Writing Center not just for English majors

Writing a paper can be a difficult and tedious process. Sometimes a little assistance or advice from someone can work wonders.

For over 20 years the Writing Center has been open to students who have sought assistance and advice.

“We help the students with four points of dialogue, finding a topic, developing content, and workshopping a draft and final,” said Patty Strong, the Writing Center’s coordinator. “We also have an online link to work with students with disabilities, those who commute, those who work full time or have families.”

The staff’s goal is to assist students in the beginning stages of their papers, to help them develop and organize ideas.

“We want to be the first step, not the last step,” Strong said. “We want to see you early rather than late.”

When students visit the center in the final stages of their work, staff members said it is often too late for them to assist the students properly.

“Students come in later on in their work and expect us to proofread and check grammar,” said Debbie Gardner, a senior English major and a center consultant for the past two semesters. She also said some students come in and expect center consultants to proofread and check their final drafts.

“We assist with the organization of the early stages of their work. We help with grammar only if it gets in the way of understanding the content of the student’s papers.

“I never used the Writing Center, but it definitely would have helped on a few papers,” Gardner said.

Strong’s staff of 12 consultants consists mostly of graduate students in various English fields. Undergraduate consultants complete a special peer-tutoring course in the Department of English to prepare them for their jobs.

“We primarily have English majors as consultants but would like to have some from other majors as well,” Strong said.

The consultants generally work with students in English 101 and English 200 courses although the center is open to all.

“There has been an increase in the turnout since the year 2000,” Strong said. “We used to see just English students, but now see students from all different departments.

“I was speaking to a professor in the physics department recently who was disappointed in the results of a writing assignment that he gave his students. I told him they should have come to the Writing Center. It’s not just for English students but can be used by physics students as well.”

Still, many students don’t know the center exists, even though Strong said she makes classroom visits and presents faculty groups with information as often as she can.

“I wouldn’t have known about the center until my English teacher made it a requirement that we visit here,” said Monica Ilog, a first-year biology major. “I’ve been a visitor for about a month now and it’s helped me greatly, listening to different perspectives you normally wouldn’t pay attention to.”

Strong said she hopes the center’s fortune will change when it reopens at the Hibbs building in the fall.

“It’s a better location with more equipment, more services and most importantly more funding. It’s a new and improved Writing Center,” Strong said. “We’ve been understaffed, needed more funding, more publicity and have languished in different places around campus. I’m really looking forward to the new location and increased university support.”