By Laura Plummer Laura Plummer directs Indiana University’s Campus Writing Program, a WAC program that administers the writing center. She is a part of the Big Ten Writing Center/Program Directors’ group that includes UW-Madison, and which meets annually to hobnob about running writing centers at big research institutions. The Vagaries of General Advice “OK, Let […]
By Emily Hall At a large university we are regularly exposed to the original and sometimes groundbreaking research that takes place across campus. Mostly, this research comes from the work of professors and graduate students, many of whom have grants, research funds, and laboratories to support their endeavors. Less frequently do we have the opportunity to […]
By Jenna Mertz Jenna Mertz served as a peer writing tutor in UW-Madison’s Writing Fellows Program for eight semesters before she, regrettably, had to graduate in May of 2014. She is currently a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Ås, Norway. According to Jack Kerouac and pithy coffee mugs everywhere, writing and traveling are romantic […]
By Sarah Greenfield Sarah Greenfield is the Interim Associate Director of the UW-Madison Writing Center, a role she took on after working as an instructor at the Writing Center for four years. This year, she has enjoyed supporting graduate tutors, organizing and running workshops, meeting with student writers, and developing new programs such as the […]
By Chris Earle, Kevin Mullen, Rebecca Couch Steffy, and Nancy Linh Karls Chris Earle is a Ph.D. candidate in Composition and Rhetoric at UW-Madison, where he also serves as the Assistant Director of the Writing Center. Kevin Mullen completed his doctorate in Literary Studies at UW-Madison and currently teaches writing with the UW Odyssey Project. Rebecca Couch Steffy […]
By Greg Smith Greg Smith, assistant dean emeritus, had been the director of the First-Year Interest Groups (FIGs) program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2002 until his recent retirement at the end of December 2014. Prior to coming to UW-Madison, his work at other institutions included being an assistant professor of English, a registrar, […]
By Rebecca Lorimer Leonard Rebecca Lorimer Leonard is an assistant professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a former UW-Madison Writing Center tutor and Assistant Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. You can read about her work at http://blogs.umass.edu/rlorimer/. In late November, CNN aired Ivory Tower, […]
By Elisabeth Miller—Each semester during Welcome Week, the Writing Across the Curriculum program at UW-Madison runs a two-day training for new teaching assistants in Communication-B (Comm-B) courses. Comm-B courses are writing-intensive, exposing students to conventions of writing in disciplines from anthropology to biology to journalism to psychology. The training, with 70 TAs every fall and 40 every spring, is energetic and packed with advice preparing TAs to conference with student writers […]
By Mackenzie McDermit and Kevin Mullen Mackenzie McDermit is a recent alumna of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she participated in the university’s Writing Fellows program. She spent a humbling and inspiring semester researching writing pedagogy in the Odyssey Project and has been hooked ever since. This is her first year as a tutor for […]
