Mike Mattison, Director of the Writing Center and the Oral Communication Center at Wittenberg University, received the 2016 Ron Maxwell Award for Distinguished Leadership in Promoting the Collaborative Learning Practices of Peer Tutors in Writing. The award was presented November 5 at the 33rd annual National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW), hosted this year by the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA.
The award recognizes a professional within the NCPTW organization for dedication to and leadership in collaborative learning in writing centers, for aiding students in together taking on more responsibility for their learning, and, thus, for promoting the work of peer tutors. Its presentation also denotes service to the evolution of the conference organization.
A committee of fourteen previous award recipients selected Dr. Mattison. “Mike is a teacher-scholar who excels at writing center work because he takes a wide view of his responsibilities to tutors and students. The writing center community, including NCPTW, is stronger because of people like Mike Mattison,” said NCPTW’s Secretary Dr. Ben Rafoth, Distinguished University Professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania who received the award in 2002.
The selection committee admired Mattison’s support for undergraduate student research, and several individuals also noted his help as a peer mentor with their own research. The award recipient last year, Dr. Christopher Ervin, Director of Composition at Western Kentucky University, recalled meeting Mattison when they both participated in an annual summer institute for writing center directors in 2007: “Mike offered wisdom and support for the ideas I shared with him about ambitious undergraduate research projects I wanted to see happening in our writing center and for writing I was doing about mentoring undergraduate writing tutor researchers. I found a mentor in Mike Mattison long after I had been working in writing centers for quite some time.”
Former Wittenberg Writing Center peer advisor Emily Rayens nominated Mattison for the award. Now a graduate student at the University of Georgia studying infectious disease, Rayens praised Mattison’s scholarly expectations, supportive encouragement, collaborative vision, openness to change, dedication to improvement, and “indomitable optimism” as qualities that distinguish him as a leader.
Rayens remembered meeting Mattison in “one of the strangest interviews ever” when she applied to become a peer advisor. “The conversation was completely terrifying, yet utterly fantastic. Dr. Mattison and I did not discuss logistics of working in a writing center or dwell for long on the motivations of my application. Instead, we talked about why I enjoyed writing, why I decided on the topic of my writing sample.”
In her nomination letter, Rayens recalled that after Mattison signed her up, one of the things that most surprised her was the way he treated peer advisors as his colleagues. He listens to their ideas and acts on them.
Mattison expects peer advisors to publish as scholars and attend conferences just as he does. In fact, that expectation is in their contract. The program of the 2016 conference, for instance, featured five presentations by Wittenberg peer advisors. Since Mattison arrived from Boise State University Fall 2009, Wittenberg advisors have given seventeen presentations at NCPTW, in addition to presenting at other regional writing center conferences.
Selection committee members were impressed by how well Mattison’s Writing Center website publicizes the scholarly achievements of Wittenberg’s advisors http://www.wittenberg.edu/administration/writingcenter/research. The website is a model for other writing centers.
Peer advisors from Wittenberg have earned a reputation at writing center conferences for blending creative insight with practical substance. “Assumption Junction: What’s a Writing Center Course’s Function?” is what Rayens and Mattison presented together at the 2015 conference in Salt Lake City.
Rayens credits Mattison and the peer-advising experience for helping her in grad school: “I was able to collaborate on a number of professional papers. This is something I would not have felt confident participating in without my time in the Wittenberg Writing Center.”
Mattison inspires confidence in peer advisors by modeling a continual pursuit of improvement. He visits classrooms far outside his department (such as Organic Chemistry II) to find ideas for teaching more effectively. His love of learning and his openness to change are contagious: “He passes his questions and curiosity on to his staff. His sense of indomitable optimism permeates our center,” Rayens said.
Mattison received a check from the Maxwell family and a plaque engraved with a quote he chose as having informed his career: “He not busy being born is busy dying” (Bob Dylan).