Information for Faculty
Welcome to the University of Alabama Writing Center! Our primary purpose is to provide writing consultations to your students. Consider us an active, inquisitive reading and listening audience for your students’ work-in-progress. We are prepared to help them with general writing skills and more discipline-specific forms of writing. We also maintain a collection of writing resources in print and electronic form for student use.
Useful Information
- Remember that Writing Center staff members are consultants. They will discuss, debate, question, model, suggest, direct, admonish, advise, respond, applaud, encourage, refer, re-state, review, reflect, read, write, outline, summarize, analyze, brainstorm, commiserate, consult, and empathize, but they will not re-write. Nor will they (or could they!) serve as substitutes for you. They will help your students become stronger writers by serving as an active, engaged, inquisitive reading audience. As with any educational endeavor, this often takes considerable time (that is, multiple sessions spread out over many weeks and even months) and effort on the part of both students and consultants. Please be patient and positive, and encourage your students to be patient and positive too. For further details, please review the ‘Students’ and ‘FAQs’ pages. You might also want to watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXK8Z79NOBk.
- Encourage your students to make two appointments per draft. Ideally, a student should visit us at least twice for each assignment: once to assess her work and set goals for a subsequent draft; and a second time to follow up.
- Encourage your students to make appointments as soon as possible. By doing so, they stand a better chance of receiving assistance when they need it. A good rule of thumb is that all appointments should be scheduled at least a week in advance.
- Your student will be e-mailed a “Client Report” for each visit, which will detail the content of the session in addition to any specific advice provided by the consultant. If you have any questions about this document, please contact the Writing Center.
- Note that students who are encouraged (and want) to visit the Writing Center generally have more productive sessions than students who are required (and perhaps don’t want) to visit. In other words, encourage your students to visit us, but do not require them to do so. Students who are intrinsically motivated to improve their writing will see greater benefits than students who are extrinsically motivated.
- If you have information (model documents, archived assignments) that might help the Writing Center staff establish a richer tutoring context for your students, or if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please contact Dr. Luke Niiler, Director, at 348-5049 or lpniiler@ua.edu.
Additional Services
- Promotional presentations: we’ll visit your class, pass out flyers and pens, model tutorials, and take questions.
- Writing intensive workshops: we’ll visit your class and review specific writing skills and strategies with your students. Topics include summary/analysis, avoiding plagiarism, constructing arguments, editing for clarity, netiquette, personal statements, scientific writing, etc.
- Consultation time with the Director: to discuss strategies for including more writing in your courses and/or assessing student writing.
- Requests for presentations, workshops, and consultations: Dr. Luke Niiler, Director (348-5049 or lpniiler@ua.edu).