Revising the Writing Center: A Look at the OU Writing Center's First Semester

Last fall semester, the Oglethorpe University Writing Center officially opened its doors, managed by the inaugural director, Dr. Courtney Mullis. Since the center's opening, almost 200 tutoring sessions have occurred, and over 100 individual students have received writing tutoring. Mullis said, "The first semester exceeded our expectations and goals as far as the number of students we worked with." 

Photo courtesy of Dr. Courtney Mullis

The Writing Center offers students one-on-one tutoring sessions with trained peer tutors in any academic, professional, and personal type of writing or communication. Students can make an appointment through WC Online for online or in-person tutoring sessions. The in-person sessions take place in Turner Lynch Campus Center, room 228. After setting up an appointment, students can receive help on anything from creative writing to slide decks and at any stage of the writing process. 

First-year student Gabriella Andino attended several virtual Writing Center appointments last semester, receiving help creating outlines and proofreading for writing assignments. Andino found her sessions "helpful in getting [her] on the right track" and plans to return to the Writing Center in the future.

Still, although the Writing Center has had a location on campus for only one semester, writing tutoring was previously available to students. Writing tutor and third-year Rachel Spooner has been tutoring since her second year at Oglethorpe and has noted a shift both in her experience and in the students'. According to Spooner, the prior format was drop-in office hours with no official training for tutors. Spooner found that, generally, the students she works with are "more open to receiving help and are more responsive to the advice" because of the formality of appointments and the tutor's qualifications. 

To Mullis, the most significant development in the Writing Center was the professionalization of writing tutors. This means tutors have access to additional opportunities and requirements outside of simply tutoring. Mullis emphasized that research on writing centers shows writing tutors can use the skills they learn in the Writing Center throughout their careers when "they really buy into the Writing Center as something a little bit more than just tutoring."

The introduction of Writing Center Theory, Pedagogy, and Practice—a four-credit course focusing on preparing students to work as peer tutors—was another one of the major additions made by Mullis. "The biggest thing I wanted to change was adding in additional training and support through developing the tutor training class and establishing some ways of continued education for tutors," Mullis stated. The course includes instruction on theories and general strategies for writing tutoring, as well as guidance on how to manage common scenarios. Training for tutors extends beyond the course, including staff meetings with personal development components. 

Spooner noted how the focus on training and professionalizing tutors had been helpful in evaluating how to help students with different backgrounds and writing roadblocks, including students with different majors, class years, and native languages. Students' various writing backgrounds and college preparation is one of the reasons Mullis believes that the Writing Center is a vital resource at Oglethorpe. The Writing Center not only gives students access to writing and communication help but also, through their connections with other campus resources, like Student Success and the Career Development office, can help students find the information they need to succeed academically.    

According to Mullis, the Writing Center's goals for this semester include maintaining a significant number of students, hosting larger-scale events like workshops, and collaborating with other resources on campus. This semester, the Writing Center will be working with the Office of Global Education to hold boot camps for The Gilman Scholarship for Study Away.  Mullis and peer tutors will be present at the boot camps to help students apply for the scholarship.

In the long term, Mullis plans to increase the size of the Writing Center staff and continue to professionalize tutors. Currently, five tutors regularly work in the center, and Mullis would like to see this number double. In 2026, she also aims to have peer tutors present research at the Southeastern Writing Center Association Conference, continuing their education and involvement in writing center studies.

As for the students, Mullis would like Oglethorpe students to know that the Writing Center is available for all modes of communication and to students at all levels. The Writing Center can help students not only with essays but also with multimodal forms of communication, such as PowerPoint slides or posters for the Liberal Arts and Sciences Symposium. Even more so, Dr. Mullis highlighted that the Writing Center and writing support, in general, is valuable to writers no matter their skill level: "I would like for students to realize that even if they're not struggling with their writing, that doesn't mean they can't get support with their writing to make it better and easier for them in the long term."

First-Year Seminar Program Concludes Second Semester

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To better assist students in the transition to post-secondary education, many institutions have offered iterations of courses, commonly called first-year seminars [FYS], with strong foci on interpersonal relationships, academic skills, and community-based belonging. In fact, Robert Feldman of the Cambridge University Press described FYS as “one of the most long-standing and most widespread interventions for the success of first-year students in colleges and universities in the United States [that], during their nearly 130-year history, have provided a space to reconcile the tensions between increased access and the retention of students.”

Considering this impact, it may come as no surprise that Oglethorpe launched their own FYS course in Fall 2022. Establishment of the seminar was largely funded through the Goizueta Foundation, a proposal submitted in 2021, and the “Sense of Belonging” subcommittee under the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion task force. 

Carrying into its second year this fall, the course offered 17 different sections with just under 272 freshmen enrolled. Operating in a small-group environment, FYS classes were one credit, met once a week for an hour and a half, and allowed students to work alongside a faculty facilitator and an upper-class peer mentor on themed, hands-on projects.  

