The Leader

Issue date: 4/11/07 Section: News

In the last four years, more than 10,000 individual tutoring sessions have been held in the Writing Center at UWM. Students and staff from every college on campus walk through the door seeking help from the tutors gathered in the small room. However, for a busy organization that hosts as many as 1,500 individual sessions in 12 weeks, the Writing Center's resources are shockingly slim.

The Writing Center is funded solely through the college of Letters and Science and not through campus administration, even though students and staff from every school use it.

"It makes more sense for the Center to be funded by campus administration," said Margaret Mika, the director of the Writing Center. "The Center's highly qualified and trained tutors do a tremendous amount of excellent work with very restricted resources, especially for a campus of this size."

Additionally, a major complaint from people that use the Center is that there is not enough space in the room.

"Our room is so small that only three tutors can work at one time," said Mika. The room is only able to accommodate a total of six people - three writers and three tutors - and it has been located in 382 Curtin Hall since the Writing Center opened in 1986.

"When you have three people in here it can be a little noisy," said Matt Trease, a Writing Center tutor.

A shortage of space is not the only problem the Writing Center faces, either.

"The computers are dinosaurs," Trease laughed, indicating the old, off-white machines lined up against the wall. Mika confirmed the prehistoric nature of the computers, saying that the Center "desperately needs new computer equipment."

Despite the difficulties in space and technology, the Writing Center remains a valuable and well-used tool for students and staff members. Writers visit the Center to work on job applications, lab reports, poems, thesis papers and anything else that is crafted with the written word, in any stage of its creation.

The Writing Center is a professional environment with rigorously trained tutors from all areas of study. People who want their work written for them will have little luck, but those who want meaningful discussion will find a diverse group prepared to help spark and organize ideas.

"Good talking makes good writing," Trease said.

Also, the common misconception that only weak writers use the Writing Center couldn't be farther from the truth, said tutor Liz Angeli. According to Mika, one third of students that have come to the Center in the past four years have been upper-level undergraduate or graduate students working on a wide range of projects including class assignments, term papers, Ph.D. dissertations and even book manuscripts.

The Writing Center is open to either walk-in tutoring or appointments. Interested individuals can visit www.writingcenter.uwm.edu and follow the directions under "Appointments" to schedule a session, or visit Curtin Hall 382 on a weekday from 9 a.m. until the listed close time.

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