Mission Statement

In order to foster and honor diverse voices, we serve all writers at Oklahoma State University and in the surrounding community through collaborative writing consultations, a variety of writing-focused programs and partnerships, as well as community engagement projects. Our staff and tutors are committed to the land-grant mission, which emphasizes instruction, research, and outreach to foster agency and literacy for all people. Inclusion, equity, and accessibility are integral values at the center of our everyday practices that continue to shape our mission, our pedagogy, and our own learning environment.

What We Do

We help you understand and practice many strategies effective writers use—from brainstorming to drafting to editing techniques.

Whom we serve

The Oklahoma State University Writing Center is here to serve the OSU community. We aim to develop effective communication regardless of skill level or background.

Writers

Here at the Writing Center at Oklahoma State University, we value and serve all writers at OSU. Our belief is that every writer, no matter the stage of their career or the stage of their writing, can benefit from having a conversation about writing with our tutors. The writers who make up our center are our own tutors, who are also OSU students, as well as the rest of the OSU population, such as faculty and staff members. Regardless of the stage of their career, they all have experience knowing where writers may struggle or where they may need help in their own writing. Alongside reaching the students, faculty, and staff at OSU, we also serve the writers of the Stillwater community. Some of the writers we serve in Stillwater range from elementary school children in community engagement programs to adults working on resumes and cover letters. Our outreach extends across campus and the community into the digital world, because although our center mainly revolves around face-to-face sessions, we also provide online consultations to ensure that all OSU writers, whether they’re studying abroad or are commuter students who need distance writing assistance, can still benefit from having a conversation with our tutors. We want to ensure that our center strives to serve and reach all members of the OSU and Stillwater communities in order to provide writing support through various modes.

Consultations

The Writing Center is a space of collaboration and embraces a relational-based pedagogy that focuses on the importance of peer tutoring. In the Writing Center, our tutors are also writers and readers you can trust to try out ideas on, to ask questions you’re grappling with, or to be a second pair of eyes to help refine your writing through discussions about clarity, syntax, and style. We read anything you’re writing, from web design projects and blogs to conference presentations to senior thesis projects. In a consultation, you meet individually with a writing tutor (face to face or online) and can receive guided feedback at any point in your writing process, from brainstorming to polishing. We believe in collaborative learning, and our tutors are grounded in writing center theory and pedagogy to help you with your writing through guiding questions; an understanding of genre, purpose, and audience; a focus on writing as a process; and revising techniques in order to best support you both with the paper and as a writer. We view our sessions as conversations and believe in the power of talking about writing in order to empower ourselves as thinkers and writers; through conversation, negotiation, learning with and from difference, and critical collaboration, we aim to foster agency and self-efficacy in our writers. We ask that you come in with any materials you’re working with and be prepared with specific questions. However, we know that sometimes it’s difficult to know where to start, and our tutors can help you with that, too!

Community engagement

The Oklahoma State University Writing Center collaborates with a variety of groups within the Stillwater community to bring free, educational programs to the public. Tutors have the opportunity to participate in community engagement programs, working with all age ranges and disciplines of writing. The program’s aims are to improve others’ literacy and professional development skills through writing center pedagogy. We encourage mutual respect and active listening for co-learning outcomes. Community engagement events are tailored to special interests or needs within the community, and bring value to the learning experience. We believe community engagement is meaningful and important work to create rewarding experiences for the volunteers and program participants through partnerships with schools, museums, libraries, and other community services and programs in Oklahoma.

tutors

The Oklahoma State University Writing Center is uniquely qualified to discuss writing at all stages and with all writers because we employ tutors from a variety of backgrounds. Our writing staff is comprised of English graduate students, Writing Across the Curriculum graduate students (WAC), and undergraduate students. Many of our graduate students are experienced instructors, researchers, leaders, and organizers. Our undergraduate students are involved across campus in different majors, research projects, student organizations, and campus leadership. Through the Writing Center, our tutors are involved in consultations, inquiry groups, research projects, workshops, presentations, and community engagement. Leadership and professional development experiences are also available through facilitating mentor groups, working as assistant directors, and leading research projects. Through an ongoing curriculum focused on pedagogy and writing, and staff education that’s built on relevant readings, our tutors are well-versed in pedagogy and effective ways to talk about and teach writing. We recognize and promote writing in all fields of study and work, which is why we bring in writers from diverse fields to meet the needs of our university.

Now taking applications! email a resume, a cover letter, and an example of your writing to writingcenter@okstate.edu.

Land-grant mission

Oklahoma State University is a land-grant university. Land-grant universities were started from the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890, where federal land was given to build universities in more rural areas in order to make education more accessible, and included more practical majors such as agriculture. The three primary values of land-grant institutions are research, instruction, and outreach/extension. At the Oklahoma State University Writing Center, we embrace all three components of the land-grant mission.

Instruction occurs in our sessions as both the tutor and writer work together and learn from each other in our table sessions. We also lead several workshops each semester on various topics, from writing an abstract to how to organize and get started on a senior thesis. In addition to workshops that support writing instruction in and outside of the classroom, we also provide instruction in writing retreats and writing fellows programs. These events support writing for undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and staff.

Research is another important component of the Writing Center. One of the ways our tutors are actively involved in research is through inquiry groups, which are tutor-driven groups that meet to research and discuss different topics that relate to the Writing Center, such as working with writers in STEM fields, multilingual writers, and antiracism. Our tutors present their research at conferences and publish their work.

Outreach/extension is an essential component of land-grant institutions, and the Writing Center embraces that extension and sees it as an integral part of our social justice mission. The Writing Center has several community engagement projects in the Stillwater community, where we get the opportunity to partner and work with community members of all ages.