For many students, the Fort Hays State University Writing Center provides much needed assistance to what is one of the most important aspects of college – getting ideas into a written form. This year, the Writing Center has seen some substantial changes and more are on the way.
The most noticble change for the center is a physical one. It moved from the basement of Forsyth Library to a spot on the main floor, causing an increase in the Center’s usage from FHSU students and faculty.
The Center provides a variety of services to students, free of charge, on any piece of writing.
“The Writing Center has moved to the first floor of the Forsyth Library and is now more visible. Due to increased demand, we have started offering more appointments. Funded by an action plan, the Writing Center has acquired a number of booths for individual tutoring, and has had a conference room built for group tutoring. We have bought a number of laptops and desktops, as well as a flatscreen, to make tutoring a fun, interactive process. While we continue to take appointments on the phone and in-person, we expect to implement an online appointment system at the beginning of the spring semester. Students will be able to choose a time and a tutor on the Writing Center’s website,” said Dr. Yuri Yerastov, director of the writing center.
This year is Yerastov’s first at FHSU. He holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Calgary. Prior to coming to Fort Hays, he taught linguistics and writing at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, Mount Royal University, the University of Calgary, and Illinois State University.
As the center becomes more known across the campus, the amount of students using it has also increased dramatically.
“The Writing Center provides consultations to FHSU students enrolled in on-campus courses. Students can come to us with a writing assignment from any course. We help them organize their papers, generate thesis statements and topic sentences, improve punctuation and grammar, and polish style and word choice. We also help students cite, quote, summarize, and paraphrase their sources. However, we are not a proofreading service, which would correct errors for you — we teach you to do that on your own,” Yerastov said.
“Everyone at the university utilizes the Writing Center. Each week we see undergraduate and graduate students, helping them with anything from essays to resumes. We also consult with instructors if they have questions about specific writing styles or more generally the services offered by the Writing Center and online resources for students” said Lisa Jones, Denver Graduate Teaching Assistant, who works in the center.
“Since we moved upstairs in the library, we have helped many more students than last fall. We had to increase the number of hours that the tutors worked to help accommodate the students, and we are still booking-up three to five days in advance.”
While the center has been running on all cylinders already, there are still more plans in the works to offer more services.
“Next semester we will begin offering weekly ‘Grammar Crash Courses.’ These will be group workshops that focus on a different grammatical concern each week. One week, for example, we will focus on commas, and the next will be focused on semicolons. Also, we are trying to move the scheduling system and student resources online to make it easier for students to schedule appointments and access writing resources while away
from campus,” Jones said.
As these changes occur, they can be found on the Writing Center Facebook page.
The Center has a staff of 10 tutors working anywhere from six to 20 hours each week, focusing on tutoring individual students and
continuing to develop their own writing skills to best serve the university.