Check out an excerpt from the upcoming issue of Southern Discourse!
Southern Discourse is the publication of the Southeastern Writing Center Association. It is edited and produced at Agnes Scott College. Inquiries should be directed to Christine Cozzens, Editor. ccozzens@agnesscott.edu
Back to the Center: Warren Wilson College
by Julie Wilson
... “I wish I could major in Writing Centers,” one student told me, and her sentiment is familiar on a campus where students count their work supervisors among their teachers. Students leave Warren Wilson not only able to analyze Shakespeare and chemical compounds, but able to rekey locks, raise chickens, organize events, replace invasive species with native plants, clean bathrooms, or tutor writing.
... This week, the crew is putting the finishing touches
on a publicity video in which they’ve rewritten the
“Friends” theme song and in which Reginald, a writer
in an alligator suit, comes to the writing center for help
with his Reptilian Composition course. They’ll show the
video in visits to first year seminars. Our students get a
lot of work done and have a lot of fun—and not
necessarily in that order.
... And like at other writing centers, our peer tutors are true believers—in words, in our work. We must have spent three crew meetings arguing about whether to replace the term “peer tutor” with another term, and then didn’t. It matters that much.
...One word we don’t dispute is the word “writer.” No tutees, no students, no clients—our visitors are writers.
Read the complete article in Southern Discourse!
Back to the Center: Working from Two Centers
by Philip Adams and Myleah Y. Kerns, East Carolina
East Carolina University’s original writing center opened in the English department in 1983. Though it was a pretty traditional model and reinforced the idea that writing belongs to English, for seventeen years it did serve students writing for any reason on campus. Then in 2000, an administrative restructuring split peer-tutoring writing support services on ECU’s campus.
Our English department kept its writing center space and shifted focus, evolving its services into the First-Year Writing Studio (FYWS). The FYWS became a place dedicated to tutoring students writing exclusively for the firstyear composition sequence (ENGL 1100 and 1200). To support students writing beyond first-year composition, the university developed the University Writing Center (UWC). The UWC joined with the existing WAC program to form the new University Writing Program, a program of Academic Affairs.
After the reorganization, it was our challenge and our goal to develop a coordinated writing support system that sees students progress through firstyear composition and the FYWS to their upper-level writing courses and the UWC. Using the split as an opportunity to reimagine our services, we hope
that our system has grown into one with complementary components that serve our students well.
Because most new students take ENGL 1100 their first semester, they also begin their experience with writing centers at the FYWS, which offers these writers a safe space to adjust to college writing. With around 4,000 students enrolled in scores of FYC sections, the FYWS can focus exclusively on the outcomes and objectives defined by the composition program and assist writers in meeting those goals through work on the course assignments...
Read the complete article in Southern Discourse!
SWCA
est. 1981
southeastern writing center association
SWCA - 2012
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