Tarez Samra Graban, assistant professor of English, and her co-authors have received the WPA 2013 Best Book Award for GenAdmin: Theorizing WPA Identities in the Twenty-First Century (Parlor Press, 2011). According to the Council of Writing Program Administrators, "This award recognizes books whose authors or editors have made an outstanding contribution to the field of writing program administration over the past two calendar years." This book was co-authored with Colin Charlton, Jonikka Charlton, Kathleen J. Ryan, and Amy Ferdinandt Stolley.

According to Dr. Graban, "GenAdmin talks theoretically about the history and nature of writing program administration, with the goal of dispelling some of the negative and negating narratives surrounding the field. Rather than understand writing program administration as simply a job we have to do that emerges from difficult situations by victimized faculty, Graban and her co-authors rewrote what they saw as an intellectual history of the field based on their own preparation as theorists, historians, and practitioners while in graduate school. Ultimately they began to see this work as socially and politically contextualized given writing programs' place as hubs of intellectual activity since the American University has evolved. The book presents a generational moment in rhetoric and writing studies that shows how it is possible--and necessary--to redefine the field based on creative dissensus when larger questions about the university are still unresolved. Graban and her co-authors wanted their book to present the 'writing program administrator' not just as a role, but as a philosophy to take into other parts of the university."