Category: Graduate Students

Writing Mentorships: An Experiment in Formalization

Graduate Students

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 […]

December 17, 2019

A Valediction

Big 10 Writing Centers, Collaborative Learning, Events, From the Director, Graduate Students, Higher Education, International Writing Centers, IWCA, Peer Tutoring, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center History, Writing Centers, Writing Fellows

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 […]

September 23, 2019

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts

Community Writing Assistance, Events, From the Director, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Outreach, Peer Tutoring, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Center Workshops

By Emily Hall and Nancy Linh Karls –

There’s a slight chill in the air. An enormous sea of red streams across University Avenue. The beat of “Jump Around” reverberates through the air. The signs are clear: school is back in session at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. […]

September 9, 2019
An aerial photo of the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A New WAC Faculty Sourcebook for a New Academic Year

Events, From the Director, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Science Writing, Uncategorized, Undergraduate Students, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Bradley Hughes – Greetings from a new academic year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center! We had a very busy and productive summer of 2018. The Writing Center was open for 12 weeks this summer, offering consultations, workshops, and writing groups for hundreds of undergraduate- and graduate-student writers. The summer center was staffed […]

September 3, 2018

Challenging Ableism and Institutional Barriers Through Writing Center Work

Disability and Writing Centers, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Peer Tutoring, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Uncategorized, Undergraduate Students, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Brenna Swift – Imagine for a moment that you’re trying to reach an educational goal, one you’ve had your sights on for as long as you can remember. As you move closer to the goal, you encounter barrier after barrier along the way. School culture at large, including some of your instructors, tells you […]

April 23, 2018

More Than Words: A Collaborative Approach to Writing Instruction in a Graduate Science Seminar

Graduate Students, Outreach, Science Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Nancy Linh Karls – With 2016 soon drawing to a close, many of us have been reflecting on what we’ve been able to accomplish over the past year. For staff in the UW-Madison Writing Center, that’s a pretty significant list: meeting with thousands of student-writers in one-to-one sessions at our main location and across our […]

December 12, 2016

Which Shoes Should You Choose? A Meditation on Indecisiveness in Writing

Graduate Students, Higher Education, Peer Tutoring, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Undergraduate Students

By Zach Marshall It has recently come to my attention that I don’t know what to do when I work with writers who experience a certain kind of writing anxiety.  As a writing tutor, part of my job is to provide motivational scaffolding to the writers I work with—encouraging them when they make progress, recognizing […]

April 4, 2016
A photo of a grey bird, a cockatiel named Petey, with her beak tucked into her back feathers, sitting in front of a laptop. On the screen of the laptop is a draft of this blog post.

How We [Actually] Write: Neurodiversity, Writing Process, and Writing Instruction

Disability and Writing Centers, Graduate Students, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Writing Center Tutors

By Leah Pope Leah Pope has been a Writing Center tutor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since fall of 2014. She is also a PhD candidate in English literary studies, writing a dissertation that explores representations of disability and bodily difference in Anglo-Saxon England. Alexandra Gillespie opens her essay in How We Write: Thirteen Ways […]

January 25, 2016

Teaming Up: A Collaboration between the Writing Center and the Library

Collaborative Learning, Graduate Students, Science Writing, Writing Center Workshops

By Nancy Linh Karls and Barbara Sisolak Nancy Linh Karls is a senior instructor in the UW-Madison Writing Center, where she serves as its science-writing specialist. She also leads and teaches the Mellon-Wisconsin Dissertation Writing Camps and coordinates the community-based Madison Writing Assistance program. Barbara Sisolak is a senior academic librarian with Steenbock Library, where she […]

January 19, 2016