HSU Oracle: International Writing Centers Week

This week the Writing Center will host it’s annual “International Writing Centers Week” celebration.

Martha Cooley, Writing Center Director, said “This is always the second week of February – Valentines Week,”.

The celebration is a chance for Writing Centers at colleges around the world to have open houses, offer prizes, and publicize their missions.

The worldwide event, which began in 2006, was originated by the International Writing Center Association.

According to the HSU Writing Center’s Mission Statement, “The HSU Writing Center supports HSU’s mission statement by encouraging students to analyze, synthesize, and articulate the materials they have read, enabling them to produce creative and scholarly papers that are logical critical, and effective.”

Writing Center tutors do not proofread papers. The Writing Center focuses on helping students improve their writing, not on merely fixing one individual piece of writing. The goal of the Writing Center is to produce better writers. Writing Center tutors consist of qualified undergraduate students and Graduate Assistants. The tutors help to identify areas of students’ writing that may need to be improved.

The Writing Center hopes that this special event will continue to bring new faces into the center. The event is designed to show students what the Writing Center has to offer, in the attempt that they will return for tutoring sessions and become better writers.

“We usually have our regular students and other students and faculty who have not been before, visit during this week,” said Cooley.

The Writing Center will still be accepting regular appointments during the week. To schedule an appointment with the writing center, drop by McBrien 108, or call them at (870) 230-5357.

Appointments are recommended, but not required, by the Writing Center staff.

The Writing Center limits their tutoring sessions to twenty minutes. They have found that longer sessions are not effective, and recommend scheduling multiple appointments if more time is necessary.

The HSU Writing Center is open 8a.m.-4:30p.m. Mondays, 8a.m.-5p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, and 8a.m.-3p.m. Fridays. The center will maintain these hours during the week-long celebration.

The goal of the week-long celebration is publicize the Writing Center and its services to students.

The Writing Center team is set and prepared for the week to hit, and has already began dreaming about next year. “I have thought about sponsoring a poetry contest next year and awarding the prize at the end of IWCA Week,” said Cooley.

Three names will be drawn each day for great prizes from the HSU Bookstore and candy.

Cooley said, “It was a big success last year, and we hope to have even more visitors this year.”