By Jen Finstrom and Matthew Fledderjohann – Jen Finstrom and Matthew Fledderjohann served together as graduate assistants and then professional staff at DePaul University’s University Center for Writing-based Learning (UCWbL) for four years. During that time, Jen began in her capacity as a facilitator for Writers Guild—the UCWbL’s creative writers’ writing group—and Matthew was a […]
By Leah Pope Parker—Conversations about evidence in writing center pedagogy traditionally focus on the genre of the research paper, where evidence includes the ideas, data, and quotations located through research that must be incorporated effectively into the prose of the paper. However, if we think about evidence more broadly within writing center teaching, as any aspect of writing that claims the authority of truth or expertise […]
By Bradley Hughes—The staff of the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison warmly welcomes you to our blog for a new academic year! As in many other parts of the US, on August 21st eclipse fever touched many of us here in Madison, Wisconsin. In southern Wisconsin, the eclipse was, alas, not total—just about 85%. Even though it was cloudy that day in Madison, I joined a number of colleagues who had spontaneously gathered at the peak, […]
By Bradley Hughes – It’s graduation and award time, and the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is delighted to honor two of our wonderful tutor colleagues, who are the recipients of our first annual teaching awards for graduate teaching assistants on our Writing Center staff. Every semester there are between 45 and 50 […]
By Hyonbin Choi with Dipo Oyeleye, Zach Marshall, Calley Marrota, Leigh Elion, Minhee Kim, and Elisa Findlay—We often discuss diversity and inclusiveness in relation to students who visit the writing center, but diversity and multiplicity on the instructors’ side are also topics that should not be neglected.
By Margaret Mika and Daniel Harrigan – The end of the semester—and graduation—is in sight, which means job hunting and job hiring may lie directly ahead. Some writing center directors may be re-filling an established professional assistant’s position or hiring a full-time assistant for the first time. Meanwhile, experienced tutors may be eyeing job ads […]
By Adedoyin Ogunfeyimi – What If . . . ? What if we also begin to think about the writing center as a storycenter, a place where student-writers come, meet, and share their stories? What if we begin to think about the work that we do in the writing center as storytelling, a way of encountering […]
Edited by Annika Konrad with contributions by Emily Hall, Laura Strickland, Mike Passint, and Julia Boles – “I learned that writing doesn’t need to feel like a near-death experience. I’ve come to actually enjoy it more. By workshopping a vast diversity of papers, I’ve acquired new skills that help me better isolate issues within my own writing.”
By Matthew Capdevielle – Standing in front of the tutor photo board in the Writing Center, I marvel at the collage of faces, the collection of extraordinary—truly special—people we have working in the Writing Center at Notre Dame. Each and every one of these tutors has surprised me in the most wonderful ways with their […]
By Sarah Dimick – Last winter, during a late afternoon appointment, a graduate student in the history department asked me how he might make the final chapter of his dissertation more compelling.1 We’d already discussed what I think of as skeletal concerns: the order of his paragraphs, the clarity of his topic sentences. We’d already […]
