The Writing Center - For Instructors

The Writing Center educates students on writing across the curriculum by partnering with faculty to offer tailored writing support to individual classes and their departments. Usually, this means offering classroom visits or writing workshops for their students. But this can also mean simply encouraging students yourself to visit us. You are the best advocates we have to help students see that working one-on-one with a trained peer tutor can help them grow as a writer. Below you’ll find language to include in your syllabus or assignments that can serve as a first step to these conversations.  

How can I encourage my students to visit the Writing Center?

One of the most effective ways to teach writing is to work one-on-one with students, which is exactly what our peer tutors do in writing consultations. Peer tutors are able to address the unique concerns of each student and meet them at their writing level. Appointments can be scheduled for 30 or 60 minutes, meaning tutors can dedicate considerable time to addressing individual student needs. While we always defer to you, the instructor, when it comes to course content, our tutors are trained to work alongside your students as peers, allowing students to develop confidence, ownership, and expertise. Yet, many students don’t automatically make the connection between your class and our consultation services, especially if you are teaching upper-level coursework. In your discussions about office hours or when you introduce your first writing assignments, you can help students make that connection by explaining the benefits of seeing a peer writing tutor.   

One way to start this conversation is by including a blurb like the one below in your syllabus or assignment instructions: 

• For additional writing support, visit the Writing Center in Student Success to meet one-on-one with a peer writing tutor. The mission of the Writing Center is to educate and empower students as writers. Their trained tutors are here to assist students of any major with all writing at any stage of the writing process. They will encourage you to grow as a writer by helping to develop writing strategies that work for you. The Writing Center is open for both scheduled and drop-in consultations. You can schedule an appointment on Navigate or by visiting their website.

Be specific about when it could be helpful to see a writing tutor for your assignment; this might mean encouraging students to visit the writing center to develop a topic or outline or visiting after they receive feedback from you on a complete draft. It can also be helpful to explain to students exactly what they can work on during a consultation for your class, for instance, improving analysis or checking citations. If you are especially concerned about reaching students who are struggling in your course, consider incorporating a scheduled consultation into your assignment sequence like you would a meeting with you, their instructor. We can work with you on the logistics, like creating an appointment campaign in Navigate that will provide all students with their own emailed link to schedule an appointment. 

You can always check who is visiting the writing center on Navigate, but we are happy to create reports for you with all students in your class who have visited us.  

What can I expect with a workshop?

If there are assignments in your class that would benefit from additional writing instruction or guided peer review from our peer tutors, we are happy to work with you to develop a writing workshop for your class. Typically these workshops are offered outside of class time. We will try our best to schedule this workshop a couple days before your due date. 

Before the workshop, a writing tutor will create a presentation based on your assignment and any other materials you provide. We will develop this presentation in collaboration with you, and you will have the opportunity for final review before it is presented to students. Workshops usually begin with a short presentation on a writing principle particular to your assignment followed by a practical writing exercise or peer review. 

We will take attendance and can send you a report of how many students attended along with any questions or comments we received. 

What can I expect with a class presentation? 

Class presentations are another great way to encourage your students to bring your assignments to the Writing Center. In these presentations, students will learn more about the services we offer and how to schedule an appointment–all directly from one of our peer tutors. We can tailor these presentations to your class. After the presentation, we will send an email through Navigate to each student in your class with an invitation to schedule an appointment. 

You can request a report of which students came to visit the writing center along with the feedback they received. 

How do I request a workshop, class presentation, or an appointment campaign? 

To request a workshop, please give us at least three weeks notice so we can work with you to prepare materials and reserve a space. Please let us know the class you would like a workshop for, an assignment sheet/rubric, the due date of the assignment, and any other content you would like us to cover. 

To request a class presentation, please give us at least two weeks of dates and times that would work best for you so that we can find a writing center consultant who is available.

Appointment campaigns that automate emails and reminders to schedule an appointment can be created at any point in time on Navigate, though we recommend coordinating it with assignment deadlines. While you can create these campaigns on your own, we are happy to do this for you.  

To make these requests, please contact us. We will follow-up within 48 business hours.  

Please consider recommending your students to become peer writing tutors! 

A majority of our tutors apply because a professor recommended them. We are always looking to hire students who are not only passionate about writing but also excited to help support their peers grow as writers, too. If you would like to see more writing tutors with familiarity writing in your discipline, recommend your students! We hire in the spring for the coming academic year and give preference to students who also enroll in an upper-level writing course in English. More information is available on our Meet the Team page.