Most UWC first-time visitors report that they heard about the University Writing Center from a professor. In other words, JMU undergraduate and graduate students decide to talk with someone outside the classroom about their writing because someone they respect inside the classroom said it was a good idea.

As you introduce your students to the UWC and to the idea of meeting with someone to talk about their writing, you might build on any of these four key talking points:

• Effective writers, researchers, and scholars often collaborate, seeking help where they can get it. Our trained UWC consultants can introduce your students to this collaborative process, empowering their development as writers and critical thinkers through personalized consultations.
• Students who sign up for a first UWC session early in their academic careers often return for second and subsequent sessions, either later in the semester or in the years to come. We love working with JMU undergraduate and graduate student writers as they are thinking about group projects, capstone projects, personal statements, and theses or dissertations, but we'd also love to start helping them now.
• Students often benefit from scheduling their first UWC session early on in a project when they are still trying out ideas; identifying, developing, or interpreting their sources and research; or working to organize their thinking. We can certainly help writers polish their nearly final drafts, but we can also help them at the beginnings and middles of their writing processes, when everything is a bit more rough.
• New or unfamiliar genres, disciplines, contexts, or audiences often require new or unfamiliar approaches. No one is always a good writer, and what worked years ago, in another course, or for a different audience and purpose earlier in the semester may not be as effectiv now. We can help your students with transfer, helping them to apply their existing knowledge and skills and preparing then to build on their efforts going forward.

The UWC's team of undergraduate, graduate, and faculty consultants offers 30- and 60-minute face-to-face and online sessions to writers in all JMU academic disciplines. We do not pretend to be content specialists, but we can help JMU writers appreciate different disciplinary and genre conventions; define, organize, and clarify their thinking; act on feedback; and revise their work for academic and non-academic audiences.

We know that undergraduate and graduate students often find the Writing Center because someone suggested it to them. We also know that writers sometimes need a nudge. If you would like to offer extra credit for a UWC visit or if you would like to offer extra credit for a UWC visit or to require a UWC visit, feel free to adapt the sample language below for your assignment prompts, course syllabi, and Canvas resources.

Sample UWC Extra Credit/Required Visit Policies*

I will award X extra percentage points (for this project/for this assignment/on any of our major writing tasks) if you meet with one of our James Madison University Writing Center consultants, under the following conditions:

OR

By X date/As part of Assignment X/Before you submit Paper/Project X, you/your group mustmeet with one of our James Madison University Writing Center consultants, under the following conditions:

1. You can schedule your session with a UWC consultant at any stage in your writing process, and you can return to the UWC for multiple sessions. The UWc offers 30- or 60-minute sessions, and you can opt for a face-to-face or online session.** To earn credit for the assignment, you must meet with a UWC consultant at least a day*** before our due date.
2. To prepare for and schedule your UWC sessions, visit the UWC's Make an Appointment page.  
3. All UWC sessions are private. Your UWC consultant will not directly share any details of your visits with me.
4. To create proof of an in-person UWC session, ask your UWC consultant to complete a hard copy proof-of-visit form. To create proof of an online UWC session, ask your consultant to verify the session in the chat window. Your consultant will type a testimonial like this: “I am UWC Consultant Brianna Watt. I certify that Drew Kennedy participated in a 40-minute UWC consultation on November 5, 2024." You can then take a wide screenshot of the chatbox, making sure that it includes the time and date.

How Students Can Verify Their UWC Visits

Longstanding policy prevents UWC consultants from discussing individual sessions with professors. It's important that JMU writers feel confident in sharing their writing ideas and concerns outside of the evaluative classroom learning space.

At the end of the Sample Extra Credit Policy/Required Visit Policy above, we outline how your students can create proof that they have met with a UWC consultant. The hardcopy form our consultants fill out after a face-to-face session offers the same information that a screenshot of a consultant's chatbox entry will offer: the client(s) who participated in the session, the date and starting time of the session, the duration of the session, and the UWC consultant's name and (digital) signature.

If you need further confirmation of a student's visit, you can email Learning Centers Associate Director Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu)..

The Writing Center's Writing Guides and Handouts site offers organized, up-to-date lists of useful online writing resources. If you need to introduce or explain a part of the writing process, a specific genre, a challenging grammar or style concern, or discipline-specific citation styles, the UWC's Writing Guides and Handouts are a good starting place. The site is also pretty handy when you're looking for a UWC-endorsed resource to include in an email or when you need your own quick refresher course.

You can help us build the site by identifying resources you'd like to to reference. Send your "Writing Guides and Handouts" ideas, suggestions, and even specific links to UWC Faculty Associate Kevin Jefferson (jefferkx@jmu.edu), cc-ing Learning Centers Associate Director Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu).

Your students may not know about the University Writing Center and the free writing assistance we offer students in all JMU courses. They may value hearing about what we do and how they can use our University Writing Center resources directly from a peer. 

To request that a UWC undergraduate or graduate consultant briefly join one of your course meetings to share information about our services, please complete this UWC Introductory Presentation Request form. 

