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Administrative Philosophy

Through my extensive administrative and tutoring experiences I learned that administration and programs thrive on their ability to collaborate, account for local contexts, and create a supportive culture of ongoing professional development. My record at Florida State University's Reading and Writing Centers and Digital Studio shows my dedication to facilitating and participating in ongoing and collaborative professional development as a tutor, consultant, instructor, and administrator. I have first-hand experience developing professional development practices, and I am excited about the opportunity to bring my philosophy, experience, and history of implementation to my future administrative roles in new contexts to help them thrive.

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You can read more about my administrative experience and responsibilities below, and you can also examine my full Administrative Philosophy. 

The FSU Digital Studios

The Digital Studio at Florida State University is an academic support structure operated under the umbrella of the Reading and Writing Center that focuses on helping students with digital composing projects. The Digital Studio embraces the "studio" element of its name, offering students anything from one-on-one assistance with software and hardware, to hands-off access to high-end computers and software. Given the range of needs addressed in the Digital Studio, consultants typically split their time between:

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  • Providing walk-in assistance to students on personal or class projects;

  • Designing texts and workshops to support the mission of the Digital Studio on campus; 

  • Conducting workshops for a range of classes on specific topics and software platforms to help instructors and students meet pedagogical and learning goals;

  • And learning new software platforms.

Jason Custer Digital Studio Description

The Digital Studio meshes together elements of writing centers, multiliteracy centers, and learning studios to provide flexible support to students and instructors working with digital multimodal texts. In my seven years at Florida State University, I served as an administrator for three of them, and a consultant in the Digital Studio for an additional two.

Site Coordinator for the Williams Digital Studio

  • Fall 2016 - Spring 2017​

In my third administrative role, I worked closely with Michael Neal to administrate the flagship Digital Studio location and bring in undergraduate tutors into this space for the first time. Many of the core administrative responsibilities remain the same as those seen above, however, I began looking into how I could map my dissertation research findings onto the Digital Studio's daily practices. As the Site Coordinator in the Williams Studio I worked to:

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  • Better understand how multiple locations at a single university work together to serve similar functions in different ways.

  • Provide initial and ongoing consultant education with software, hardware, and multimodal rhetoric and design that meets the needs of both our clients and consultants.

  • Integrate undergraduate consultants for the first time to complement our graduate students in this space.

Coordinator for the Digital Studios

  • Fall 2014 - Summer 2015​

In my second administrative role, I took on additional responsiblities as the full coordinator for the Digital Studios at FSU. At the time of taking on this position, the Digital Studio faced potential closure and a complete lack of established practices and documentation to help sustain effective practices across years and semesters. As such, when I took on this new role, I maintained the responsibilities above and developed several new practices, including:

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  • Communicated directly with faculty and graduate students across disciplines to schedule their classes in the Digital Studio and ensure students received appropriate assistance from the staff.

  • Started an initiative to create documentation for all facets of the Digital Studio, including daily operations and policies to make the transfer of administrative responsibilities among graduate students simpler.

  • As part of that initiative, I designed dozens of documents and built a Google Drive hub for all Digital Studio materials to allow for ease of access for tutors in the space.

  • Designed, held, and conducted regular staff meetings to discuss technical, operational, or other concerns consultants had.

  • Established the Studio Service Initiative, an ongoing approach to optimizing the time consultants spend in the Digital Studio to further its goals on a semester-by-semester basis. Past Studio Service Initiatives have included: designing advertising materials for the space, creating workshop materials for working with specific software, and learning new programs.

  • Established goal-setting and reflective practices as part of ongoing consultant education and development.

  • Implemented new data gathering methods to insure the work conducted in the Digital Studio was being measured effectively and to support the design of assessment materials. 

  • Edited and maintained the Digital Studio's presence on FSU's domain through the EZADMIN platform to provide information about our consultants, hours of operation, services, and more.

  • Completed weekly reports of what I did in the space each week as an administrator, and participated in professional development activities with the Coordinator of the Reading and Writing Center and Digital Studio that built on those weekly reports.

Administrative Experience and Responsibilites

Site Coordinator for the Johnston Digital Studio

  • Fall 2012 - Spring 2013

In my first administrative role, I served as the site coordinator for the Digital Studio's secondary location, and supported the full coordinator of the Digital Studios. My responsibilities as Assistant Coorindator included:

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  • Providing consultations for FSU's students on digital multimodal compositions for 10 hours per week.

  • Developing, establishing, and maintaining the schedule for my location's consultants.

  • Teaching new consultants how to use the software and hardware available in the Digital Studio.

  • Scheduling and conducting Traveling Tutor workshops, wherein consultants provide an insructor's full class assistance with a platform, medium, or concept their students are composing in.

  • Designed and revised the Tutor Guidebook used to welcome new consultants to the Digital Studio.

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