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Jay D Sloan - Kent State University - From Praxis: "Consultants in the Kent State University Stark Campus Writing Center enter the "contact zone" in order to help each other and the writers they work with wrestle with diversity. Like many universities, Kent State University's Stark campus has taken "embracing diversity" as one of its primary initiatives."

"For students, personal statements and application essays are among the most difficult and most important documents they will ever write. They are difficult because they require both introspection and polish, and important because the writer may literally be competing for tens of thousands of dollars in a huge field of outstanding candidates. A writing tutor who has provided guidance on more than a thousand graduate applications, Joe Schall advises you on how to be competitive but not cocky, informed but not formulaic, openly creative yet professional. As you consider ways to write your way into your future, count on this website to help you grow and thrive in the process."

A copy and paste, comment-shaping tool for online aysnchronous consultations. Aims to help consultants address common surface, global, citation and plagiarism issues in online student work.

"The E-Consulting UBERdoc" is a comment-shaping tool for online asynchronous consultations. This document aims to help consultants address common surface, global, citation, and plagiarism issues in online student work.

""The E-Consulting UBERdoc" is a comment-shaping tool for online asynchronous consultations. This document aims to help consultants address common surface, global, citation, and plagiarism issues in online student work."

From Praxis: "Former university writing consultant Michael Erard has made a living as a writer and writing consultant outside the university. He shares his wisdom about the challenges and advantages of consulting in the wild. You don't need to be in a university-based writing center to do the writer-centered, process-positive, and culture-sensitive work of a writing consultant."

a discussion on the need for a supervisor to remain in the center in the evenings, after full-time employees have left for the day

"Using Regionally Oriented Materials in a Writing Center" (on dialect); "A Five-Minute Diagnostic for Writing Labs" (predicting student performance via error-finding exercise); reports from labs; "Handbook for Tutors" (description of an in-house training manual)

The WAC Clearinghouse, in partnership with the International Network of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs, publishes open-access journals, books, and other resources for teachers who use writing in their courses.

a discussion of placing peer tutors in writing classes (mentoring) see also: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=19770331 see also: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=24437343 see also: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=24564475 see also: http://lyris.ttu.edu/read/messages?id=24599558

The Journal of Response to Writing publishes papers based on research, theory, and/or practice that meaningfully contribute to an understanding of how response practices lead to better writing. JRW has three purposes: 1. Provide a venue for theorizing and reporting ground-breaking research on response to writing 2. Invite writing theorists, researchers, and practitioners to a venue to share their work with one another and colleagues in adjacent fields, most notably Composition, Applied Linguistics, and Foreign Language teaching viz a viz L1 and L2 writing 3. Provide new or inexperienced teachers with immediate suggestions for use in giving, encouraging, or managing responses to their students' writing

This article presents three case studies that closely examine various types of inter-actions taking place in writing center tutorials involving newly arrived pre-ma-triculated ESL writers. By learning what strategies tutors commonly use and how successfully the ESL writers negotiate their goals for the visit and the form and meaning of their text through this sample, this study aims to help identify what characterizes successful tutorials and what unique challenges English language learners might face when interacting with tutors. Results from these case studies show that it is not how many corrections tutors make or suggest for the students' papers, but how much the tutors engage their tutees in a meaningful dialogue that brings satisfaction to the ESL students. Findings also suggest that deliber-ate efforts should be made to equip ESL writers with necessary metalanguage to communicate their goals for their visit.

handouts on writing in various disciplines

Bell, Diana C., Holly Arnold, and Rebekah Haddock. "Linguistic Politeness in Peer Tutoring." The Learning Assistance Review 14.1 (2009): 36-54. From abstract: "use[s] politeness theory to analyze the developing tutorial relationship between students and peer tutors in a university writing center" (36).

crowdsourcing a list of software of interest to writing centers (note: since this is 2008 discussion all of these programs either exist in newer versions or are no longer in production)

from abstract: "in keeping with theory and practice of tutor training in inquiry-based pedagogy, ELL students and peer tutors vacillate between the linguistic dominant position, indicating that participants establish a collaborative and egalitarian environment. However, L1 tutors may experience dissonance because the agenda set by ELL students often focuses on surface features such as grammar and diction rather than on global revisions" (36).

"The WAC Clearinghouse provides access to the following books and books series. To date, more than 50 books are available on this site and additional books are in production. All books are available for free viewing and/or download. To view books, click on book covers, books series titles, or links in the new releases list."

a discussion of sign-in sheets, KRONOS, and other means of tracking tutors clocking in and out of shifts

The sign-up page for Commcenters, an international listserv for scholars and researchers interested in communication services in communication, writing, and multimodal communication centers. 

University of Washington Bothell Writing and Communication Center's extensive list of ESL Instructional resources, Young-Kyung Min who wrote all the resources offers the following: "Over the last four decades, the demographics in US institutions of higher education have rapidly changed with an ever-increasing enrollment of non-native English speaking students. The enrollment of non-native English speaking students on our campus has greatly increased since its establishment. Creating a global learning environment is one of the main learning goals for our campus; thus, it is very important for faculty to continue learning about the particular needs and concerns of our non-native English speaking students and the campus resources available to assist faculty in helping students with their needs and concerns. Please continue to visit this website as more resources will be added to this section."

The WAC Clearinghouse, in partnership with the International Network of Writing Across the Curriculum Programs, publishes open-access journals, books, and other resources for teachers who use writing in their courses.

From Neal Lerner's July 2011 message to WCenter: Folks, the latest issue (July 2011) of the Journal of Writing Research includes a very impressive study by James Williams and Seiji Takaku of the relationship between college students' self-efficacy, help-seeking behaviors, writing center visits, and writing performance. Here's a link to a pdf of the study: http://www.jowr.org/articles/vol3_1/JoWR_2011_vol3_nr1_Williams_Takaku.pdf Here's a snippet to take to your dean: "The analysis showed that those students who frequently obtained writing center tutoring received higher grades in composition than those who did not, regardless of their ESL or native-English-speaker status. The frequency of writing center tutoring seemed to be especially valuable for the ESL students, who outperform their domestic cohorts, receiving significantly higher grades in composition."