Campus Learning & Writing Centers

Faculty Partnership

How We Can Help Each Other

We provide:

Feedback on consultations. Every time a student comes in for a consultation, we ask permission to send a “Writing Center Narrative” to you, the instructor. This e-mail provides the student’s name, date of the visit and a brief discussion of the consultation.

Promotional class visits. We can visit your class at any time during the semester to explain our services. AWriting Center consultant will present a brief overview of our services and answer questions. This generally takes about 10 minutes. To schedule a visit, please contact Patty Strong, director of the Writing Center, at prstrong@vcu.edu.

Field trips. During the first weeks of the semester, it’s often quite helpful to bring your class to us. You’re welcome to come to the center for a tour and brief overview, however, please schedule this in advance. We discourage such visits after the third week of the semester due to the high volume of consultations.

What you can do:

Talk us up. Tell students how much they can benefit from conversations at the Writing Center. Explain how a collaborative process strengthens writing and how a second pair of eyes can help any project. Encourage students to see us as a valuable resource.

Build in a Writing Center Criteria. Make a Writing Center consultation a part of developing a writing assignment. Students benefit most from early visits. Include Writing Center information on your syllabus. Feel free to cut and paste from this site. Set a Writing Center button on your Blackboard site with a link to our website.

Encourage consultations for all writers. We are here for all writers, and all writers can benefit from having an additional reader. We find that conversation clarifies and strengthens all writing, no matter how strong it was to begin with.  While we can certainly be helpful to struggling writers, presenting the Writing Center as a remedial space discourages students and hinders our efforts to be of service to the whole VCU community.