Overview

Our annual spring two-day conference usually is held in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, with occasional conferences in Greater Minnesota. The conference usually includes academic plenaries, luncheon keynotes, and many breakout sessions on both days. Our breakouts confound the usual conference style by replacing many (if not all) of typical traditional presentations with nontraditional discussions, panels, and interactive events. We place our presenters purposely in smaller groups where we encourage them to offer the new, the untried, the tentative–to explore, ask questions, and precipitate friendly debate.

Our mission is to help transform writing and English into teaching and learning experiences using practical methodologies that serve students best. Our vision is to bring scholarly ideas and practical pedagogy together to help create the future of our disciplines. We enjoy a mix at our conferences and in our committee of tenure-line and adjunct faculty, graduate students, administrators, and high school faculty teaching college writing and English in the high schools.

News

Our bi-monthly “MnWE News” offers three or four very brief features in each issue that may include local, regional, or national news of note to writing and English teachers, links, and reviews of articles and books significant to the practice of teaching writing and English.
Our email listserv for the “News” has 2500 names of faculty in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and parts of Iowa, Illinois, and North and South Dakota. In addition to the bi-monthly newsletter, we send MnWE Conference calls for papers and other information about the conference, occasional notices of other useful regional and national conferences being held in the the Upper Midwest, and other occasional forwards that may be especially helpful or useful. Our listserv email addresses are exclusive–never shared–and directions for leaving the list are always at the bottom of every email. 

Joining is easy and free. Simply email Richard Jewell at “richard (at) jewell.net” (delete the spaces, and replace “at” with “@”). Give him the email address at which you’d like to receive MnWE emails. (Adjuncts and graduate students, you may want to provide a private email address so you don’t lose the “Email News” if you move to another school.)

For most people, unsubscribing is easy. Simply follow the directions at the bottom of any email you receive from MnWE. (Please try this method of unsubscribing first, before asking Richard to unsubscribe you.) However, some school servers may not allow you to unsubscribe automatically as above. if this happens t you, please follow these directions to unsubscribe:

  1. Find the unsubscribe directions at the very bottom of one of the MnWE emails sent to you.
  2. Copy your email address exactly as shown in the unsubscribe directions.
  3. Paste the address into the content of a new email, and send it to Richard Jewell, asking to have this email address deleted from the listserv.  (See above for his email address.)
Are you receiving two copies of the listserv emails? If you’d like to receive just one, then go to the bottom of the email sent to you at the email address you’d like to have MnWE delete. Then follow the directions at the bottom of that email.

History

PictureRichard Jewell
MnWE was started officially by Richard Jewell, an Inver Hills College tenured faculty member, who had taught previously at both the University of Minnesota and St. Cloud State University. In January 2007, he asked Donald Ross at the University of Minnesota if the two of them might work to develop a joint conference in their two systems and throughout the state.

When Donald agreed, Richard then went to the annual MnSCU English and writing discipline meeting in Minneapolis in February to ask whether its members would like him to develop an annual state conference that would include all Minnesota colleges and universities.

About eighty faculty from throughout MnSCU were present; they voted by over 80% to support the conference.  A founding committee coordinated by Richard formed immediately to organize the first conference.

The initial committee has grown to include several dozen active members and MnWE representatives at their schools who come from campuses in both Minnesota and Wisconsin. The conference and the newsletter reach out to all states surrounding Minnesota.

Members of the committee represent a wide diversity of college and university professors, instructors, and graduate students from University of Minnesota campuses, Minnesota and Wisconsin state universities and public two-year colleges, and a variety of nonprofit and for-profit private colleges and universities. We also are proud to include graduate students in the conferences and on our committee, and we are glad to see an increasing number of high school faculty attending the conferences, who teach college writing and English in their schools.

The first conference was in fall 2009. Attendance normally varies from 150 to 200. Richard Jewell continues to serve as the General Coordinator. In about 2011, two additional central positions were added: Larry Sklaney as Conference Coordinator, and Danielle Hinrichs as Conference Program Coordinator. Both of them have, since 2015, been Conference Co-Coordinators.

Minnesota Writing and English Conference

Copyright 2019