If, like many, your concept of the UW-Madison Writing Center begins and ends with its most central and ubiquitous function—a single writing tutor helping a struggling undergraduate form a coherent thesis or deploy proper grammar or a transition paragraph—you may want to prepare to have your mind blown.
This month, the Writing Center celebrates a half-century of helping not just UW-Madison students, but also faculty, public school teachers and community members improve their ability to communicate effectively through the written word. The list of services offered by the center—and the constituencies it now serves—reads like a Faulknerian run-on sentence.
For starters, there are more than 60 specialized workshops, covering everything from diversity statements, CVs and resumes to research posters. There are detailed, week-long boot camps where graduate students come together to slog through the difficult task of writing their dissertations. There are even workshops on how to paraphrase instead of plagiarizing.
Brad Hughes, a visionary leader who directed the Writing Center for 35 of its 50 years before retiring in August, was fond of saying that the strength of a research university is driven by its writing. It’s a mantra he espoused often in Another Word, the center’s erudite blog, where staffers and students routinely engage with current writing research and theory.
While Hughes was responsible for piloting many of the Center’s services, his most significant contribution may have been bringing the national concept of writing across the curriculum—the notion that writing ought to be a skill integrated into and honed by classes outside composition and English Lit—to every corner of the UW campus.
As the Writing Center blazes into its second half-century, it is prioritizing an ever-increasing number of initiatives, including a focus on diversity (the Center just added a half-time coordinator of diversity, inclusion and social justice issues)—and a series of partnerships with local schools, neighborhood centers and libraries to bring the Center’s writing expertise further into the community. That’s top of mind for interim co-directors Nancy Lihn Karls and Emily Hall (who also directs the Undergraduate Writing Fellows program).
“That, I think, is really in line with the larger mission of the Wisconsin Idea, but also in line with what's happening in the field throughout the country,” says Hall. “We don't want to be the silo. We want to support writers where they are.”
And these days, they’re everywhere. Maybe you recall taking the elevator to the sixth floor of the Helen C. White Building, where a graduate teaching assistant spent an hour or so enlightening you on the virtues of topic sentences and changing passive to active voice. The Writing Center is still headquartered in Helen C., but its presence on campus has exploded like a glitter bomb. Satellite locations in dorms, libraries and other key campus locations facilitate student access multiple nights a week. Students can Skype with tutors, edit assignments collaboratively on a shared Google document, or receive helpful feedback on assignments submitted through email. Students under deadline crunch—because, hey, that happens—can track the up-to-the-minute tutor availability of tutor by following the center’s Twitter feed.
So who’s dispensing all this writing wisdom? While the Writing Center’s main staff is composed of graduate teaching assistants from departments across the College of Letters & Science, the Writing Fellows, a phalanx of 40-50 undergraduate students who complete an Honors course on tutoring writing, are paired with faculty members teaching writing in disciplines across the Letters and Science curriculum. The Fellows read drafts of student papers, offer thoughtful feedback on the drafts and meet with each student in a conference (outside of class) to brainstorm ideas for revising the paper. The Fellows can also serve as a bridge between the professor and students—sometimes offering feedback and suggestions on aspects of a paper assignment that confused students.
Knowing how to write well, and passing that knowledge on to others, can change a student’s academic trajectory. Adelina Yankova, a 2016 UW-Madison graduate in journalism, gender and women’s studies and digital studies who’s currently pursuing her graduate degree at Columbia University in New York, served as a writing fellow for three years, beginning as a sophomore. She characterizes her time with the Writing Center as one of the most important intellectual experiences she had as an undergraduate.
“To this day, when I write something, I ask myself questions I would ask the students I worked with,” she says. “My own writing improved tremendously through helping others revise their work. The whole writing fellow experience made me a much more conscious writer and editor.”
After helping students and faculty on campus, many former teaching assistants and fellows have drawn inspiration from their Writing Center experience to make their mark in the real world. Some have started writing centers elsewhere, carrying on the legacy of teaching good writing skills. Some have even made the big time, like Aaron Cohen (’03), a writer for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and novelist/TV writer Patrick Somerville.
“I just love watching them learn about the teaching of writing,” says Karls. “They're thinking about the politics of writing and thinking about language use and style. It's exciting to kind of see their minds open and see how they recognize the value in what they're doing.”