Teachers College: The Writing Center
by Sybil Maimin

Tucked into the basement of the stately red brick Gothic building that is Columbia University’s Teacher’s College (TC), the Graduate Writing Center is a seven-year old indispensable resource for students who need to hone their written-language skills. Utilized mainly by TC and Columbia College students, the Center is also open to members of the community and has had clients ranging from elementary school children who want to develop good habits and techniques to professionals who need help translating foreign language journal articles into proper English. The Center’s services include private tutoring for higher education students and for elementary, middle, and high school students as well as workshops and dissertation editing. Currently, the Center, which has about 200 clients, is one of only three graduate schools in the nation with a writing center.

Tutors, who work one-on-one with clients, are TC students studying in relevant fields such as Applied Linguistics, English Education, TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages), and Gifted Education. They are well versed in styles of documentation for research papers, particularly the popular APA style. Tutors focus on specific writing tasks, helping a client find and correct errors and develop strategies and approaches that can be applied to future assignments. They will look at organization, transitions, sentence structure, and grammar. They do not proofread or copy edit. Cara Tuzzolino-Werben, a TC student in Applied Linguistics, who is assistant coordinator at the Center and matches clients to tutors after assessment interviews, explains that the program is process oriented. “If you are struggling, you have to understand that writing is a process as well as a technique. Breaking it down makes it easier. Writing a paper is a continuum. It is drafting and revising. In the collaborative relationship, the client writes a paper, discusses it, revises it, rewrites it, and perhaps discusses it again.” Tutoring for younger students depends upon individual needs and can be related to school assignments, writing-test preparation, college application essays, or developing useful skills. The only copy-editing done at the Center is for final-stage dissertations.

John Young, a TC doctoral candidate and part-time math teacher at Hunter College High School’s after-school program, is one of 20 tutors at the Writing Center. The needs of his clients vary from the “right” way to gather the all-important literature review in a research paper to the challenges faced by non-native English speakers. He tries to be patient and supportive. “Teaching and education are my life’s work,” he exclaims. “Working here is a joy.” Tuzzolino-Werben shares his enthusiasm and credits director of the Center, doctoral candidate Dana Zaskoda, for setting the standard with “her really rigorous approach to writing.”

In addition to the one-on-one options, three-to-four hour workshops, open to the community, focus on relevant issues in academic writing, such as getting started, organizing, grant writing, research skills, grammar, referencing and bibliography, and punctuation. Tutors teach the workshops, which are kept small at 6 to 8 members. Workshops are held at the Center. Individual tutoring can take place at any time and place convenient to both client and tutor.#

The Center is self-sustaining and charges fees for its services. Rates are hourly and must be purchased in 3-hour blocks. For more information, call (212) 678-3789.

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