University of Connecticut Writing Center

University of Connecticut Writing Center

Thomas Deans and Kathleen Tonry

We never had to campaign to create our center. Instead, before either of us were hired, committees of faculty and administrators had already articulated a need for a substantial, faculty-led writing center within the context of a larger general education reform. We were then hired as an integral part of the writing component of that curricular reform. We included here an excerpt from UConn’s 2003 General Education Guidelines. This document frames the University Writing Center as part of larger general education effort. We have not been entirely faithful to the letter of this document—for example, we do not maintain an archive of all W syllabi and our tutors are predominantly undergraduates rather than graduate students—but we have been faithful to its spirit. This origin story led us to one of the conclusions in our program profile: that a particularly opportune time to found a large writing center/WAC hybrid like ours is when a curriculum overhaul is afoot.