Information for Faculty

Referrals

Faculty can refer students individually or as a class. For individual students, faculty may wish to consult first with the Center administrator. Student progress can be monitored by arrangement with the faculty member and the student, and the Center will provide periodic updates on the student's progress to both the student and the faculty member. The Center can also accommodate class referrals; in this case, faculty should consult with the Center director beforehand to work out the most effective way to do this.

A note on referring students: Referrals are certainly a good way to introduce students who might not otherwise avail themselves of the service to the benefits of working with a consultant. Faculty should be aware, however, that requiring students to visit the Center can have some drawbacks. Students may resent being told that their writing needs help and may only pay the Center a cursory visit. To make referrals most productive, faculty are encouraged to remind individuals or groups of the Center's fundamental premise: that all writers, no matter what their ability level, benefit from the feedback of knowledgable readers, and that all the Center's consultants are trained to provide such a service to writers.

In-Class Services and Workshops

The Center offers three different kinds of in-class services and workshops for interested faculty. The first is a brief, 10-minute informational talk about the center and its services. This is often most useful early in the semester. The second is a full or partial class presentation on a writing related topic such as plagiarism, documentation, and writing in a specific discipline. Finally, the Center offers peer response workshops, in which consultants from the Writing Center facilitate discussions with small groups of students about their writing for a given assignment. All of these workshops can be tailor-made to meet individual faculty members' needs, and the Center welcomes any requests and ideas that faculty members may have for designing and implementing workshops for specific classes or groups of students.

To request these services, faculty should e-mail the Writing Center.

Writing Consultant One-to-One Services

Writing Consultants can work with writers at any stage in their writing process. They can

• work on pre-writing or invention activities, helping a writer to come up with ways to approach an assignment
• help with first drafts or revisions: thinking through audience, purpose, organizational strategies, introductions, conclusions, development of ideas and examples
• work on editing and proof reading strategies
• help with the technical conventions of the language (grammar, spelling, punctuation) and general problems with writing
• work on problems in critical reading and thinking, research strategies, and documentation

Writing Consultants will not

• write a paper for a student
• proofread a student's papers (though they will work with students on their proofreading and editing skills)
• dispute or question the grade a teacher has given a student's paper

Last updated January 9, 2005