Click for audio
When Stephen McElroy, Matt Davis, and Rory Lee invited us to contribute to a festschrift honoring the life’s work of our friend and colleague Kathleen Blake Yancey, we were overjoyed by the opportunity. Kathi has enriched our lives in the same ways that she has enriched the lives of some many other people in our field. Through her research and publication, she has provided insights that have influenced and informed the work of many hundreds of scholars. And that influence began early in her career. For example, when Duane heard Kathi’s CCCC’s presentation on text linguistics in 1979, he became so interested in the topic that he decided to write a dissertation on text linguistics. He has been citing Kathi’s research ever since. Kathi’s work on the Museum of Everyday Writing inspired Sherry to redesign her curriculum in the early 2010’s to have students focus on, collect, and submit to the museum while reflecting on the importance of everyday writing in their lives.
We are grateful that Kathi has mentored each of us, and many others, throughout her career. She has always been generous in sharing her knowledge and wisdom. That mentoring has occurred in countless one-on-one conversations in hallways and restaurants at conferences. Of course, she has engaged in plenty of mentoring conversations with small and large groups of colleagues in the field. In those conversations, she makes others feel valued and respected. And her infectious laugh and numerating of ideas have been part of every one of those conversations. Kathi has been a role model for how to serve our professional organizations. She has served on many scores of committees for NCTE, CCCC, and CPWA. And she has served as president or chair of each of these three organizations. We’ve seen firsthand how her service and leadership has strengthened those organizations through her steadfast commitment to fostering a culture in which everyone feels welcomed, valued, listened to, supported, respected, and that they belong.
In the audio text, “X for X-Factor” for the Yancey A to Z collection, the five of us, a multigenerational team, offer polyvocal voices reflecting on how we came to know Kathi’s works and her dynamic leadership through the idea of the “X factor,” the quality of a person that leads to success, in our teaching, research, and administration. In our project, divided into four parts, we offer listeners an opportunity to hear more about how we collectively define success and reflect on mentorship as writing program administrators (WPAs) as a direct influence of Yancey’s modeling for the field and scholarship that has shaped our careers with a call on “emotionally intelligent mentoring” from Carter-Tod to the up-and-coming scholars in our field (Part I). In Part II, our team takes up ideas around adapting to what we encounter each day in our work as WPAs through our daily actions in our academic roles through embodied mindfulness, compassion, and gratitude in unplanned situations. We bring forward the idea of hard listening (Glenn) and advocacy, for both faculty and students, with care by building environments of care for the community. The X-factor of (un)expectancy pushes us to build administrative identity and requires us to question the roles of institutions and the situations we must navigate—in how we transfer our knowledges and sit in the reflective practices for future administrative situations.
We open Part III by inviting Wood to ground his administrative works in the scholarship and habits to look at how we build habits of reflection as WPAs; he laments about the servant-leadership model that drives his works as a mid-career WPA and scholar. Carter-Tod teases out methods for utilizing metathinking that shapes learning and navigating new spaces so that “every X-factor allows us to reflect” through the language Yancey has offered the field to operationalize the labor of writing program administration (8:40-10:40). We close the section about the personal and familial sacrifices that make evident “the choices we make to make space for the work” (Yancey in video CFP), and Carter-Tod grapples with the intense and visible labor that occurs for BIPOC administrators and the armor that is needed. In our final section, we center Yancey’s commitment to community writing and her influence on our works in different settings. We end our conversation on X-factor by offering listeners tips for preparing and sustaining leadership in writing program administration through virtutes, rhetorical readiness, and the social responsibility of being change agents to move our works beyond the classroom and university, as we have seen the intellectual works and mentorship of Kathleen Blake Yancey.
Sheila Carter-Tod defines "success" based on Yancey's framing of X-Factor. Duane Roen offers examples of successful leadership qualities. Susan Thomas reflects on the importance of mentorship as WAs, and Sheila Carter-Tod challenges the discipline to listen to younger voices.
Click for audio
Sherry Rankins-Robertson talks about adapting and responding to the unexpected as WPAs, which Yancey mentions as essential to having the X-Factor. Susan Thomas shares how to embody mindfulness, compassion, and gratitude in unplanned situations. Sheila Carter-Tod reflects on opportunities for advocacy in unexpected moments, and Sherry Rankins-Robertson discusses the role of transfer.
Click for audio
Shane Wood draws on Yancey's work on reflection and shares his experiences as an early career WPA. Sheila Carter-Tod discusses how the past shapes how we navigate new situations and why metacognition is important to writing program administration. Sherry Rankins-Robertson talks about the choices (and sacrifices) we make to make space for our work as WAs.
Click for audio
Duane Roen reflects on Yancey's commitment to writing across contexts and explains how vital it is to engage in community writing. Sherry Rankins-Robertson reflects on the joys of teaching writing in prisons. Duane Roen, Sheila Carter-Tod, Susan Thomas, and Shane Wood conclude with ways to prepare and sustain the X-Factor as WPAs.
Click for audio
Glenn, C., & Adams, H. (2025). Listening, when the listening is hard. In J. E. Beitler & S. R. Robbins (Eds.), Sites of writing: Essays in honor of Anne Ruggles Gere (pp. 271–284). WAC Clearinghouse.
Kryger, K., & Zimmerman, G. X. (2020). Neurodiversity and intersectionality in labor-based grading contacts. Journal of Writing Assessment, 13(2), 1–12. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0934x4rm
Inoue, A. B. (2019). Labor-based grading contracts: Building equity and inclusion in the compassionate writing classroom. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado.
Museum of Everyday Writing. (2010). Museum of Everyday Writing. Florida State University. https://museumofeverydaywriting.omeka.net
Roen, D. (1981). The effects of selected text-forming structures on college freshmen’s comprehension of expository prose. [Doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.
Yancey, K. B. (1979, April). A linguistic approach to teaching coherence [Conference presentation]. CCCC Convention, Minneapolis, MN.
Yancey, K. B. (2023). X for X-Factor [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/2TFutEKCj5I
Zimmerman, G. X. (2024). Enhancing ungrading: Ideological assumptions and disability justice interventions. Pedagogy, 24(3), 341–355. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-11246271