Outreach: The Writing Center, the Campus, and the Community
Document Type
Contribution to Book
Journal/Book Title/Conference
New Directions, New Connections
Publisher
Purdue University Press & ERIC
Publication Date
1984
Abstract
Making the process-oriented writing center an integral part of the community, as well as of the campus, can be crucial to ensuring its survival. Using students as tutors gives the center free tutoring and the students "hands on" experience. To reach students, the director can provide campus-wide publicity and attend meetings for incoming, ESL, and nontraditional students. The center can also provide help for students from academic disciplines other than English with report and scientific writing, research papers, social science writing, theses and dissertations, letters of application, and resumes, as well as offer study sessions for professional entrance exams. The writing center and the library can work together to develop research modules for students to use in conjuntion with or in lieu of a course on research writing. The center can and should be a force for literacy on campus by conducting workshops geared to specific disciplines, visiting classes to guest lecture on improving writing skills, consulting with departments on evaluation and conferencing, developing materials such as editing guides and style sheets, reading student papers, and conducting surveys. Such projects demonstrate the value of the writing center to the administration deciding the program's fate. Beyond the campus, the writing center can collaborate with high school English departments and with community groups and businesses both to generate additional revenue and to precipitate community-wide literacy.
Recommended Citation
Kinkead, J. A. "Outreach: The Writing Center, the Campus, and the Community," in New Directions, New Connections, ed. Muriel Harris, Purdue University Press, 1983; also published by ERIC, 1984.
