University Writing Program

Deirdre Vinyard joined the University Writing Program as the Director of the Writing Center and an instructor of first-year composition in 2022.  Her composition courses center on the multiple types of literacy that her students bring to the classroom; this focus strives to help students develop a sense of writing identity through exploring all of their literate selves.  Her work at the writing center focuses on creating inclusive, translingual tutoring spaces. 

Vinyard holds a Bachelor’s degree in Intercultural Studies from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, a Master’s degree in Linguistics with a specialization in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in English (Composition and Rhetoric) from the University of Nevada, Reno. Her doctoral specializations are college composition and second language writing. 

Before joining the UWP team, Vinyard served as an Associate Dean of Curriculum at the University of Washington Bothell, where she also taught first-year composition. At Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vinyard headed up the development of the first-year writing curriculum and served as the multilingual specialist in the Writing Center. Additionally, she was the Deputy Director of the Writing Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she directed the Basic Writing program and taught in the teacher training program for graduate teaching associates.  

At the University of Nevada, Reno, Vinyard was the Director of the Intensive English Language Center, an academically-focused ESL program for international students. While there, she also served for one year as the director of the university’s Tokyo campus, an experience that further informed her understanding of language and identity. This work with multilingual students has shaped her approach to all her teaching and writing center work. One of her goals is to integrate a focus on language — using it and understanding it — into writing, as a way of furthering an awareness of changing identities and as a way of making meaning and creating change in the academic world and beyond. She strives to make classrooms – and writing centers -- collaborative, inclusive spaces, where student voices dominate and inform the work. 

Lorimer Leonard, R., Bruce, S., & Vinyard, D. (2021) Finding Complexity in Language Identity Surveys. Journal of Language, Identity, & Education, DOI: 10.1080/15348458.2020.1863152.  

Bruce, S., Lorimer Leonard, R, & Vinyard, D.  Students Resisting Language Labels in Institutional Surveys.in Schreiber, B. R., In Lee, E., In Johnson, J. T., & In Fahim, N. (2022). Linguistic justice on campus: Pedagogy and advocacy for multilingual students. Multilingual Matters.  

• Conference on College Composition and Communication
• Writing Program Administrators
• International Writing Center Association

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