Linguistically Diverse Writers’ Experiences Guide Linguistic Equity Training 


Multilingual Writers, Peer Tutoring, Racial Justice, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Theory, Writing Centers

By Susanne Treiber, Madison College and Karen Best, University of Wisconsin-Madison—Just a bike ride away from the renowned UW Writing Center lives a hidden gem of a neighbor–the Writing Center at Madison Area Technical College, a 2-year institution with a mission to “provide open access to quality higher education that fosters lifelong learning and success” (“Madison College: Our Culture”). Within this progressive community college resides a writing center, where an average of 33% of its visitors over the past 7 years identify as […]

July 11, 2023

“Try and Fight that white Supremacy:” Tutors on Antiracist Praxis


Diversity and Inclusion, Higher Education, Racial Justice, Social Justice, Tutor Training, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Faith Thompson, Salisbury University—After Victor Villanueva’s 2006 catalyzing speech at the International Writing Centers Association Conference, calls for antiracist practices at writing centers have been echoed by many scholars such as Frankie Condon, Laura Greenfield, and Neisha Anne-Green. These calls have offered insight into ways that racism shows up in writing centers, including student work brought to tutors that perpetuate racism and racist ideologies […]

February 21, 2023

Illuminating the Writer Behind the Draft: Insights on Written Feedback Appointments


Graduate Students, Multilingual Writers, Technology, The Online Writing Center, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Tutors

By Samitha Senanayake—After completing an asynchronous feedback appointment and glancing, often with tired eyes, at the neat blocks of paragraphs in the global or summary comment, I feel good: job done! But it’s only recently that I’ve begun to wonder what the same paragraphs might make a student feel. Even before they read the text, what must feedback in the form of  paragraphs feel like, sound like? In the same way, does a track change on Microsoft Word […]

November 29, 2022

Writing Center Affiliates’ Recent Conference Participation 


Diversity and Inclusion, Events, Graduate Students, IWCA, Multilingual Writers, Peer Tutoring, Social Justice, Writing Center Conference, Writing Center pedagogy, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Tutors

By Ellen Cecil-Lemkin—The first in-person International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) Conference since 2019 was held from October 26 to 29, 2022 at Vancouver, British Columbia. Sherry Wynn Perdue, IWCA president, wrote, “Attended by almost 500 members from all over the world, our annual conference offered presenters and attendees an opportunity to converse and conspire, so we may reconceive our roles as […]

November 8, 2022

“Are We Walking the Walk?”: Undertaking Writing Center Assessment


Writing Center Research

By Angela Zito—Assessment is not everyone’s favorite thing to talk about, but it is one of mine. In this post, I’ll try to convince you that writing center assessment can be a worthwhile and invigorating process that places the things you care about most—inclusivity, student learning, accessibility, tutor education—front and center. Assessment projects urge us to ask ourselves, “Are we walking the walk, as well as talking the talk?” […]

May 3, 2022

Writing as Learning: Our Writing Center Blog Celebrates 13 Years and 300 Posts


Awards and Honors, Big 10 Writing Centers, Updates, UW-Madison History, Writing Center History, Writing Center Research, Writing Centers

By Bradley Hughes—This past November I was honored—and a little daunted—to have wonderful colleagues invite me to write a retrospective about this blog. Honored because as the editor of the blog from 2009 until 2019, I have loved what this blog does for its authors and readers, for the field of writing center studies, and for the UW–Madison Writing Center. Daunted because I knew it would be a lot of work and impossible to do justice to the richness of 300 posts. […]

March 8, 2022

Sharing Our Recent Research


Events, IWCA, Online Writing Centers Association, Writing Center Conference, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Staff, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Emily Hall—Graduate students and academic staff members from UW-Madison’s Writing Center, Writing Fellows program, and Writing Across the Curriculum regularly contribute to scholarly research in the fields of writing studies, writing center studies, writing and community literacy, computers and writing, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and more. Over the summer and through the fall, we have had a remarkable […]

November 9, 2021

Developing a Multimodal Toolkit for Greater Writing Center Accessibility


Disability and Writing Centers, Diversity and Inclusion, Graduate Students, Peer Tutoring, Writing Center Research, Writing Center Theory, Writing Center Tutors, Writing Centers

By Ellen Cecil-Lemkin and Lisa Marvel Johnson—As several scholars have already pointed out (Dembsey; Hitt; Kiedaisch and Dinitz to name a few), historically, the scholarship on disability in the writing center is… not great (to put it lightly). It’s seeped in ableism by positioning disabled writers as “other” and problems that need to be solved. This framing leads to positioning disabled students “as so radically different from other students that they are beyond help—that they require too much time, resources, or special knowledge” (Hitt). This perspective, however, goes beyond ableism that occurs on an individual level. […]

April 20, 2021

Getting to the Roots of L2 Writer Experiences


Multilingual Writers, Peer Tutoring, Uncategorized, Writing Center Research, Writing Centers

By Molly Rentscher and Vicki Kennell – Molly Rentscher, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Writing Fellows Program alum, was the Writing Center Coordinator at Arizona State University’s West campus while collaborating with Vicki on the research shared in this blog post. In August 2018, Molly began a new position at University of the Pacific, where she supports […]

October 8, 2018