Attention: The Writing Center is now located at Library North 2411.
Welcome to the Writing Center
We tutor all students, from all disciplines, on all assignments
The Writing Center provides free tutoring in college writing for all students. Our excellent tutors are available Monday-Friday to assist you with any assignment from any class—essays, arguments, research papers, reports, analyses, editorials, proposals, abstracts, and lab reports, with critical reading, developing presentations, and citing sources.
Our friendly tutors are here to help every student from every college and school—native speakers and ESL, undergrads and grad students—to become a better writer. We guide and advise you as you work on your paper.
There are two ways to use our tutoring services:
1. Schedule your appointment online here
2. Drop in during Writing Center hours
What Tutors Do
Provide insight to college-level writing as we assist students with the following:
- Understanding the assignment
- Writing with audience and purpose in mind
- Topic selection and narrowing
- Focusing a thesis
- Choosing credible source material
- Integrating source material and using academic citation styles such as APA, MLA, Chicago
- Understanding US conventions of Intellectual Property
- Developing logical structure
- Recognizing and resolving sentence-level problems
- Crafting flow, transitions and style
- Choosing appropriate words
- Developing presentations
What Tutors Don't Do
- Fix the paper
- Proofread or copy edit
- Comment on a paper without the author present
Custom Services
The Writing Center can also aid in the development of material customized for the particular writing instruction needs of any group, department, college, or school.
Phone:
607-777-6725
Location:
Library North 2411
Around the corner from the Harpur College Dean's Office
Hours:
Monday-Thursday 10-4:00, Friday 10-3:15
Please note that tutoring is not available at times when classes are not in session.
Tutoring is also unavailable during winter and summer sessions.
Barrett Bowlin is the Director of the Writing Center and has been teaching for the Writing Initiative since 2008, when he was a graduate student in the doctoral program. He writes short stories and creative nonfiction, with work appearing in such journals as Ninth Letter, Hobart, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, Bayou, and War, Literature, and the Arts.