Very Poor Draft of Abstract

Hi everyone,

My brain is feeling the doldrums of the end of the semester and is frozen by the first snowfall of the winter. So, I would like to abdicate all responsibility for the draft below, but we need to start with something...so there it is.

Please comment at will and be ruthless.

Thanks,
Tif

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In this half-day workshop, participants will be introduced to writing centers that have reached out into their surrounding communities in multiple ways. Facilitators from universities and community colleges across the country will share their stories of challenging institutional assumptions of writing center work and the challenging process of building mutually-beneficial partnerships with people and organizations outside of the college/university boundaries.
Participants will get to see inside the different stages of developing community partnerships, from centers just starting, to those who have been in partnership for nearly a decade.

Participants will be provided with an overview of established and newly-developing theories and research that ground such writing center outreach. We will examine strategies for assessing community assets and needs, community partnership ethics, negotiating institutional politics, generating opportunities for tutors to create innovative partnerships, research possibilities, and so on.

After an initial orientation and discussion session, participants will break into small groups to conduct a community assessment in order to explore where potential partnerships may lie. Then, participants will assess their own institutional asset assessment in order to determine strategies for developing support for the outreach.

Participants will then move through different round table discussions focusing on different approaches to working within the community: service learning, community partnerships, community writing centers.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have a draft of an action plan?

Ick.