Elizabeth Wardle believes that writing program administrators and other academic leaders lead best when they’re following research-based principles and empowering others to act on their own expertise. Such an approach, she explains to Shane A. Wood on a recent episode of Pedagogue, builds collective interest that can initiate and sustain meaningful programmatic change.

Wardle has put this theory into practice throughout her career, from the University of Dayton and the University of Central Florida, where she served as Writing Program Director and later department chair, to here at Miami University, where she directs the Howe Center for Writing Excellence (HCWE) and works with faculty from across disciplines to help them build a culture of principled, evidence-based writing instruction in their own programs.

Listen to Wardle explain why she favors “ground-up” leadership that relies on intellectual curiosity.

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Elizabeth Wardle is Roger & Joyce Howe Distinguished Professor of Written Communication and Director of the Roger and Joyce Howe Center for Writing Excellence. She is co-author/co-editor of Writing about Writing, Naming What We Know, (re)Considering What We Know, and Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity. Her scholarship includes writing program administration, faculty development, curriculum design, and leadership and change, among other interests. She also edits the Writing Research, Pedagogy, and Policy Book Series for Southern Illinois University Press and the Retrospectives section of Composition Forum.