By Christopher Syrnyk The physical embodiment treatment . . . When writers come through the doors of the Main Writing Center (WC) at UW-Madison, it’s worth considering how we instructors can process many bits of information about them. Before we meet, we’ve typically reviewed instructor records to prepare us for the session in the here […]
By Paula Gillespie. South Florida is full of surprises. A troop of macaws, probably freed from a zoo or pet store during a hurricane, descends into the trees down the street and spends the morning there, squabbling about which one gets to sit where. Burmese pythons, once pets that are now too large to keep […]
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has a long and distinguished history of public service. The guiding philosophy of this commitment to public service, called the “Wisconsin Idea,” is often described as “the boundaries of the university are the boundaries of the state.” Since I have a scholarly interest in the Wisconsin Idea, I’ve been thinking about […]
Jointly offered as a partnership between the Graduate School and the Writing Center, UW-Madison’s Dissertation Boot Camp is based on dissertation camps offered at such institutions as Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota, and Florida International University. (A special thanks to colleagues at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill […]
By David Aitchison. Hear David read this blog post with his wonderful accent. A few weeks ago, I had an appointment in our Main Writing Center with a sophomore, Amanda, who was working on her application essays for the Business School. With just a thirty-minute slot to look at three 250-word essays we had little […]
By Manuel Herrero-Puertas. In an increasingly globalized world, more students start their papers with the phrase “In an increasingly globalized world. . . .” Stale as this formula sounds, the truth is that globalization leaves no landscape unaltered. Consider academia. More than ever, universities provide international avenues where scholars from different countries meet and exchange […]
By John Stafford Anderson. Saturday, at a party we had celebrating her upcoming dissertation defense, a friend of mine tearfully took me aside. She wanted to know if I would be available next week to help her with some writing points on her dissertation. Of course, I agreed to help, but I wanted to know […]
By Rebecca Lorimer. Are college students today academically adrift? Perhaps this question might make more sense if I had typed the last word in all caps or added a prolonged shriek sound effect after the question mark. You are correct if you feel an implied “yes” in the question and a not-so-implied eye-roll in my […]
By Melissa Tedrowe This past Friday, April 8, I attended a UW system-wide conference about supporting the academic success of “at-risk” students — most commonly, students who are the first in their families to attend college; students returning to college at a “non-traditional” age; students from low-income backgrounds; and students from groups historically underrepresented in […]
This week my shift at the writing center will be bitter sweet. I’m finishing my work on two dissertations and a master’s thesis. In my work at the writing center, I’m a bit of a graduate student junkie. In fact I probably spend way too much writing center time with graduate students and not nearly […]
