By Gabrielle Isabel Kelenyi and Seth Umbaugh—This fall, the Writing Center offered an ongoing education group (OGE) about being an ally versus a co-conspirator in an antiracist writing center, which was co-facilitated by the TA Assistant Director of the Writing Center, Seth Umbaugh, and the TA Coordinator of Multicultural and Social Justice Initiatives, Gabrielle Kelenyi. We assembled […]
By Dorothy Mayne—Writing groups have many benefits and purposes, but the community they bring to the culture of writing on campus is one of their most praised features. In fact, it’s the first purpose that we mention on our writing group website: “At the Writing Center, we believe that community and accountability, along with setting achievable goals, play a significant role in completing major writing projects.” Meeting regularly with the same people to set goals, discuss weekly themes related to wellness, writing strategies, and more allows us to develop camaraderie with others across campus.
By Emily Hall—Graduate students and academic staff members from UW-Madison’s Writing Center, Writing Fellows program, and Writing Across the Curriculum regularly contribute to scholarly research in the fields of writing studies, writing center studies, writing and community literacy, computers and writing, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and more. Over the summer and through the fall, we have had a remarkable […]
Another Word is currently seeking proposals for blog posts. We seek proposals from writing center administrators, professional staff, undergraduate and graduate tutors, and those invested in writing center studies on a broad range of topics related to administering, tutoring, training, and working in the writing center.
By Ellen Cecil-Lemkin—Last week was the inaugural Online Writing Centers Association’s (OWCA) conference. OWCA is a new professional association (founded in 2020) with the mission of providing support to online writing centers, their professionals, and area of study. Starting off their first annual conference, OWCA’s call for proposals (CFP) invited presenters to consider a theme of interdependence […]
By Emily Hall and Nancy Linh Karls—Greetings from a new fall semester! As summer edges its way into fall, we find ourselves returning: not just the return that comes with the cycle of a new academic year but also a return to campus life that continued moving while its physical spaces seemed to remain suspended in time. […]
The Writing Center at UW-Madison is pleased to announce a return to in-person appointments this fall! We’ll be offering these in our main Writing Center and in our eight satellite locations across campus. Our main center opens on Wednesday, September 8, while satellite locations start up in week four of the semester, on Sunday, September […]
By Kyle Smith—This spring, Madison Writing Assistance (MWA)—represented by Associate Director Angela Zito, Assistant Director Weishun Lu, and myself, an MWA instructor—asked members of the Madison community to tell us about their relationship with writing. As the community-outreach arm of the UW-Madison Writing Center, MWA works with anyone in the Madison area who has a writing project they want to develop or improve. MWA’s patrons work with us on projects ranging from […]
By the Writing Center Leadership Team TA Award Committee—For the past five years, the Writing Center has celebrated our excellent instructors by honoring selected students with teaching awards. Each semester, we have between 45 and 50 doctoral-level teaching assistants who work with our students in one-to-one writing instruction, provide outreach across campus, lead workshops, and more. To select our award winners, we invite our teaching assistants to nominate their colleagues or themselves for these awards. Nominees are invited to apply by submitting […]
By Ellen Cecil-Lemkin and Lisa Marvel Johnson—As several scholars have already pointed out (Dembsey; Hitt; Kiedaisch and Dinitz to name a few), historically, the scholarship on disability in the writing center is… not great (to put it lightly). It’s seeped in ableism by positioning disabled writers as “other” and problems that need to be solved. This framing leads to positioning disabled students “as so radically different from other students that they are beyond help—that they require too much time, resources, or special knowledge” (Hitt). This perspective, however, goes beyond ableism that occurs on an individual level. […]
