United States that have taken shape over the last century and a half. This histories however, are tied to the rise of university writing programs themselves and their near universal institutionalization in the latter half of the 19th century and 20th centuries. As a unique feature of American colleges and universities today, the expansion and growth of these writing programs serving more and more students over time led to organizational demands and questions as to how best administer these programs within various institutional constraints. Writing program administration as an institutional position, albeit a marginalized one, and or an organizational necessity emerges in this mix.

As Susan McLeod contends in her histories of Writing Program Administration, many of these trajectories across institutions can be traced through the transformation of colleges themselves from what might be called a classic, liberal arts education where administrative duties were handled by faculty themselves, towards the German research university structure. This meant these American colleges that serviced predominantly wealthy white men to enter the ministry or public life and office, especially after the US Civil War, were orienting themselves towards research and the formation of disciplines, disciplinary standardization and reproduction. Along these lines, what in the US was a tradition of rhetoric by the late 19th and early 20th centuries was becoming corralled into various disciplinary homes. Composition, or what came to known as the teaching of writing, emerged as both a distinct need by these colleges (with Harvard spearheading and becoming a model for other colleges and those in formation) to prepare incoming students from elite backgrounds and not for college, and with the growth of land grant universities and later community colleges, for industrial or professional life. This need for composition also gets tied to notions of exclusivity, and with the emergence of writing programs is a near simultaneous investment by colleges like Harvard in entrance exams that test writing "correctness."

Foundational events in WPA intellectual traditions include the founding of CCCCs^[2], the Dartmouth Seminar^[3], the Open Admissions Movement, and the establishment of the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA). Influential thinkers who identify themselves as WPA scholars early in the field’s development include Louise Whetherbee Phelps, Kenneth Bruffee, Shirely Rose, Wendy Bishop, Joseph Williams, Janice Lauer, Edward White, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Norbert Eliot^[4], etc. Scholars who first called themselves compositionists enacted WPA work by necessity as they were often the only writing specialist in departments such as Communication and English.

Council of Writing Program Administrators: CWPA is the national association of college and university writing program administrators. The association includes members who are in various roles of responsibility (chairs, deans, directors, and so ons) as well those who are studying or interested in Writing Program Administration. CWPA is responsible for publishing the leading journal in the field, Writing Program Administration, and for putting on the yearly national conference. Members of CWPA also have access to job boards, grants and awards, and a large network of professionals in the field.^[5]

WPA: Dating back to 1977, Writing Program Administration is the leading journal in the field and is published by the Council of Writing Program Administrators. The journal publishes theoretical and empirical research articles in a variety of formats intended to add to the national conversation on writing program administration and issues related to the practice. The journal is typically published three times a year in the Fall, Spring, and Summer and covers a wide range of topics of interest including: curriculum development, writing faculty professional development, theory, practice, and researching in writing program administration, outreach and advocacy, interdisciplinary work that inform writing program administration, and so on.^[6]