A New Collaboration: Welcoming a High School Writing Center to UW-Madison


Collaborative Learning, Peer Tutoring, Uncategorized, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Mike Haen and Brenna Swift – The UW-Madison writing center, like all centers, is built on collaboration. As tutors, we collaborate during individual consultations to help writers brainstorm ideas and revise drafts. We also collaborate with faculty, instructional staff, and teaching assistants across campus through our outreach program to co-teach lessons on writing and […]

November 26, 2018

Medieval Monks Wrote in Their Books and So Can You


Tutorial Talk and Methods, Uncategorized, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Workshops

By Leah Pope Parker—We learn to write by imitating, by reading, and by thinking about the construction of texts we aim to emulate. It is commonly understood among teachers of writing that learning to write—at a more sophisticated level, in a different style, in a new genre—requires writers to read models for the kind of writing that they want to produce. This is why we […]

November 12, 2018

The Power of Open


Collaborative Learning, Higher Education, Science Writing, Social Justice Committee, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Katie Lynch – Upon graduating from UW-Madison with my Ph.D. in Literary Studies in 2010, I took a tenure-track position at Rockland Community College (RCC), one of the 64 institutions in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. My specific job description combined the teaching of writing and literature with a partial course release […]

October 22, 2018

The Benefits of a Collaboration Between a Writing Center and a Student Journal


Higher Education, Student Voices, Uncategorized, Undergraduate Students, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Centers

By Taryn Okuma – In Spring 2015 I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw that John Tiedemann (a fellow UW-Madison alum) had shared a link for WRIT Large, a student publication from the Writing Program at the University of Denver. John is a teacher whom I’ve always admired and his enthusiasm for his […]

October 15, 2018

Getting to the Roots of L2 Writer Experiences


Multilingual Writers, Peer Tutoring, Uncategorized, Writing Center Research, Writing Centers

By Molly Rentscher and Vicki Kennell – Molly Rentscher, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Fellows Program alum, was the Writing Center Coordinator at Arizona State University’s West campus while collaborating with Vicki on the research shared in this blog post. In August 2018, Molly began a new position at University of the Pacific, where she supports […]

October 8, 2018

A Writer in Pain: Notes Toward a Writing Center Ethics of Care


Disability and Writing Centers, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Uncategorized, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Amy Gaeta – As a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in English, writing center tutor and student, I love to write. Even if it was not part of my job, like many people reading this blog, the writing process is where I continue to find myself. During my past two years of working in the writing […]

October 1, 2018

Writing with Custodians: Community Writing Center Work within the University


Community Writing Assistance, Events, Higher Education, Multilingual Writers, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Calley Marotta – How can a university-sponsored community writing center serve those whom the university does not reach? This is a question community writing centers consistently try to answer by designing writing support for those who live and work beyond the university’s walls (Rousculp 2014).(1) By doing so, they seek to bridge a gap […]

September 17, 2018

Venn and the Art of Writing Instruction


Collaborative Learning, Higher Education, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Uncategorized, Undergraduate Students, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Center History, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Shifra Sharlin – Shifra Sharlin has been a Senior Lecturer at Yale University in the Department of English since 2013. In 2007, she received her Ph.D. in the Composition-Rhetoric Program from UW-Madison where she worked in the Writing Center. She has also taught at UC-Berkeley, the Wisconsin English as a Second Language Institute, UW-Madison’s […]

September 10, 2018

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