Our Services

We are constantly trying to increase the quantity and quality of services that extend to the campus. Currently, we have three distinct services:

Tutoring

We offer a peer tutoring service (tutors who are also students, as opposed to faculty tutors) for individuals or small groups by appointment or on a walk-in basis. Appointments are highly recommended but not required. Our tutoring appointments are one half-hour unless arranged differently with the tutor in advance. We will help with any kind of writing at any stage in the writing process. Our tutors work primarily through discussion about writing, so it is therefore most helpful for the writer if you come to the tutoring session with questions or thoughts about what you are currently working on. Our tutors can then work with those questions and any drafts that are brought in.

Workshops

We offer workshops on a variety of topics throughout the term. All workshops are limited to ten spaces only and, unless noted otherwise, are held in the workshop room in the Tutoring Center on the 1st floor of the new Learning Resource Center (LRC) building. Students must sign up for workshops in advance at the front desk in the Tutoring Center. Instructors wishing to set up a custom workshop for their classes should contact Jonathan Townsend, Writing Center Coordinator.

Resources and Directed Learning Activities

Our resources have two intended functions: 1) to serve writers looking for supplemental help on a certain topic, but who may not be able to or want to sit down for a tutorial session. 2) to serve faculty and their students by having all resources in our collection have a stated goal, activity, and review process by a tutor so that students who need help with a specific skill or concept can access the corresponding resource from campus or from home via our website, complete the activity at their leisure, and then, if their instructor requires it, visit a tutor to verify that the activity has been satisfactorily completed and provide proof of this to the student.

A student who, for example, has a difficult time identifying or correcting comma splices in her own writing can either send herself or be sent by her instructor to the Writing Center’s website and the directed activity (an activity with a lesson and directions on how to complete it) on comma splices, complete it at her leisure (from home, if she wishes), and then visit the Writing Center to sit down with a tutor and have that tutor verify that the activity has been completed correctly. Then she can take the receipt from that tutorial session back to her instructor to verify that she has learned how to identify and correct comma splices in her own writing.