Category: Higher Education

Virtues of Conversation: Ethics in the Writing Center

Collaborative Learning, Higher Education, Peer Tutoring, Tutorial Talk and Methods, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Center Theory, Writing Centers, Writing Fellows

By John Duffy—Most people who have taught in a writing center, or who have given the work any serious thought, are usually skilled in explaining what a writing center is not. That is, those of us charged with helping students, faculty, or the occasional inquiring dean understand writing center teaching often begin with negative definitions, listing the various things that a writing center isn’t and specifying those actions that writing center tutors don’t undertake. And so, we may say […]

October 8, 2012

Now is The Writing Center Website of Our Discontent, Made Glorious Summer by This Sum of Our Work

Awards and Honors, Big 10 Writing Centers, Classes, Collaborative Learning, Community Writing Assistance, Disability and Writing Centers, Events, From the Director, Graduate Students, Higher Education, International Writing Centers, The Online Writing Center, Uncategorized

By Christopher J. Syrnyk, Assistant Professor of Communication, and Faculty Liaison, Advance Credit Program for Communication Courses, Oregon Tech At Oregon Tech, where I became an Assistant Professor this fall in the Communication Department, I volunteered during a recent Communication department meeting to take on the role of the department’s Web Content Manager. Volunteering for […]

October 1, 2012

Conversations Near and Far

Higher Education, International Writing Centers, IWCA, Peer Tutoring, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Center Research, Writing Centers

I’ve considered myself a “writing center person” for over twenty years now, ever since I anxiously took my first college paper to my undergraduate writing center and left with a few concrete ideas for revision and the sense that I might actually be able to do the whole college thing. I eventually became a writing […]

September 24, 2012

Writing Across the Curriculum’s Head Start

Events, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Science Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Centers

Every semester, our Writing Across the Curriculum program gets a head start. The week before classes have even begun, we have the privilege of spending two mornings training up to 75 new Teaching Assistants. These TAs will be teaching writing-intensive courses across the disciplines—courses that fulfill an intermediate communication requirement for undergraduates. In our UW-Madison […]

September 17, 2012

Our Writing Center’s Founder: Professor Joyce Steward

Collaborative Learning, From the Director, Higher Education, Outreach, UW-Madison History, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center History, Writing Center Workshops, Writing Centers

By Brad Hughes, Director, The Writing Center, Director, Writing Across the Curriculum, UW-Madison. In this blog post, I would like to honor the legendary founder of the Writing Center (originally called the Writing Laboratory) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the most influential pioneers in the modern writing center profession—Professor Joyce Stribling Steward. […]

September 10, 2012

Writing Across the Curriculum in Madison’s Summer Sun

From the Director, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Outreach, Science Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Research, Writing Centers

During the searing heat and drought that the summer of 2012 has brought to the upper midwest, our Writing-Across-the-Curriculum (WAC) program has been busy (inside comfortably air-conditioned buildings) partnering with faculty and other instructors across our campus in exciting new collaborations.  At the same time, our summer writing center has been hopping with lots of […]

July 30, 2012

New Podcast Presentations by Katrin Girgensohn

Collaborative Learning, From the Director, Higher Education, International Writing Centers, Madison Area Writing Center Colloquium, Peer Tutoring, Podcasts, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Research, Writing Centers

All of us at the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are delighted to share two new podcasts from our theory and research series, featuring Katrin Girgensohn, a faculty member and Director of the Writing Center at European University Viadrina in Germany and one of the leading writing center scholars in Europe. During 2011-12, […]

June 21, 2012

“Very Heaven”

Collaborative Learning, Higher Education, Peer Tutoring, Technology, Tutorial Talk and Methods, UW-Madison History, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Center Theory, Writing Centers

By Dennis Paoli, Coordinator of the Reading/Writing Center and Co-coordinator of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program at Hunter College, City University of New York. He also writes plays and films and is Donor/Adviser of The Heidi Paoli Fund for cancer patients. He met Heidi in Madison. Hi. Dennis Paoli, University of Wisconsin Class of […]

April 9, 2012

Starting a slow-writing movement

Collaborative Learning, From the Director, Higher Education, Peer Tutoring, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

As we launched a new semester in our writing center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison this past week, I loved listening to the lively buzz in our center emanating from conversations about writing projects.  And as I eavesdropped, I was reminded of how much I value slow, detailed, substantial conversations about writing in progress. Our […]

January 24, 2011