The Institute for Writing and Rhetoric administrators are available to talk with you about all matters related to your students' writing and speaking skills.
Both Christiane Donahue and Karen Gocsik are available to talk with you about your course design and methods. Please feel free to contact them.
Christiane Donahue
Director, Institute for Writing and Rhetoric
Baker Library, Room 208
603-646-9749
Karen Gocsik
Executive Director of the Writing and Rhetoric Program
Baker Library, Room 209
603-646-1241
The Institute for Writing and Rhetoric, in collaboration with DCAL and the Library, provides three or four opportunities every term for faculty to gather to talk about writing. Topics have included:
If you are interested in participating in a workshop, or in developing a workshop for your department, please contact Karen Gocsik, Executive Director of the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric.
The Online Writing Materials for Faculty offers advice for writing instruction. Here you will find discussions on how to run a writing workshop, how to use peer groups effectively in the classroom, how to diagnose and respond to student writing, how to address matters of grammar and style, and more. If you have comments about the materials on this site, or if you have an idea that you would like to share, please contact Karen Gocsik, Executive Director of the Institute for Writing and Rhetoric.
Our most popular resource among faculty, the Writing Assistance Program assigns trained undergraduate writing assistants to individual courses throughout the disciplines.
The program operates on the premise that revision is the single most critical process in improving student writing. A writing assistant allows you to require an extra draft without increasing your reading load. Your students will benefit from the feedback the writing assistant offers; you will benefit by receiving substantially improved papers in the final drafts.
The logistics of using a writing assistant are best devised when you and your writing assistant sit down together at the beginning of the term to discuss your goals and expectations. Typically, your writing assistant will read your students' papers, raise questions and make comments, and return the papers to the students. Students then revise their drafts and turn final papers in to you.
In some instances, you will see the need for a student to meet individually with the writing assistant. The details of these meetings ought to be worked out between you and your writing assistant and are determined in large part by the writing assistant's schedule.
The one requirement of the program is that students must turn in drafts to the writing assistant on time. Your students should understand the multiple-draft process as a course requirement.
To request a writing assistant you can either contact Stephanie Boone, the Director of Student Writing Support, or download the request form (PDF), fill it out, and return it to Stephanie Boone via either e-mail or HB 6250.
We ask that you provide us with certain information about your course so that we can more effectively assign our writing assistants. A syllabus is especially appreciated, in that it helps us to determine how many writing assistants you might need. In most instances, assistants can be expected to handle up to 450 pages of student text in a term. More than this amount will require an additional assistant.
Please note that writing assistants are in high demand, and there are terms when we cannot accommodate late requests. We give priority to requests for courses with significant writing components and to those requests we receive by deadline.
As stated above, most professors use a writing assistant to require an additional draft of each paper assigned. Other ways that professors have used writing assistants include the following:
The working relationship between professor and writing assistant can be extremely rewarding - especially when lines of communication are open. Here are some tips for making sure that your writing assistant fully understands the goals and expectations of your course.
Further questions and special requests of the Writing Assistance program should be directed to Stephanie Boone, Director of Student Writing Support Services.
RWIT - the Student Center for Research, Writing and Information Technology - is a collaboration among the Writing Program, the Library, and Academic Computing.
RWIT is designed to offer our students a "one-stop" shop where they can get help with writing, research, multi-media technology, and basic data base construction.
RWIT tutors are undergraduate students who are hired because of their exemplary writing and research skills. Tutors are trained to:
Our tutors are trained to respond facilitatively to student work. Tutors will typically begin with students' ideas and then work through research issues, structure, organization, paragraphing, style, and grammar. Multi-media compositions are similarly evaluated and responded to.
If you have a concern about a student's writing, or if you are designing a particularly challenging writing assignment, please contact Stephanie Boone, Director of Student Writing Support. If you are assigning a research project and would like to discuss research support, please contact Laura Braunstein, Librarian. If you are assigning a multi-media composition, please contact Susan Simon of Academic Computing, who can work to attach a technology tutor to your course.
RWIT is located on the first floor of Berry, in the northwest corner, behind the Computer Help desk.
Hours are 4 - 6 and 7 - 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday
We can accommodate walk-ins, but students should know that their busiest times of the term are also ours - students should sign up early for slots around midterms and finals.
The Writing Program Online Writing Materials site offers students extensive advice about all aspects of writing in an academic environment. First-year students will find advice about what constitutes academic writing in What is an academic paper? All students will find information ranging from creating a good thesis sentence, to tips for revision, to advice about grammar and style.
We strongly encourage you to visit this site. Faculty who have visited it and read through the material have not only had good words to say about the resource, but have also incorporated the site into their syllabi, some even assigning aspects of the site as required reading for their students.
If you have questions about the Writing Materials for Students web site please contact Karen Gocsik, Executive Director of the Writing and Rhetoric Program.
