Writing Center opens on MCV campus

Cyrus Nuval
Staff Writer

A new branch of the VCU Writing Center is up and running on the MCV campus.

The Writing Center’s new branch opened in in the Tompkins-McCaw Library on August 27. The branch is currently on a trial run and will be operating on Tuesdays and Thursdays from noon to 6 p.m. The center is not staffed by as many consultants as the Monroe Park Campus Writing Center, which moved to the Academic Learning Commons this semester.

“We are waiting to see what it may need, what it won’t need, if the branch will need to be run differently from the one here,” said assistant director for the Writing Center Brian McTague.

Many students who currently work in the Writing Center believe that the addition of the new branch will benefit students on the MCV campus.

Alexander Burke, head of the MCV Writing Center staff and a literature graduate student, said that the Tompkins-McCaw Library has been interested in housing a Writing Center in the past and has been working with McTague since the summer semester.

“(The Tompkins-McCaw Library) student committee had expressed prior interest in some form of writing assistance program, so the library staff were quite receptive when I contacted them,” Burke said. “You could say it was more of a convergence than a single initiative, and the Tompkins-McCaw staff has gone to great lengths to make things happen smoothly.”

Writing Center staff member and literature graduate student Hannah Dodge said a new branch of the Writing Center is long due on the MCV campus.

“I’ve always had some of my consultations be with students doing stuff like nursing, medicine, dentistry, and a lot who were applying for those programs,” Dodge said. “I think that one of the perks about the extra location will be the time and energy that students will save not having to trek all the way to the other campus.”

There have been past plans to place a Writing Center branch on the MCV campus, McTague said, but a lack of resources delayed the project.

“Now that we have a new location and new opportunities, I think we all came to a consensus that now would be a good time to expand,” McTague said. “We used to have a larger space in the University College building … our move to a smaller space in the Academic Learning Commons and our larger number of staff than before might have also influenced our decision to go ahead with plans of placing a satellite branch in the MCV campus.”