The Writing Center is located in Room 203 of the Academic Building.

The Mission of the Writing Center

The Writing Center at Roxbury Community College is committed to empowering students across all disciplines to write essays and research papers whose form, grammar, and expression reflect the accepted standards of American English while valuing the unique and individual voice and perspective of the diverse cultures and ideologies of its student body.

The History of the Writing Center

Members of the English Department began to see a need to develop a Writing Center where students could access support in their writing and faculty could share ideas, concerns, and best practices in the teaching of writing. Their vision became a reality with funding from a Campus Participation and Improvement Grant. The Writing Center acquired technology (26 computers, printers, and a video projector) and became fully operational in 2000. Professor Nancy Teel was the administrator of the grant, and Professor Bette Steinmuller served as the first coordinator.

Professor Teel took over the Coordinator position and remained until 2002, when she returned to full-time teaching. Professor Judy Kahalas was appointed in 2002 and remains in that position.

An Overview of the Writing Center

The Writing Center has 23 student computers, 2 faculty computers, and two printers. It also has a scanner and an LCD projector for faculty use.

Options:

Open Lab: Students may use the Writing Center whenever there are seats available during open hours. If a class is in session, a student may enter with the permission of the professor teaching the class.

Reserved: Classes often use the Writing Center. This is arranged with the Coordinator and scheduled in advance. During this time, only the scheduled class may use the Center.

Workshops and Presentations: The Writing Center frequently offers workshops and presentations that are planned to support specific curricula. For example, English Composition classes may be working on research papers. The Writing Center will offer workshops that enhance classroom teaching (e.g. Writing a Strong Thesis Statement, Internet Research, etc.). It also offers presentations on a variety of interdisciplinary topics: Using Microsoft Word and Basic Word Processing, Is an Online Course for You?, Using PowerPoint for your Presentation, etc. For an up-to-date list of our presentations, click on the link, Presentations.

Individual Appointments: The Writing Center offers individual tutoring to those students who request additional support in writing college papers. In order to access this service, students should fill in the Request for Tutoring Form that can be printed from this site. Bring the form to the Writing Center and you will be given an appointment. At this appointment, you must bring the following: the assignment from the professor, a storage device (Flash or Floppy), and the work you have done to date. Be prepared to ask the tutor specific questions about your writing. Some examples of appropriate questions are the following:

• How can I write a strong conclusion?
• Is my paper organized around a controlling idea?
• Is the thesis statement supported throughout the paper?

Do not expect to have the Writing Center tutor correct your grammar and edit your mistakes! Our philosophy is to teach you how to recognize and correct your own mistakes!

Drop-in: Students often have “emergency” situations in which they need immediate feedback on a paper. Although we believe that you should have assignments completed with sufficient time to carefully review them, we do recognize that this can happen. You can drop in and request help at any time during Open Lab; however, you need to be prepared to wait.

On-Line Tutor: The Writing Center is fortunate to have access to eduspace, an interactive web-based learning environment that has an online tutor. Students who want thorough feedback with strong recommendations should become familiar with this site. You simply upload your paper from a storage device and wait 24 hours. Then you will need to come back to the Writing Center to access the tutor’s markup of your essay. This service is only available in the Writing Center. Please ask for instructions on how to use it.

The Gateway Gazette

The Gateway Gazette is the student newspaper of Roxbury Community College. It represents the voice of the student body, its staff reporters, and members of the college community who wish to contribute articles. There are many ways in which students can participate in the school paper: reporting, soliciting advertisements, helping with copy and layout, distribution, record-keeping, etc. If you wish to be part of the staff or if you wish to contribute an article for publication, please contact us at www.gatewaygazette@rcc.mass.edu.

Helpful Websites

The Writing Center has software as well as web-based programs that help students throughout the process of writing papers. Students can practice grammar, punctuation, and the mechanics of writing. For example, if your professor has marked up your first draft by noting you have a problem with run-on sentences, you can do practice exercises until you feel confident that you have mastered this problem. If you want to develop better paragraphs, you can practice that as well. Some programs that are available for students to use in the Writing Center are listed below:

Expressways:  This interactive site helps students learn to develop cohesive and focused paragraphs using specific rhetorical formats such as comparison and contrast, examples, etc.

Bibliomaker:  This program sets us the Works Cited page for MLA documentation or the References page for APA documentation. Students can enter the necessary data and print out a page that will be correctly formatted and ready to attach to their papers.

Eduspace: This interactive site is provided by Houghton Mifflin Company, and it is available to students in every discipline. In addition to tutorials in grammar, mechanics and punctuation and in writing in general, including research writing, it has quizzes, practices, and a writer’s handbook, Digital Keys for Writers. Another feature of the site is the online tutor. Students can fill out a form online, upload their paper from a storage device, and return the following day to retrieve it. The marked up copy from the online tutor generally has excellent recommendations for students to improve the paper prior to submitting it for a grade.

In addition to these websites, the Writing Center recommends other websites that students can use from their own computers or from PCs anywhere on campus. Please explore this list: