By Nancy Linh Karls and Emily Hall—The last two weeks have been tumultuous on many fronts, for our students, tutors, and staff at the UW-Madison Writing Center and at other writing centers around the country. We write this brief post to let you know of the decisions that we’ve made to adapt our writing center to the array of current challenges Our response, of course, may shift going forward, but this is our starting point for continued instruction this spring . . .
By Amanda Pratt—As graduate students who work in writing centers, we tend to juggle many responsibilities. Our coursework, our dissertation research, our other jobs—the classes we teach, the professors we are tasked with supporting, the programs we run. Our families and personal lives. Oftentimes, and especially for neurodiverse and otherwise marginalized graduate students, this balancing act compounds the unseen emotional and psychic labor of existing in the academy […]
By Tim Cavnar—One of the many programs administered by UW-Madison’s Writing Center is called Madison Writing Assistance (MWA). MWA could be described in many different ways—a local literacy program, the Writing Center’s public outreach branch, a tutoring service. Co-founded by former Writing Center Director Brad Hughes in 1999 and offering writing tutoring out of Madison’s Goodman South Library branch, it has grown significantly since that time. Currently, MWA offers […]
On November 8, 2019, the UW-Madison Writing Center hosted a day packed chock-full of activities and events to celebrate its 50 years on campus. To provide a taste of the Writing Center’s evolution over time, we’ve included the slide show that Emily Hall and Nancy Linh Karls, Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum Interim Co-Directors, provided during their afternoon remarks. […]
By Michelle Niemann – Since 2016, I’ve been running what I think of as a one-woman writing center for faculty. I’m a “solopreneur,” one of those post-academics earning her living through a micro-business. My aim is not to grow the business or make a lot of money (why would I have gotten a PhD in English if that was ever the goal?), but to support myself by doing good work—work that institutions of higher education need done, even if they don’t always know it. […]
This academic year, the Writing Center was able to hire three new academic staff members, all of whom are recent graduates of UW-Madison’s PhD program in English. Below, we’ve asked them to respond to a series of questions with the hope that you, our readers, will be able to get to know them through their words. […]
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 […]
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. […]
By Elisa Findlay
By Karen Best – If you want to spend twenty minutes as the life of the party in a group of academics, tell them you train faculty and staff to better meet the needs of ESL students taking their classes. I’ve worked in the field of English language education for almost 15 years, but it […]
