International Writing Centers
A Sixth Birthday and a Newborn: News from Our Writing Center in Frankfurt (Oder)/Germany
This is kind of a birthday post. Six years ago, we opened the doors to our nice spacious room after I, as a PhD student, brought the idea of a writing center to my university and convinced the president that we really should have one. At this point we only had a handful of writing [...]
Now is The Writing Center Website of Our Discontent, Made Glorious Summer by This Sum of Our Work
By Christopher J. Syrnyk, Assistant Professor of Communication, and Faculty Liaison, Advance Credit Program for Communication Courses, Oregon Tech
At Oregon Tech, where I became an Assistant Professor this fall in the Communication Department, I volunteered during a recent Communication department meeting to take on the role of the department’s Web Content Manager. Volunteering [...]
Conversations Near and Far
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 [...]
New Podcast Presentations by Katrin Girgensohn
All of us at the Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are delighted to share two new podcasts from our theory and research series, featuring Katrin Girgensohn, a faculty member and Director of the Writing Center at European University Viadrina in Germany and one of the leading writing center scholars in Europe. During 2011-12, [...]
Worldwide Writing Against Procrastination. How Writing Centers Connect to Make Our Work Visible, Support Writers and Have Fun
It was in 2010 when a student in our writing center complained about her procrastination habits: “For me, you should open at night, because this is when I eventually get started and would need a writing center”. This student’s comment came up at our next team meeting, and suddenly an idea took shape: “A Long [...]
The Madison Area Writing Center Colloquium
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 [...]
Exciting Things Going on in Germany
As a visiting scholar from Germany at the UW-Madison Writing Center, I sometimes feel jealous of all the things going on here. Having a writing center with 110 people working as writing fellows, writing consultants and as leadership staff, and, even more important, experiencing how the writing center is valued here at the university, seems [...]
