– Jessica Marston
The writer is enrolled in Comm 240 News Reporting.
Each year, hundreds of Fort Hays State University students seek out the assistance of the campus Writing Center. To better serve them, the center has implemented an online scheduling system offered through its website.
Previously, scheduling was done on paper, with students emailing or calling administrative staff to set up appointments.
“As you can probably imagine, it gets very difficult to schedule people when you have students emailing at midnight and asking to get an appointment for 10 a.m. the next morning,” said Lisa Jones, Thornton, Colo. graduate assistant to the director of the writing center. “Especially when the paper schedule is kept in the office, and we have no way of knowing.”
The Writing Center, run by the Department of English, is currently housed on the first floor of Forsyth Library. Previously, it was in Forsyth’s basement. The center offers free tutoring services to any FHSU student, faculty member, or alum at any point in the writing process.
“One thing we are trying to emphasize this year is that we are not an editing service,” said Tyler Weiser, Salina writing center graduate assistant. “We are here to make better writers, not better papers.”
“Our primary focus is identifying patterns of error in student writing and giving the tools and techniques to become better writers,” Jones said. “In the last two semesters, since we have moved upstairs, we have actually had small difficulties keeping up with the demand, especially with the large international population.”
There is always a great need for tutors to work with international students, but a lot more teachers are requiring students to receive help, Jones said. Additionally, there is a higher level of interest among the students in learning how to write better papers.
“We are also working on digitizing all of our resources, and we will be putting those up on our website that will hopefully be linked up to the home page so that students can access all of our handouts from home as well,” Jones said.
The Writing Center has also begun offering “Grammar Crash Courses” on Wednesday evenings.
“We meet for one hour, and we discuss one topic of grammar,” Jones said. “Topics range from distinguishing the difference between adjectives and adverbs, to using commas. We give students resource materials and a run-down of the rules. Then, they peer review and workshop any piece of writing that they are currently working on.”
Jones explained that the workshops are intended to give students another time to come in and work with one another on strictly editing.
The workshops “came about because we had a lot of students coming in and saying, ‘Well, just edit my paper,’ which is not our goal,” Jones said. “We actually want to teach students how to become better writers, not just fix their papers.”
The Writing Center is open Monday through Thursday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Friday 9 a.m.-noon; and Monday through Wednesday 6:30-8:30 p.m. Appointments can be made on their appointment page.