Our Commitments

Our Mission Statement

Here at the Writing Center, we believe in relationship-based learning. 

We believe that writers deserve supportive, human(e) feedback that does more than correct, it helps them develop their own ways of learning, communicating and getting work done. 

We believe in fostering healthy, supportive and vibrant cultures of writing – whether that means creative writers getting together, instructors planning their courses or PhD students writing up their research. 

Mostly, though, we think that sitting down to pursue your own ideas and talking with others about those ideas is one of the most fulfilling and powerful things a person can do. We're here to help with that. 

We offer 50-minute, one-on-one appointments to all students, faculty and staff every day of the week, in-person and online. We also provide workshops, trainings and events, often collaborating with departments and programs across campus and with community partners. We're also an active research site constantly trying to study how writing itself is changing and what that might mean for us all.   

We believe that learning to write is an ongoing, life-long process and that all writers, from first-year students to faculty, benefit from discussing and collaborating on their work with thoughtful and respectful readers. 

Writing Center consultants can work with any piece of writing, whether for a specific course or for professional or personal development. We also welcome collaborative projects as well as multimedia projects. We are also a site for research on writing center theory and practice and are committed to being part of ongoing scholarly conversations about the teaching of writing.

At all stages of the process, we believe that writers benefit from the kind of thoughtful response we offer at the Writing Center. In our consultations we engage in a dialogue with writers to help them develop their writing and to become more effective and confident writers. 

We are also committed to accommodating all writers and all learning styles. We do not grade or evaluate the writing we see and we do not communicate what happens in a consultation to students’ instructors without the permission of the student.

Commitment to community

The University Writing Center is dedicated to being a safe, inclusive, accessible environment for learning. Our goal is to support literacy practices that are empowering on both an individual level and community level.

Our mission is to encourage and empower critical thinking and civic discourse. This means: 

We work with all writers, from all political viewpoints, to help them learn how to create arguments that are evidence-based, nuanced and engage respectfully with opposing points of view. 

We work with all writers to encourage a discourse that, even when in opposition, is respectful of the humanity of others. 

We continue to believe in and advocate the value in listening and responding, thoughtfully to the ideas of others.

In the physical center and in our online writing center, we work to maintain a welcoming place where writers feel comfortable bringing the diverse range of perspectives found in the university community. 

We are committed to accommodating all writers and all learning styles, and we respect writers' use of their home languages and world Englishes in their pursuit and expression of knowledge.