By Eli Goldlbatt, Temple University. Eli Goldblatt graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990 and taught at Villanova University from that year until he moved to Temple University in 1996. He is currently professor of English and Director of First Year Writing at Temple. He was faculty co-director of the Writing Center at Temple […]
By Lauren Vedal. Lauren Vedal was a tutor at the UW-Madison Writing Center from 2004-2009. She is now the Writing Specialist in the Humanities at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where she provides one-on-one writing consultations for students and support for faculty who want to better incorporate writing instruction into their courses. Shame and Writing […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
By Matthew Capdevielle, Director of the Writing Center, University of Notre Dame “So, what are you working on today?” “When is your paper due?” “Are you concerned about anything in particular in this draft?” In the writing center that I direct at the University of Notre Dame, we spend a good deal of time asking […]
By David Charbonneau, Director, Writing Center, Mt. San Antonio College. When I first came to my current position at Mt. San Antonio College, the largest single-campus community college in California, my experience in Writing Centers had been entirely in the four-year context, both at UW-Madison as a graduate assistant and then at a four […]
I’ve long argued that writing centers at research universities should prepare interested doctoral students to lead strong, innovative writing centers and WAC programs when they move into their faculty careers. And that we should do this in systematic and sustained ways. Being a dedicated, successful, experienced writing tutor is of course a necessary part of […]
This semester, I’ve been thinking a lot about revision. Well, okay, I always think a lot about revision; it’s essential to my writing center work, my classroom teaching, and my own writing (I am the queen of Shitty First Drafts, as described in the second chapter of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird). But lately I’ve […]
