The Writing Center

Referral Guidelines for Faculty

The Writing Center’s mission is to be an inclusive campus resource by providing one-on-one guidance to students at any step in the writing process. Our staff understands the need for certain courses to have assigned Writing Center visits to ensure student success and comprehension of course content. However, we kindly request that all professors who require visits to the Writing Center fill out this form at least a week before their students come in so our staff has time to prepare and equip themselves with the nature of the assignment. If you require multiple visits during the semester for multiple assignments, please include the assignment prompts and date ranges of all required visits.

When discussing visits to the Writing Center with your students, it is important to remember that appointments are meant to be collaborative and allow for students to have an open discussion about their writing. To protect the academic integrity of students and staff, we have regulations in place that define what our staff can and cannot help with. 

1. The Writing Center is not an editing service. Our staff will not write your student’s paper for them, but rather, we encourage collaboration in our space. We expect students to come to the Writing Center equipped and with some ideas about what they need help with and what direction they would like to take their paper.
2. If a professor has given a student feedback or edits on their work before a Writing Center visit, it is that student’s responsibility to either show the tutor their edits or discuss the professor’s expectations with them.
3. Our tutors currently use APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, and Chicago 17th edition citation styles. If you use any of these citation styles for your assignments or any different citation styles (CSE, ASA, etc.), please include them on your assignment prompts as well.
4. Tutors are trained to give students suggestions on their work. However, students are never forced to implement changes we suggest.
5. Writing Center tutors help with writing only. We do not help students with course content, even if it is English-adjacent. If one of our tutors notices a student is struggling with course content, it will be included in their session report, which will be emailed to you after that student’s session.
6. While the Writing Center does take walk-in visits, it is strongly preferred that students use our scheduling system (www.usca.mywconline.com) to make appointments. During busy times, such as midterms and finals, it is not guaranteed that our schedule will have room to accommodate walk-ins. Please share the link to our scheduling system with your class.

Writing Center Student Referral Form