David Slomp is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Lethbridge who works with student language arts teachers in the southern area of the province. His research interests include the development of writing abilities of high school students. He previously worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta where he co-chaired the university Writing Task Force. As part of that task force he investigated the contexts for students learning to write at the university level. A former high school language arts teacher himself, he is uniquely positioned to guide discussions of the teaching and learning of writing in high school and post-secondary contexts in Alberta.

Roger Graves is Professor of English and Film Studies and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum and author of  Writing Instruction in Canadian Universities (1994), co-editor of “Writing Centres, Writing Seminars, Writing Culture: Writing Instruction in Anglo-Canadian Universities” (2006) and “Interdisciplinarity: Thinking and Writing Beyond Borders” (2010),  and co-author of 8 textbooks on writing. He has given over 100 presentations to undergraduate classes at the University of Alberta working with those students to help them understand the assignment their instructor has crafted and the criteria that instructor will use to evaluate student writing. He is uniquely qualified, as both a current writing instructor at the post-secondary level and a former high school teacher, to facilitate and negotiate the educational terrain on both sides of the higher education border. The conversations at these workshops have important implications for university instruction and for the retention and success of all post-secondary students.