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Services for the Entire University Community

 How might UM-D faculty build Writing Center services into their teaching?

  • Schedule classroom visits or tours. Consultants can come to your classroom or host your class at the center.

  • Collaborate with consultants: provide the Center with copies of your syllabi, assignments, model papers, rubrics, etc.

  • Offer revision opportunities to students who opt to schedule a consultation. Taking into account written instructor feedback, consultants can help students rethink a paper's design and/or formulate an approach to revision.

  • Encourage all students, including accomplished writers, to consider a visit to the Center a part of their writing process. Our experience tells us that requiring students to use the Writing Center can prompt resentment that interferes with learning.

What services can students expect from the Writing Center? The Center offers support in all stages of the writing and research process. Consultants are not editors, but rather experienced readers able to offer students guidance on a range of issues relevant to improving their communication effectiveness. Consultants can help students:

  • Understand assignment goals

  • Formulate an approach to an assignment

  • Develop confidence for new writing tasks

  • Be aware of audience, purpose, and context

  • Develop a focus/thesis
  • Articulate and organize ideas

  • See the need for additional evidence


  • Generate revision strategies


  • Identify and use appropriate resources

  • Improve control of grammar and mechanics


A word about the Writing Center's philosophy and practice:  first and foremost, our goal in each consultation is to help a student writer learn something  that he or she will be able to use in the future. Like you, we know that unless students do their own work they will not learn. For this reason, peer consultants will work diligently with your students on concerns related to many different aspects of the writing process -- including (though not limited to) organization, use of evidence, documentation style, and grammar and mechanics -- but they will refrain from simply editing students' papers and projects for them.  Peer consultants often hear from students, "You have to get me an A on this paper!" Obviously, while we cannot do a student's work for him/her or guarantee a certain grade, we can almost always guarantee that a student will leave a consultation with a paper that has improved (usually significantly), and with greater awareness about how to approach writing projects more effectively in the future.