Information for Faculty & Staff

Writing Center Roadshows

Tutors are available, upon advanced request, to give brief, 15-minute presentations on the Writing Center's services. We are happy to provide these presentations for faculty classrooms or committees, or for any student group, department, or program. The tutor will need either an overhead projector or access to the internet and a projector. To request a Writing Center roadshow please email wcenter@gmu.edu and provide the following information:

• Your name and the name of the course/program and the course number
• The date and time you would like the roadshow to take place, as well as an alternate if for some reason the initial date requested is unavailable
• The location of the classroom/office where you would like the presentation to take place
• Any special information the tutor should keep in mind as (s)he provides our information (for example, you may want to let the tutor know in advance what types of writing assignments you require for your course).

Roadshows are available for all locations though please keep in mind our hours in Arlington and Prince William are limited so we may not have a tutor to send at the time you request.

If we are unable to provide you with a Writing Center roadshow due to scheduling difficulties the information provided in the Roadshow is available as a Powerpoint slideshow. If you are at the Prince Wiliam or Arlington Campus, please use our Prince William Powerpoint slideshow or our Arlington Powerpoint slideshow.

Essay Exams

Assignments and essays distinguished as "take home exams" will NOT be tutored unless we have written permission from you. You may either send a note along with the student or leave a message with the Acting Director, Kathy Goodkin, by contacting her at wcenter@gmu.edu or calling 703-993-8359.

Visit Verification

If you would like verification that your student visited the Writing Center you may request that your students return a "visit verification" form which will indicate the date of the session and a few notes on what was accomplished during the session.

Referrals

Referrals to the Writing Center are highly encouraged and we greatly appreciate the promotional work you do for us in your classrooms and course syllabi. If you refer a student to the Writing Center please remind them to bring the assignment prompt. Also, if you have anything specific in mind for the student and/or tutor to focus on during the session, you are welcome to send a note along with the student indicating as much. The tutor and student can then make these concerns a part of their session goals.

Please keep in mind the Writing Center is not a proofreading or editing service. Tutors will not "fix" a student's grammar mistakes or red pen the piece of writing. We aim to improve the students as writers, not just address the current assignment. Tutors will likely recommend strategies or provide resources which the students can apply to future writing as well as in the revision of the assignment at hand.

We discourage sending students to visit the Writing Center as a requirement for an assignment or as extra credit. As pleased as we are that you are supportive of our services and want your students to take advantage of them, students who voluntarily sign up for our sessions or are advised (not required) to go, tend to benefit more from the tutorial because they are individually motivated to do so. Since the tutor and the tutee set the agenda for a session together,  when the student's motivation for being there is merely to fulfill a requirement, the tutorial is not productive. Our purpose is to develop the writer and not just "fix" the writing, so when students aren't self-motivated, the session is challenging.

In addition, if you have 30 students in your class and you require them all to visit the Writing Center in the same week, our hours will be monopolized by your students and students who really want a tutorial sessions will not be able to make one because the schedule is full.

If your primary purpose is to orient your students to the Writing Center's services we are happy to send a tutor to your class to give a brief presentation on all the Writing Center has to offer (see below).

Confidentiality

Sessions between tutor and tutee are confidential. Students are required to indicate whether or not we can share session information with the professor of the course when they sign up for tutorial sessions. If you would like to learn what took place in a tutorial session you may contact the Writing Center, though please know we may only share session information if the student has indicated we have permission to do so.

Plagiarism

If we suspect that a student is plagiarizing, and that student is resistant to reworking the potentially plagiarized material during a tutorial session, a tutor may contact you to inform you of this situation if the tutee has permitted the tutor to share session content.