Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal

Understanding WPA Readiness and Renewal examines WPA journeys and journeying.

Designed for WPA graduate seminars and professional development workshops, this book addresses two questions:

• How do people develop readiness to serve as WPAs?

• How do experienced WPAs find or create renewal opportunities that help them move forward throughout their lives and careers?

Authors address these questions from their sometimes-intersecting identities as BIPOC scholars, LGBTQ+ people, graduate students, and adjunct faculty, as well as early, mid-, and later-career WPAs.

Authors draw on their experience teaching at a range of two- and four-year institutions to analyse the complexities, contingencies, and rewards of short and long-term WPA work. These scholars contend that understanding WPA "readiness" and "renewal" involves questioning inherited definitions of those terms and engaging in theorized, self-aware conversations that reflect, and reflect on, understudied fears and desires about WPA work from graduate preparation to preparing for leadership rotation and retirement.