By Rick Ness – I’ll start this essay with some “fun” facts: Charles Darwin was an ordinary student whose father told him he wouldn’t amount to anything; John Stuart Mill was thought by his father to be of mediocre intelligence; Tolstoy was considered very dull, William James unexceptional. Michael Jordan was cut from his high […]
By Niccole Carner – When I began working at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Center this past fall (2017), I was in the midst of my first play-through of Persona 5, a Japanese role-playing game developed by Atlus Games for the PlayStation 4. My approach to the first weeks of teaching was subtly and inadvertently […]
By Ishita Aghi and Erika Gallagher – At UW-Madison, the Undergraduate Writing Fellows program is composed of 50 students who assist other undergraduates with academic writing in courses across the College of Letters & Science. Fellows are undergraduate tutors from a variety of disciplines who possess a passion for helping others. They undergo extensive training […]
By Antonio A. Byrd – As this academic year’s assistant director for the UW-Madison Writing Center, I teach a few sections out of more than 70 sections of free non-credit workshops in academic writing for undergraduate and graduate students. The Writing Center has offered these workshops since its inception in 1969, and I’m proud to […]
By Angela J. Zito – Last week, the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network held its annual conference in Montreal, Quebec, where the keynote speaker Randy Bass called upon all of us in attendance (and the programs and institutions we represented) to help steer higher education in the direction of increasingly inclusive and integrated learning […]
By Christa Tiernan and Kelly Wenig – The recent upsurge in international student enrollment in American public research universities has prompted us to think about the adaptability of writing centers during periods of changing university demographics. How do writing centers respond to enrollment trends? Let there be no mistake: the demographics of American public […]
By Michael LeMahieu – In the summer of 2011, I found myself in an unexpected position. I had just accepted an offer from the college dean to serve as Director of the Pearce Center for Professional Communication. This, some of my most trusted colleagues told me, was a mistake. Professional communication wasn’t my field. I […]
By Tori Thompson Peters – Last year, I had several appointments with an advanced writer named Linda Park who was working on an article for publication about language and cultural barriers in our healthcare system. As we were discussing the project, Linda explained to me that even though she was studying communication between doctors and patients […]
By Neil Simpkins – During my sophomore year of college, I was starting my gender transition, coming out to my friends and family about my disability, and taking a class about disability studies and personal memoir. In that class, we read Eli Clare’s Exile and Pride, Harriet McBryde Johnson’s Too Late to Die Young, and Meri […]
By Erica Kanesaka Kalnay – “I am not a painter, I am a poet. Why? I think I would rather be a painter, but I am not…” — Frank O’Hara In “Why I Am Not a Painter,” a famous ekphrastic poem by Frank O’Hara, the poet recalls drinking a few beers with the expressionist painter […]
