Category: Writing Center Workshops

Reflecting on a Virtual Semester

Collaborative Learning, Community Writing Assistance, Diversity and Inclusion, Events, Higher Education, Madison Writing Assistance, Outreach, Peer Tutoring, Social Justice, Writing Center Workshops, Writing Fellows, Writing Groups

From Chrissy Widmayer—Looking back on the Writing Center’s Fall 2020 semester, I am awed by all that we have been able to do. Alongside our students, we grappled every day with new challenges posed by the pandemic, adapting to an entirely online slate of services this semester, and sought to maintain the high level of professionalism we always offer. I am grateful for the patience our students have shown as we’ve adjusted to our new methods of teaching and so pleased with the reciprocal culture of care the Writing Center has fostered this semester. […]

December 15, 2020

Introducing the Writing Center’s New Academic Staff Members

Community Writing Assistance, Disability and Writing Centers, Outreach, Staff Introductions, Uncategorized, Writing Center Academic Staff, Writing Center Staff, Writing Center Workshops

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. […]

October 7, 2019

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts

Community Writing Assistance, Events, From the Director, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Outreach, Peer Tutoring, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Center Workshops

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. […]

September 9, 2019

Conversation Starter: Social Media and the Writing Center

Big 10 Writing Centers, Community Writing Assistance, Events, Higher Education, International Writing Centers, Outreach, Social Justice Committee, The Online Writing Center, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Receptionists, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Center Workshops, Writing Centers, Writing Fellows

By Jennifer Fandel—I have two words of advice on using social media in the Writing Center—embrace it!

And, to be absolutely honest and establish my hard-won credibility on the subject, let me say that I’m, personally, no social media devotee. But I have seen what social media can do, and […]

December 12, 2018
A drawing of a dragon in the lower margin of Hatton 76, fol. 126v. The dragon is penned in a pale grey ink, with its head toward the outer margin to the left, with a long neck and curling tail.

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
book covers of recent publications on reading in higher ed

Reading in the Writing Center, Beyond the One-on-One Session

Higher Education, Technology, Tutorial Talk and Methods, Uncategorized, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Center Workshops

By Angela J. Zito – With recent publications like the NCTE’s Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom (2018), What is College Reading? of the WAC Clearing House (2017), and Indiana UP’s Critical Reading in Higher Education (2015), it seems that reading in colleges and universities is gaining a good deal of new critical […]

February 20, 2018

Chasing after an Emerging Genre: Creating a Writing Center Workshop on Diversity Statements

Technology, Writing Center Workshops

By Antonio Byrd—As this academic year’s assistant director for the UW-Madison Writing Center, I teach a few sections out of more than 70 sections of free non-credit workshops in academic writing for undergraduate and graduate students. The Writing Center has offered these workshops since its inception in 1969, and I’m proud to have contributed to this stellar history by creating a new workshop this year simply called “Writing Diversity Statements for the Academic Job Market.” […]

November 6, 2017
The plaque on Bascom Hall that reads “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state university of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”

Writing with Evidence in the Age of Alternative Facts

Collaborative Learning, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Workshops, Writing Centers

By Leah Pope Parker—Conversations about evidence in writing center pedagogy traditionally focus on the genre of the research paper, where evidence includes the ideas, data, and quotations located through research that must be incorporated effectively into the prose of the paper. However, if we think about evidence more broadly within writing center teaching, as any aspect of writing that claims the authority of truth or expertise […]

September 11, 2017
A map of the UW-Madison campus, with blue stars showing locations of Writing Center satellite locations and many more red stars showing locations of Outreach events. The red stars are clustered around academic buildings on the east side of campus, with a significant separate cluster at the Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine and Public Health on the west side of campus.

The Impact of Writing Center Outreach: Empirical and Anecdotal Evidence

Classes, Collaborative Learning, Outreach, Satellite Locations, The Online Writing Center, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Workshops

By Leah Pope—Every semester, the Outreach team of the UW-Madison Writing Center devotes dozens of hours to visiting classrooms, workshops, resource fairs, and student organizations to deliver brief introductions to the Writing Center’s services and teach or co-teach workshops on various genres and aspects of writing. As the TA Coordinator of Outreach this year, I have the unique pleasure of a bird’s-eye-view of Outreach teaching […]

November 7, 2016

Teaming Up: A Collaboration between the Writing Center and the Library

Collaborative Learning, Graduate Students, Science Writing, Writing Center Workshops

By Nancy Linh Karls and Barbara Sisolak Nancy Linh Karls is a senior instructor in the UW-Madison Writing Center, where she serves as its science-writing specialist. She also leads and teaches the Mellon-Wisconsin Dissertation Writing Camps and coordinates the community-based Madison Writing Assistance program. Barbara Sisolak is a senior academic librarian with Steenbock Library, where she […]

January 19, 2016