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The Roth Writing Center, located at the Academic Resource Center (ARC), is a campus staple that allows students to help their fellow peers with writing anything from anthropology essays to creative writing pieces. While the Center typically has many appointment slots, this semester, writing tutors had their hours to one a week at the beginning of the semester. Writing tutor Elora Roy ‘23 said that in general, she is fortunate not to be financially dependent on her income from the Writing Center as a result of the reduced hours. “Going from the usual 2-3 hours a week down to 2 half hour appointments once a week [currently] was difficult in the aspect that I really love working as a tutor, and I miss making the kinds of connections with students that I used to be able to with more hours.” At the moment, there are approximately 40 student writing tutors.
When asked about whether or not the cuts were due to funding issues, Dean of Academic Support and Executive Director of the ARC, Noel Garrett assured that it was not a funding issue. The funding for the Writing Center comes from the overall budget of the Office of the Dean of the College, as well as with extra funding provided by the ARC for special initiatives and programs and from a restricted fund gifted by alumni Patricia Roth Squire ‘51. The restricted fund is used to ensure sustained programming and tutoring through the Writing Center. However, the operating budget, like all budgets across the College, was cut significantly several years back. “While this was difficult, we have been able to continue to provide the outstanding student and faculty support with a smaller budget,” said Dean Garrett.
Rather, the reason for the shortened working hours was the planning for an additional section of ENG 300, which is the training course that all students who are interested in becoming writing tutors must take. The additional section was added to provide additional support to First Year Seminars (FYS) which are writing courses. “Initially, this second section was to be offered in the spring semester, allowing the new class to start working with FYS faculty in the fall semester. Unfortunately, the course was requested for the fall semester, resulting in a higher than normal number of tutors in the spring 2022 semester,” said Dean Garrett. “We knew this would happen once the course was scheduled, and we knew that we would need to get through one semester in order to be able to support the FYS program in the fall semester. To compensate for this, ENG 300 will not be offered in the fall 2022 semester, but will, once again, be offered in the spring 2023 semester.”
While there are still many writing appointments that students have the opportunity to schedule, newly appointed Director of the Writing Center Summar West mentioned that the Writing Center had temporary constraints on the number of hours individual tutors have been able to tutor. “At the start of our tutoring during the spring semester, most peer tutors were given one hour as a starting point,” says West, “but that has been changing this semester and some tutors are now tutoring more hours, some are also working on new initiatives (which results in more hours), and some are continuing to tutor just once a week for this particular semester.” The impact on the hours also had to do with adjusting tutoring hours based on utilization of the sessions by tutees and adjusting to account for historic deficits in the budget. “I have tried and will continue to try to be as supportive of my Writing Center staff as possible in terms of how they may have been impacted by fewer hours earlier in the semester and how we go forward with future hours,” says West.
To maximize the budget to permit additional hours during “crunch times” such as midterms and finals, Dean Garrett wrote that the ARC and the Writing Center review tutor logs on a regular schedule to determine changes that may be required to address rising student needs. “This is important in any budgeting scenario to ensure resources are being used effectively and in accordance with donor stewardship agreements. The donors for both the ARC and the Writing Center receive annual reports detailing the use and impact of funds provided through their donations,” Dean Garrett added.
In regard to the future of the Writing Center, West mentioned that writing tutoring sessions have recently added half-hour appointments to the schedule, rather than regular one hour sessions. In addition, peer tutoring is available both in person and online, depending on what a tutee needs. The Writing Center is also beginning some initial steps toward offering more writing workshops to support students, including with topic-based workshops such as one on writer’s block and another on scientific writing. “In the future, with resources on a user-friendly website; we also plan to be in greater consultation with the faculty next year to see how we can further support the Writing Across the Curriculum program and writing-intensive courses,” stated West.
Overall, the Writing Center is here to stay and is intent on helping writers to become their best potential selves. Stop by the ARC and make an appointment!
