Category: UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices

The Craft of Science Writing: Introducing a Resource for Writers, Instructors, and Tutors

Tutor Publications, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices

By Siri Carpenter—My path to becoming a professional writer was a wayward one. Toward the end of my undergraduate career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I was a psychology major in the early 1990s, I had the sudden inspiration that I wanted to be a writer. But when a friend asked me a perfectly reasonable question—“What do you want to write about?”—I was stumped. I stammered that I figured I’d write about . . . uh . . . whatever seemed interesting, and that . . . hrmmm . . . I was especially interested in science. […]

October 13, 2020

Mutual Empowerment In and Beyond the Writing Center

Higher Education, Uncategorized, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Centers

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. […]

October 21, 2019

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

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

Waterloo Journal: Building WAC Support Where There Is No WAC

International Writing Centers, Uncategorized, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Stephanie White – I’ve been reading Adam Gopnik’s ageless Paris to the Moon off and on over the last year, savouring it in small portions like a bottle of good Scotch. Gopnik’s descriptions of life in Paris for a non-Parisian family, originally published as a series of New Yorker essays called “Paris Journals,” are warm […]

March 6, 2017

Outreach By Design

Disability and Writing Centers, Higher Education, Outreach, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Uncategorized, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices

By Rachel Herzl-Betz Rachel Herzl-Betz is the T.A. Coordinator of Outreach for the Writing Center at UW-Madison, where she has been a tutor since 2012. She is also a PhD candidate in Literary Studies, with a focus on Victorian Literature, Disability Studies, and Rhetoric. This August, when I began my work as the Outreach Coordinator […]

September 22, 2014

International Writing Centers and Environmental Humanities

Community Writing Assistance, International Writing Centers, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Rob Emmett Writing centers can launch lives in new directions, across continents and oceans. The years I spent working at the Writing Center while in graduate school in Madison certainly set me on a path to my current work at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) in Munich, Germany. The RCC […]

February 3, 2014

Understanding Student Perceptions of the Writing Center–A Conversation Between a Student, a Writing Center Instructor, and a Director/Professor

Collaborative Learning, Outreach, Peer Tutoring, Student Voices, Undergraduate Students, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Theory, Writing Centers

By Taryn Okuma, The Catholic University of America. Taryn Okuma is Director of the Writing Center and Clinical Assistant Professor of English at The Catholic University of America (CUA) in Washington, D.C. She received her Ph.D. in Literary Studies from UW-Madison in 2008. While at Madison, she served as the Co-Director of the English 100 […]

April 29, 2013

In Praise of Quiet

Big 10 Writing Centers, Collaborative Learning, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Student Voices, Tutorial Talk and Methods, UW-Madison Writing Center Alumni Voices, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Mitch Nakaue, The University of Iowa. As a deeply introverted person, I’ve always been interested in the power of writing center work to incite talk.  As a graduate student at UW–Madison, I learned to cultivate an expressive and even outgoing classroom teaching persona, but found myself much less drained by one-to-one discussions with students.  […]

April 8, 2013