VOLUME XIII, NUMBER 19

#& INNOVATION ABSTRACTS

PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD), COLLEGE OF EDUCATION,

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN + WITH SUPPORT FROM THE W. K. KELLOGG FOUNDATION AND THE SID W. RICHARDSON FOUNDATION

 

The Writing Center: A Center for All Disciplines

When educators discuss writing centers, they usually
refer to a lab setting with writing tutors available for
students enrolled in writing classes, particularly devel-
opmental writing classes. But a writing center should
be an interdisciplinary facility. With the focus of
education on cultural awareness and on literacy,
colleges are faced with the need for centers of learning
that provide students with multifaceted learning
opportunities. One such center is the interdisciplinary
writing center—a center that provides students a setting
for cross-curricular writing assistance.

Community college students need somewhere they
can go for help in writing for any discipline—a place
where they can feel comfortable asking for suggestions
on how to get started on a paper, how to punctuate, and
how to document correctly. Many writing centers
provide assistance on freshman composition papers, but
few provide assistance for writing assignments in other
general education or elective courses.

Today more instructors are including writing in their
classes, and students are looking for ways to meet the
criteria delineated in these different writing tasks.
Students must now not only write for Humanities
classes (expository essays, critical analyses, book
reviews, music critiques, literary analyses, and research
papers), but they must also write for social science
classes (expository essays, causal analyses, outlines,
summaries, abstracts, research papers), for natural
science classes (descriptions, process analyses, lab notes,
summaries, abstracts, research papers), and for health
science classes (lab notes, summaries, abstracts, nursing
care plans).

Students need a place to go for writing assistance—a
place that provides tutoring to help them understand
how to meet the specific demands of different audiences
and purposes in their writing. So, the question re-
mains—how does one make the college writing center
an interdisciplinary writing center?

First, directors of writing centers should hire tutors,
preferably full-time, to work in the writing center.
These tutors should have a minimum of a B.A. in
English or Composition and should be selected accord-
ing to the following criteria:

a determined level of proficiency in writing,
some knowledge of the composing process,
some experience with nontraditional students,
an understanding of the needs of nontraditional
students, and

* an awareness and some understanding of inter-

disciplinary writing.
Since consistency is important in order to maintain a
continuum for students, and in order to provide an area
consistently conducive to the development of writing
skills, these tutors need to work regular hours.

Second, directors of writing centers should draft
faculty tutors from the Humanities, as well as other
disciplines. This is relatively easy to do. Directors can
meet with division or department chairpersons and
request a few minutes of time at a division or depart-
mental meeting for a discussion of the writing center’s
“new role” or new direction. They can ask colleagues
who are friends to “be brave” and volunteer to tutor.
They can seek out new faculty members, particularly
tenure-track faculty eager to fill a curriculum vitae with
innovative items. Above all, they can be honest and
clarify their intentions, their long-range goals, and their
emphasis on meeting the needs of students.

Third, directors of writing centers should make the
prospect of tutoring in this center attractive to faculty
members. They should consider what “perks” they can
offer. In some instances, depending on the performance
review structure, faculty members feel intrinsic rewards
and feel that they earn intangible credit, nonvisual
“feathers in their caps” for this involvement with
students. Faculty members often receive letters of
evaluation at year’s end—letters that not only acknowl-
edge the faculty members’ participation as tutors, but
that also verify advising or conferencing credit needed
to satisfy contract agreements. Whatever the situation,
directors can make this tutoring more than just intrinsi-
cally worthwhile for faculty members.

Fourth, directors of writing centers should provide
hired tutors and faculty tutors with an orientation
session at the beginning and a sharing session at the
end of each semester. The focus in these orientation
sessions should be on the following:

 

 

THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR STAFF AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (NISOD)
Community College Leadership Program, Department of Educational Administration
College of Education, The University of Texas at Austin, EDB 348, Austin, Texas 78712

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