Campus Learning & Writing Centers

Writing Center Employment Opportunities

The Writing Center hires graduate and undergraduate consultants from across the disciplines. Undergraduate students must complete the course Writing Process and Practice (ENGL491) prior to employment in the Writing Center. Undergraduate students do not have to be English majors, although they must be competent writers with particular interest in exploring the writing process and the teaching of writing.

Interested graduate students must interview with the director, submit a writing sample and statement of interest and supply references who can attest to the applicant’s qualifications. Successful applicants must attend an orientation workshop, participate in the center’s mentoring program and attend weekly staff development meetings.

About Our Work

If you are interested in working in the Writing Center, you must be interested in more than correcting and editing student papers. While strong writing skills are certainly requisite to our work, strong people skills are of equal importance. Working one-on-one with writers is hard work, and it requires commitment at multiple levels – intellectual, emotional and social.  Indeed, the larger share of any consultation’s success depends upon an invested and caring consultant.

Consultants must be interested in the students with whom they work. This interest also goes well beyond the written text a student brings in to the center. The written product is never the principal point. While work on a paper certainly prompts the student's visit, the work of the session invariably occurs in the metacognitive domain, in the thinking process of the student.  Thus, Writing Center work is fundamentally a social and dialogic exchange. 

Writing Center work is right for you if you care about ideas and writing and people in equal measure.  

For more information, please e-mail the director prstrong@vcu.edu