Writing Center News from Walter Labonte

The Writing Center at Lebanon Valley College is interested in taking on additional dimensions and rebranding ourselves. We want to be known as the place writers go to write, not just where clients come to work on papers with skilled tutors.

Toward that end and in conjunction with our mission to “make better writers, not just better papers, the Center will be hosting on April 6 at 6 p.m. an evening of readings by students and faculty in the Center. We hope to make this an annual event and to have more participants each year. This will be a forum where writers get to try out their work before an audience. This dovetails nicely with the new English Department concentration in creative writing. We invite students from all disciplines, however, to participate, either as a reader or a member of the audience.  We hope, in the short range, to provide space where writers and writing groups may come to meet.  Eventually, a connection with local writers can be established where we can involve these community members in readings of their works as well.

Also new this year is our Writing Center Facebook page. The external visiting committee that reviewed our self-study suggested that we needed to be more in tune to the way today’s student connects to others, including through the use of social media.

We welcome any suggestions from faculty, staff, or administrators by posting comments on our wall on that page. The tutors are excited about other writing centers “friending” us and establishing relationships around the world.

In the pilot stage is a revamped and condensed version of our training program  for out tutors which we hope to have published in the Tutor Column section of the Writing Lab Newsletter, a juried publication of the International Writing Center Association edited by the world-renown scholar in writing center work, Muriel Harris, who is one of the listed friends we have on our Facebook page.