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FOR LSU FACULTY

Ways to help us help you and your students:

• Advertise Writing Center services on your syllabus and your assignments. Consider adding the following paragraph to encourage Writing Center visits throughout the semester, not just before an assignment is due:
  
   
  The LSU Writing Center offers free individual tutoring for all currently enrolled LSU students, first-year through graduate levels. Call or drop-by to make a 30-minute appointment. LSU Writing Center, B-18 Coates Hall, 225-578-4439, www.lsu.edu/writingcenter.
  
  
  
• Request a class presentation. A tutor will visit your class for a brief presentation describing our services. Email the time and location of your class and your preferred date for a presentation to wcenter@tigers.lsu.edu.
  
  
• Request a workshop. If you would like a workshop for your class on topics such as effective editing, organizing a research paper or documentation, email your request to wcenter@tigers.lsu.edu.
  
  
• Communicate your needs with the Writing Center staff. If you have additional questions contact Sarah Liggett, director of the LSU Writing Center, at 225-578-4439, enligg@lsu.edu.
  
  
• Recommend rather than require your students to attend the Writing Center.  Conferences are most successful when writers seek help on their own and come prepared to work on a draft. The Writing Center serves the entire campus and cannot accommodate whole classes of students who are required to attend.
  
  
• Let better writing skills be a reward in itself. Students who schedule appointments only to earn extra credit often have little interest in learning writing strategies, frustrating the tutor who tries hard to help them.
  
  
• Ask your students to summarize what they did and learned in a conference. Tutors do not sign papers indicating the student has had a conference.
  
  
• Remember that a Writing Center conference can’t substitute for a peer review. Conferences are active learning experiences involving the writer, the tutor, and a text.  A tutor will not complete a peer review sheet or answer a set of questions. Instead, tutors engage the writer in dialogue about the text, ask open-ended questions, and use non-directive techniques to foster revision.
  
  
• Encourage students to work with a tutor throughout the writing process. Waiting until the last minute before an assignment is due is not beneficial to students in terms of improving writing skills. Appointments are limited and may be unavailable at the last minute. In addition, because writing tutors don’t edit, proofread, or correct papers, students may wish they had started working with a tutor earlier.
  
  
• Remind your students who may need an editor to contact the Writing Center for a list of editors for hire. The tutoring process is the same for short papers as well as long dissertations. Time constraints and deadlines may make hiring an editor more feasible in some cases.