Inclusivity Praxis

The Writing Center programs at UW-Madison have a long history of commitment to diversity, inclusivity, and social justice. All of us on staff work hard to make our programs and spaces welcoming for all students, to have many kinds of diversity represented within our staff, and to prioritize programs that support social justice on our campus and in the city of Madison. We are also deeply committed to partnering with campus and community programs that are campus and community leaders in diversity, inclusion, and social justice.

Examples of these Commitments

In partnership with the university’s Multicultural Student Center and the Center for Cultural Enrichment and the Residence Halls, we have had satellite locations in the MSC and CCE for over 20 years and in more recent years in the Black Cultural Center in the Red Gym.

Our Madison Writing Assistance Program has a strong commitment to social justice in the Madison community.

We have partnered with the university’s Gender and Sexuality Center on workshops and writing retreats.

We partner with the university McBurney Disability Resource Center to provide flexible, accessible writing consultations for student-writers with disabilities and to offer a new workshop on “Communicating Your Writing Accessibility Needs with Course Instructors.”

Each year we do outreach instruction and introductions to the Writing Center and Study Jams with many campus diversity programs, including the Posse Program, the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program, the Advanced Opportunity Fellows Program, the Center for Educational Opportunity, the Multicultural Student Center, the Office of Adult Student Services, the PEOPLE program, the McNair Scholars Program, the Gender and Sexuality Campus Center, the Latinx Resource Fair, the Office of Veterans Services. . . .

In partnership with the Advanced Opportunity Fellows Program in the College of Letters and Science, we offer a weekly graduate writing group for AOF scholars from historically under-represented groups.

We offer twice weekly writing assistance to students in the Odyssey Project, an educational program that provides adults in the Madison area who are facing economic barriers an opportunity to start college for free.

In 2017 the Writing Center’s TA Assistant Director Antonio Byrd developed a new workshop for graduate-students and post-docs from across campus, “Writing Diversity Statements for Academic Jobs.” And here’s a link to a post (“Chasing after an Emerging Genre”) that Antonio wrote on our Writing Center’s blog about this new workshop.

We have offered online writing consultations for over 20 years, in order to make our instruction more accessible for part-time students and for students with busy schedules and work and family obligations. For a wonderful discussion of how important the Online Writing Center is for supporting equity for student-writers and for instructors, please see a 2018 post on our Writing Center’s blog by Maggie Bertucci Hamper.

In our initial and ongoing education for all of our staff, we regularly discuss diversity, inclusion, and social justice as they relate to writing centers.

In our Writing Center’s blog, Another Word, our staff and our alumni periodically write about topics related to diversity and inclusion and writing centers. Here’s one example, written by several graduate tutors on our staff: “With, Not For: Building and Strategizing Diversity in the Writing Center.”

Send us Feedback

If you have any feedback that you’d like to share with the Writing Center about accessibility, diversity, inclusion, or a related topic, we invite you to contact us. Although we would appreciate the opportunity to communicate directly with you about any concerns you may have, we realize that this may not be ideal for all circumstances. In these cases, you’re invited to use this form to send anonymous feedback to the Writing Center’s leadership team.