Writing Center evolves for student needs
The VCU Writing Center saw more traffic than ever last school year. There were almost 1,500 more student visits to the Writing Center than the previous school year.
Amir Vera
Staff Writer
The VCU Writing Center saw more traffic than ever last school year. There were almost 1,500 more student visits to the Writing Center than the previous school year.
The Writing Center, which operates under the University College, helps students polish their writing with the aid of student consultants.
“For 2011-12, we had a total of 10,029 consultations, which is about 17 percent more than 2010-11 which saw 8,570 consultations,” Brian McTeague, assistant director of the writing center, said in an email.
The increase is significant, McTeague said, but the number of consultations has increased every year since the center opened. More promotion has played a role in the center’s exposure, he noted.
According to lead writing consultants Lauren Miner and Will Beattie, the center has started promoting on the Internet to reach more of the student body.
“We’re always thinking about how we might expand our promotional efforts,” Miner said.
“We want the VCU community to know more about who we are and what we do, that we aren’t proofreaders so much as readers and coaches, and that we’re interested in having real conversations about the writing process, not just the written products.”
The increase in promotion and consultations over the years has also resulted in the largest staff at the Writing Center. According to McTeague, the staff is currently composed of 45 members. Veteran consultants were also added to manage daily operations in the Writing Center.
The larger staff means more specialty programs to help students in different majors and programs have also been added, according to Miner and Beattie. One of these specialty programs includes the focused assistance consultations for students across all disciplines.
“We are doing our best every semester to make sure those specialized needs get taken care of,” Beattie said. “We are getting trained to work with personal statements, applications, and English language learners. We’re working towards being more involved with working with various different kinds of things.”
English Language Learners are among the different groups of students using the center. Two years ago a specialized service called English Language Resources (ELR) was started to add more assistance to students who are learning English, according to McTeague. With this program, students receive more time with their consultants than usual.
“As more students take advantage of this specialized type of consultation, which allows for a focus on language acquisition skills and is longer in length (60 minutes, opposed to the general 30 minutes) we’re seeing about 10-15 percent of our total consultations are ELR,” McTeague said.
Along with the ELR students, another group of students the center helps out is graduate and doctoral students. Douglas Kimemia, a doctoral student in the public policy and administration program, has been coming to the Writing Center for the last two years working on his dissertation paper and various articles. He also teaches African Government and Politics at VCU and makes sure he, as well as his students, attend the Writing Center.
“When I hear a student is also struggling putting their thoughts clearly, I tell them that they can come here and find somebody who will help them,” Kimemia said.
With the improvements to the Writing Center, McTeague predicts that this year’s numbers will match those of 2011-2012. The only reason it wouldn’t match, he said, would be because of the changes to UNIV 200.
Before the change, students would come into the Writing Center from the very beginning of the semester to work on their papers. However, according to McTeague and the consultants, students come in later in the semester.
“I think that in short bursts we see more students, but towards the end we’ve seen some numbers actually decrease because maybe some of the students aren’t as worried about producing an eight- to 10-page document as they were with a 13- to 15-page document,” Beattie said.
Depending on student feedback and the overall success of the center, McTeague said, they will continue to make changes and promote in order to meet student needs.
