Tutoring Center Parties The ‘Write’ Way
DANIEL DURBIN
THE SIGNAL
This fall semester marks the 20th anniversary of the UHCL Writing Center, and like most significant birthdays, a party will be held to both show appreciation and celebrate all the work the staff and tutors have accomplished in that time.
The birthday bash will take place Friday, Nov. 15, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Writing Center, located in suite 2105 of the Student Services Building.
The event will host a multitude of word-based board games such as Apples to Apples, Boggle and Scrabble to keep all in attendance entertained.
A prize drawing will be featured at 2:15 p.m. Any time a student has utilized tutoring sessions at the Writing Center throughout this semester, his or her name has been entered into the drawing. Students are limited to two tutoring sessions per week, allowing the possibility of two drawing entries per week for the prize contest.
Twenty prizes will be given away, including shirts, coffee mugs, literary action figures, a writing journal and one $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble. One lucky grand-prize winner will take home a brand-new Kindle Fire HD. Students do not have to be present in order to win a prize. An email will be sent out after the event announcing all the winners, who can later come by the office to grab their bounty.
Free snacks and beverages will be available in the Writing Center throughout the event as well. Perhaps most notably, Writing Center Director Chloe Diepenbrock will bake her campus-wide famous mocha raspberry torte.
“Most people who have been here a while know about my mocha raspberry torte,” Diepenbrock said with a smile.
When it was first established in 1993, the center was confined to a 400-square- foot classroom within the Bayou Building. When the Student Services Building was constructed in 2004, the center was relocated into a spacy 2,000-square-foot room on the second floor filled with computers and tables for students’ use to unleash their creative writing potential, as well as a plethora of literature art in the form of sculptures, sketches and pictures.
The spatial expansion of the center has proved beneficial as the number of tutoring sessions continues to grow.
Diepenbrock declared the usage of the Writing Center by students has grown every year since its first semester in service. She continued, saying that between 2009 and 2013, there has been a 16 percent increase in tutoring sessions, with more than 3,500 sessions occurring between the fall of 2012 and the fall of 2013. More interestingly, she said, there has been a 27 percent increase in usage this semester alone, totaling 900 tutoring sessions in the first seven weeks of fall classes.
The Writing Center began online tutoring in the fall of 2012, which allows students to schedule an appointment and talk with tutors online in order to gain instant feedback rather than doing it face-to-face or through email. Since then, “Sixty-six percent of students have transferred from email to online chat,” Diepenbrock stated.
Katie Hart, program coordinator for the Writing Center, expects those numbers to skyrocket with the forthcoming downward expansion in the fall of 2014, which will admit freshmen and sophomores on campus for the first time in the university’s history.
“[Professor Diepenbrock] found that about 50 percent of the usage at other centers is from Freshmen,” Hart said. “Because of this, we expect a pretty major increase in visits. We will need more space, more tutors and definitely more funding in order to handle this.”
Up to this point, the Writing Center has employed more than 200 tutors to help students with their writing skills in its 20 years of service.
Whether current students hope to win a prize drawing or they just want to unwind for a couple hours and enjoy some food and fun, the Writing Center staff encourages everyone to visit and partake in its anniversary bash.
