Avree Ito-Fujita, a University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa English PhD candidate, has been awarded the 2017 International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) President’s Future Leaders Scholarship. She is one of only four student leaders nationwide who received the award and this is her second IWCA award.
Ito-Fujita will present “Tutors Between Writing Centers: Forming Online and F2F Identities” at the IWCA Annual Conference in Chicago in November. Her presentation explores how UH Mānoa’s Writing Center became the training ground for another campus-based writing center program, the Online Learning Academy’s community-based writing center, and how writing center tutors mitigate online and face-to-face identities in order to adapt to community needs.
In addition, she and three other UH Mānoa representatives will give a panel presentation playing up the conference’s “spy” theme—their presentation is titled “The Inside Job: Supporting Institutional Access in the Writing Center.” The group will highlight ways that writing center practitioners can infiltrate their campuses, build programs and cultivate learning communities to promote access and participation.
IWCA fosters the development of writing center directors, tutors and staff. The President’s Future Leaders Scholarship is one of several academic accolades Ito-Fujita has received.
Grateful for the opportunities afforded her by UH Mānoa, this Kapolei native, now Mānoa resident, wants to stir the passion for writing in others.
“I would like to emphasize that the UH System is home to many wonderful writing center programs and UH Mānoa is home to two of them,” said Ito-Fujita. “UH Mānoa’s Writing Center serves students, faculty and staff of UH Mānoa. The Online Learning Academy’s writing center provides tutoring services to all students in the state of Hawaiʻi. Both services are free and I encourage people to check out programs at their home campuses.”
More about Avree Ito-Fujita
During her undergraduate and graduate careers at UH Mānoa, Ito-Fujita has worked for multiple writing programs. An ambitious and self-driven student who enjoys collaborating with writers, she not only is a PhD candidate in the English department but also a writing center tutor and coordinator.
Ito-Fujita’s academic research focuses on writing center pedagogy where she aims to identify best practices for community writing center administrators, tutors and writers. Her interests and experience originate in writing, but expand to other areas. Eventually she would like to be a part of the animation film and video game industry.