For example, the students of FYS-101-002, facilitated by Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Anna Ziering and upperclassmen Wynne Kelly, built “little libraries”: painted, shelved boxes, set to house books and placed in various spots around campus. Ziering identified that, not only were the material results of the project built, but also a community and greater sense of communication amongst peers. Particularly, the presence of a peer mentor like Kelly helped to reach students on a level that faculty often couldn’t through just emails and Canvas reminders.  

One of the faculty liaisons of the program, Mariel Meier, stood on the DEI task force when the concept was first proposed in order to address various issues seen amongst incoming students. She conveyed that the overarching goal was to put an emphasis on connectivity and make resources on campus more available. Meier recognized that students, especially first-generation students, faced difficulties when navigating the university and locating support needed as well as noted the lack of a strong community in strictly academic settings, like those born from sports or extracurriculars.

Freshman Erin Jarrett, a first-generation student herself, echoed these complications Meier and the other faculty observed, finding herself stuck, in a sense, with no prior knowledge and unable to ask her family for help on college-related questions. Even so, she discovered that the course and interactions with her peers greatly assisted in the transition, filling in the gaps she otherwise may have struggled with.

“It definitely helped with being in a room with a bunch of people that you’re normally not in a class with [of] different majors,” Jarrett expressed. “I did become friends with like two people in it. And now, with other people who are in it, if you see them walking around campus, you’ll say ‘Hi’ to them. Having someone like Wynne [Kelly] who was a student mentor, having her help and be someone who has already been through Oglethorpe also helped out.”

Despite not being a first-generation student, freshman Zoya Beeman also emphasized the course’s social impact. 

“Being in [FYS], not really having many people you may know in your year, you have people you recognize on campus and be like ‘Oh they were in my first-year seminar class,’” Beeman said. “I feel like it's beneficial even if you didn't talk to them or anything. You can just see them and have that instant connection.”

On the other hand, for some students, though not expecting to take a class like FYS, freshman Kyla Baker identified the positive impacts the course and related work had on their habits. Particularly, Baker noted an improvement in her study skills, in not procrastinating as often, and in setting goals for herself, including the importance of asking for help when needed. 

From the mentor perspective, now-senior Adeline Horton reflected on her experience mentoring in 2022 for an FYS class led by the Dean of the Hammack School of Business, Dr. Stephen Craft, her role as a resource to her mentees, as well as the unique opportunities provided to the students. Some of the projects she helped facilitate included building an academic calendar, forming a four-year plan, administering aptitude quizzes, and checking in with her mentees. 

“[FYS] gives [students] a good moment to scale in to college,” Horton said. “I think the hardest thing coming into college is that you're 18 years old. Sometimes you're not even that old. You pick this major that you think you like, but who's to say? And then you sit in FYS and it gives you the chance to actually deep dive into your major. And then you get to determine from there like, is this the right path for me? And I think that that's great and so worthwhile.”

In general, according to Feldman, “students who participate in FYS have demonstrated gains in academic achievement and grades; civic engagement; intercultural competence and multicultural awareness; positive relationships with faculty, staff, and peers; involvement on campus; and development of academic interpersonal and life skills.” To the degree she expressed, Horton also noticed these effects in her students. 

“It was cool to see the way that the class impacted them and seeing who cared more about college, who cared less,” Horton said. “Because there were students that came in on the first day and sat in the back row and leaned back in their chairs and kicked their feet up. And then, by the end, they’re doing a great job; they’re trying really hard at this project, their final presentations, and at making connections with Dean Craft and making connections with me.”

Horton encouraged others to if given the opportunity, become a mentor. 

“I'm not the kind of person that's going to just talk something up when I don't believe in it, but I do think that it's a good program and I think that Oglethorpe is doing something right and I'm eager to hear about how the program continues to grow and hopefully succeed,” Horton said. “Between the relationships you’ll get with the faculty that are the directors of the program, or the faculty that you work one on one with, down to the mentors or the mentees, its a really cool experience.” 

According to Meier, not many changes in the program were made this year compared to its first launch, though they did substitute out some modules and programs to better fit the needs and gaps they identified, as well as increased the amount of training faculty received. Looking at how this fall only 60-70% of freshmen were enrolled in a FYS course, Meier hoped to expand the program to encompass all first-years in the future. 

“I really hope that we look at the First Year Experience holistically and kind of start to reimagine it from the ground up, thinking first about how students interact with their faculty mentors and their peer mentors during the summer,” Horton offered. “Maybe reimagining what that first-semester class looks like [and integrating it] into the experience students have instead of just an add-on. This is really the beginning of the relationship that the students and faculty are building.”

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*This article was written as an assignment for COM-240-001: Intro to Newswriting (Fall 2023)