WOU Writing Center:
Who We Are

 

 

 

 

 

“As an academic support service that promotes the educational mission of WOU, the Writing Center advances the writerly self-efficacy of every writer who uses the Writing Center strategically, repeatedly, and over time.”

— Our Mission Statement —

About the Writing Center

The Writing Center is the only academic support unit on campus specifically designed to promote your development and success as a college writer. The consultant team is available to assist you in-person and online with writing projects for any course and any level of instruction. The Writing Center also offers specialized assistance for multimodal compositions or new media projects like digital narratives, blogs, websites, presentations, and even YouTube videos.

We would invite you to utilize Writing Center services at a variety of stages in your writing processes: understanding assignment directions; brainstorming ideas; creating “maps” or outlines; checking to see that your project meets the directions specified by your instructor; exploring practical routes for revision and development; and adhering to format and style guides (e.g., AAA, APA, APSA, CBE, Chicago, and MLA). While tutors avoid “fixing” your writing, they do help you become conscious of, and proactive about, particular error patterns that emerge in your written work. Additionally, we have a library of reference texts and take-home handouts to help you.

Mission

As an academic support service supporting the educational mission of WOU, the Writing Center advances the writerly self-efficacy of every writer that uses the Writing Center.

Goals and Outcomes 

Students who use the Writing Center will read, write, and revise like writers.

After one session at the Writing Center, students will accomplish the following:

  • demonstrate an understanding of the function of a session and of the Writing Center
  • articulate a next step for the revision of a particular document

After three or more sessions at the Writing Center, students will accomplish the following:​

  • identify personal strengths and challenges with regards to their written communication skills
  • see an increase in their writerly self-efficacy


Faculty who utilize the Writing Center will read, teach, design, and evaluate like writing teachers.

After an assignment design session or an in-class spotlight workshop, faculty will be able to do the following:

  • reconstruct assignment directions in regards to audience, genre conventions, and evaluation criteria (as observed through revision of assignment directions)
  • embed the Writing Center as a regular part of their classroom culture (as observed through repeated class presentation, student usage, and syllabus statement)

Tutors who work in the Writing Center will read and respond like compassionate writers.

During a session, tutors will be able to accomplish the following:

  • reconstruct assignment directions in regards to audience, genre conventions, and evaluations criteria
  • articulate a writer’s strengths and challenges with care

Our Research & Community Outreach

At our Writing Center, we are diversifying our services to accommodate emerging populations at WOU. We are actively researching and focusing our knowledge to create new directions for writing center theory and practice. Professional staff and students work together to identify service gaps and to imagine solutions to serve our students, university, community, and field in meaningful ways. Check out some of the projects we have been working on!

We Have A New Logo!

The Challenge: Reaching our Students At the Writing Center, we believe in what we do, and we are passionate about reaching students on campus. And with our research on writerly self-efficacy, we have come to understand the importance of students working with a writing tutor repeatedly and over time.  However, a problem that has emerged for us recently is our lack of visibility on campus. While we visit classrooms and present to large groups of students, many students are still unaware of the Writing Center until later in their studies.  A Step in the Right Direction: A PR Team To address our lack of visibility on campus, we had a group of new interns work on developing a strategic PR plan for the Writing Center. This team — composed of five new tutors — worked hard for an entire term to come up with posters, a strategic marketing plan, a revised mission statement, and a new logo. The PR team decided that working on a new logo would help us brand ourselves to the campus and community and express the values that we strive to embody at the center. To begin, then, the tutors identified the core ideas and values that are important to us at the Writing Center: writerly self-efficacy, community, collaboration, positive and genuine feedback, a safe,...

Writerly Self-Efficacy Research

i Self-Efficacy Journal Article Check out the study here!  Creating our Writing Self-Efficacy Scale In order to measure the impact of the Writing Center on students, together with Dr. Joel E. Alexander, the Writing Center developed a scale to measure students’ writerly self-efficacy. The scale allows the writing centers to track students’ writerly self-efficacy across multiple sessions. Further, the scale creates a way for writing centers to track and report to administration the performance and importance of the writing center. For more information about the validity and creation of the scale read “The Empirical Development of an Instrument to Measure Writerly Self-Efficacy in Writing Centers” by Katherine M. Schmidt and Joel E. Alexander in The Journal of Writing Assessment. To access the scale, click here: PSWSES revised For questions or additional information regarding the scale and its applications, contact Katherine...

CONNECT WITH US!

Email us at writingcenter@wou.edu or give us a call at (503) 838-8286.
You can also stop by our office in APSC 301. We're excited to meet you!