School of Arts and Sciences Review Winter 2014 | Page 9

A Closer Look

“One way that the Writing Center has evolved is
that it has a sort of real philosophy to it and the
training for the tutors is much more coherent,” says
Ellis. “They come in the summer and they have a
week of training, during which we work on what a
session is going to look like and how it works. Then
throughout the year we have weekly projects that the
tutors work on to strengthen their understanding of
what it means to work in a writing center, how the
writing center fits in with the rest of the university, and
theories behind learning to write and the teaching of
writing.
“They learn how to handle the different writing
styles that are commonly used, such as MLA and APA,
and we’re going to be trying to add Chicago to that as
well. While this is going on, the tutors are also acting
as assistants in a composition classroom,