Our introductory presentations are excellent for General Education or writing-intensive courses to alleviate anxiety about seeking out writing assistance and answer questions your students might have.

If you have any questions, please contact UWC Disciplinary Writing Coordinator Emily Bouza (bouzaea@jmu.edu).

We can also visit your class to help deliver longer presentations or workshops related to your course content and writing goals.

• In-class presentations and workshops can be useful for addressing specific concepts or concerns (e.g., group writing strategies, genre conventions, critical reading strategies, revision and editing strategies).
• Peer review workshops and sessions can help your students get beyond identifying grammar and punctuation "errors" to engage discipline- and project-specific concerns and offer constructive feedback at different stages in the writing process.

After you submit your request using this UWC Workshop Request form, we'll contact you to set up a face-to-face or Zoom meeting to discuss your needs, to tailor the visit to your course's specific writing situation, and to set a date and time.

Please contact UWC Disciplinary Writing Coordinator Emily Bouza (bouzaea@jmu.edu) with any questions.

The UWC's Course-Embedded Consultant Program pairs an advanced UWC undergraduate writing consultant with your course as a semester-long resource.

Course-embedded consultants will work with you to become familiar with your writing goals and assignments and create an intervention plan that could include visiting your course meetings on select days or holding scheduled consultation hours just for students in your course.

You can learn more about the program through our UWC Embedded Consultants page, and you can request an embedded consultant for an upcoming course by completing this UWC Course-Embedded Consultant Request form.

Please contact UWC Disciplinary Writing Coordinator Emily Bouza (bouzaea@jmu.edu) with any questions.

We welcome all JMU faculty and staff to take advantage of the same individualized consultation services that we offer to students.

In recent years, we've worked with faculty and staff members on a range of projects at different stages in their writing processes:

• Journal article drafts
• Dissertations and master's theses
• Graduate course papers, projects, and proposals
• Grant proposals
• Job applications
• Personal statements
• Group and club guidelines
• Emails

We can help get you started, even if you have nothing on the page and nothing to build on but your sense of purpose. We can help get you unstuck, offering a willing audience and fresh set of eyes. We can set up regular sessions with you as you draft, helping you navigate looming deadlines, vague prompts, hazy style guidelines, and unfamiliar disciplinary or genre conventions. We can play the new reader role to help as you polish your work for a wider audience.

You can schedule your face-to-face or online UWC session through our Make an Appointment page. If it's your first UWC visit, you'll need to register for an account in order to log into our scheduler.

We know that JMU faculty and staff sometimes benefit from more extended sessions, beyond the 30- or 60-minute sessions available through the UWC scheduler. If you think longer sessions might be beneficial, you might schedule a first 60-minute session as a sort of introductory planning meeting and then discuss the possibility of longer sessions (90 minutes and on rare occasions up to two hours) with your UWC consultant.

Please contact Learning Centers Associate Director Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu) with any questions.

Many professors design their writing assignments and prompts in isolation. We can't help you with your grading, but we can help if you want to workshop a prompt or to run a writing assignment past a trained set of consultant eyes.

UWC undergraduate, graduate, and faculty consultants see a lot of prompts. We read them, we help your students respond to them, and we write them. We know what makes sense to JMU writers when it comes to assignments, calendars, and expectations, and we can offer useful feedback as you construct or refine your own prompts.

You can schedule your one-to-one consultation focused on writing assignments or prompts by visiting our Make an Appointment page, or you can email Learning Centers Associate Director Rudy Barrett (barretrl@jmu.edu). We can also work with you if you're interested in a faculty roundtable/workshop/discussion focused on writing assignments.

Online Resources

Assignment Design Guidelines: These UWC-authored notes can help you think about different audience- and outcome-based concerns as you draft or revise writing assignments and prompts.

Writing Assignment Problems: The awesome UWC video series we've linked to below was created back in 2010-2011. While we love seeing the familiar faces—Martin Steger, Olivia Mankowski, Christina Wulf, Justin Thurston, and current JMU Learning Centers Director Laura Miller, to name a few—we also love that any UWC consultant here in the 2020s would immediately recognize the potential assignment concerns and opportunities that the videos dramatize:

• Confusing Organization
• Minimal Guidance
• Over-Engineering
• Group Writing

Collaborative Writing Resources: We've linked to this University of Connecticut Writing Center suite of resources for years now. If you're thinking about integrating a collaborative writing project into your course or about revising your existing design, the page offers a useful—though increasingly dated—starting point.

Want to implement peer review effectively in your courses (no matter your discipline)? Want researched step-by-step advice that offers help with planning, delivering, and assessing? This 5-part series created by Lucy Malenke, who served as UWC Assistant Professor of Writing and CHBS Liaison from 2014-2023, is truly useful:

• Part 1: The Benefits and Drawbacks of Peer Review
• Part 2: Planning the Peer Review
• Part 3: Preparing Students for Peer Review
• Part 4: Running a Peer Review
• Part 5: Encouraging Revision and Assessing Peer Review