By Emily Loney—When Sir Philip Sidney sent the manuscript of his prose romance, the Arcadia, to his sister, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, sometime in the 1580s, he sent a letter along as well. Apologizing for the imperfections of his tale, Sidney tells Pembroke in his letter that the Arcadia was written for her, and he reminds her […]
By Tim Cavnar—One of the many programs administered by UW-Madison’s Writing Center is called Madison Writing Assistance (MWA). MWA could be described in many different ways—a local literacy program, the Writing Center’s public outreach branch, a tutoring service. Co-founded by former Writing Center Director Brad Hughes in 1999 and offering writing tutoring out of Madison’s Goodman South Library branch, it has grown significantly since that time. Currently, MWA offers […]
By Karen Best—In August I published the first installment of this two-part series on working with multilingual or English as a second language (ESL) writers in courses all across campus. In that blog post, I confessed that I had really overshot my target word length and thus would divide the content into two separate blog posts. […]
By Aaron Vieth – This post is a reflection on one of the Writing Center’s many new initiatives this year. Beginning last summer, we have been piloting a new format for our ongoing appointments—what we are calling “writing mentorships.” It is the aim of this post to provide a bit of background on what practices these writing mentorships have grown out of, describe what writing mentorships look like, and share the trajectory of the mentorship program […]
By Jen Fandel – One of my favorite parts of my position as Writing Center Administrator is working with our undergraduate receptionist team. These are students who often come to us seeking employment early in their university careers, and, as the person who hires them, I highlight the Writing Center’s community as one of the many bright spots of the job. […]
On November 8, 2019, the UW-Madison Writing Center hosted a day packed chock-full of activities and events to celebrate its 50 years on campus. To provide a taste of the Writing Center’s evolution over time, we’ve included the slide show that Emily Hall and Nancy Linh Karls, Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum Interim Co-Directors, provided during their afternoon remarks. […]
By Mike Haen (and the Cross-Institutional Research Team) – In this post, I want to share some exciting details about a grant-funded, cross-institutional research project that a group of colleagues and I recently discussed during a session at the International Writing Centers Association Conference (IWCA). […]
By Michelle Niemann – Since 2016, I’ve been running what I think of as a one-woman writing center for faculty. I’m a “solopreneur,” one of those post-academics earning her living through a micro-business. My aim is not to grow the business or make a lot of money (why would I have gotten a PhD in English if that was ever the goal?), but to support myself by doing good work—work that institutions of higher education need done, even if they don’t always know it. […]
This academic year, the Writing Center was able to hire three new academic staff members, all of whom are recent graduates of UW-Madison’s PhD program in English. Below, we’ve asked them to respond to a series of questions with the hope that you, our readers, will be able to get to know them through their words. […]
By Bradley Hughes – In August of this year I retired from my career as Director of the Writing Center and Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I had the privilege of directing the Writing Center for 35 years (from 1984-2019) and the Program in Writing Across the Curriculum for […]
