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

The Power of Open


Collaborative Learning, Higher Education, Science Writing, Social Justice Committee, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Katie Lynch – Upon graduating from UW-Madison with my Ph.D. in Literary Studies in 2010, I took a tenure-track position at Rockland Community College (RCC), one of the 64 institutions in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. My specific job description combined the teaching of writing and literature with a partial course release […]

October 22, 2018

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

Writing with Custodians: Community Writing Center Work within the University


Community Writing Assistance, Events, Higher Education, Multilingual Writers, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Calley Marotta – How can a university-sponsored community writing center serve those whom the university does not reach? This is a question community writing centers consistently try to answer by designing writing support for those who live and work beyond the university’s walls (Rousculp 2014).(1) By doing so, they seek to bridge a gap […]

September 17, 2018

A New WAC Faculty Sourcebook for a New Academic Year


Events, From the Director, Graduate Students, Higher Education, Science Writing, Uncategorized, Undergraduate Students, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Bradley Hughes – Greetings from a new academic year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Writing Center! We had a very busy and productive summer of 2018. The Writing Center was open for 12 weeks this summer, offering consultations, workshops, and writing groups for hundreds of undergraduate- and graduate-student writers. The summer center was staffed […]

September 3, 2018

Writing Center Outreach and Leading from the Middle


Higher Education, Outreach, Technology, Uncategorized, Writing Across the Curriculum, Writing Centers

By Angela J. Zito – Last week, the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network held its annual conference in Montreal, Quebec, where the keynote speaker Randy Bass called upon all of us in attendance (and the programs and institutions we represented) to help steer higher education in the direction of increasingly inclusive and integrated learning […]

October 31, 2017

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

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

More Than Words: A Collaborative Approach to Writing Instruction in a Graduate Science Seminar


Graduate Students, Outreach, Science Writing, Writing Across the Curriculum

By Nancy Linh Karls – With 2016 soon drawing to a close, many of us have been reflecting on what we’ve been able to accomplish over the past year. For staff in the UW-Madison Writing Center, that’s a pretty significant list: meeting with thousands of student-writers in one-to-one sessions at our main location and across our […]

December 12, 2016