Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 23, No. 2 (2026)
Faculty Perceptions of the Writing Center: Oral Histories from First-Year Composition
Mekenzie McElroy
Florida State University
mlm25@fsu.edu
Abstract
Faculty attitudes and teaching practices significantly influence how students understand and engage with writing centers. This project uses oral history interviews with three first-year composition instructors to explore how their experiences, knowledge, and attitudes inform the ways they incorporate the writing center into their teaching. The participants (a graduate teaching assistant, a non-tenure-track instructor, and a tenured professor) shared stories that revealed how familiarity with the writing center often developed slowly and was shaped by visibility, personal relationships, and firsthand opportunities to see the center’s work. As their understanding deepened, so did their trust in the writing center’s pedagogical role, which influenced how they framed the writing center in their classes. While each instructor valued the center as a partner in supporting student writers, they differed in their approaches to integrating it into their courses, reflecting broader tensions over required visits, extra credit, and student motivation. These narratives highlight the importance of building and sustaining faculty-writing center relationships through consistent outreach, shared pedagogical values, and increased visibility, which can help writing centers that have been pushed to the margins of institutional life move toward a more central role in writing instruction.
Keywords: faculty perceptions, first-year composition, oral history methodology, student engagement, faculty-writing center collaboration
Introduction
First-year composition courses are often where students first develop the writing strategies they will use throughout college. These courses not only introduce students to academic writing expectations but also connect them to campus resources designed to support their growth, including the campus writing center. Writing centers often offer one-on-one consultations, classroom visits, workshops, and online materials to help students reflect on and improve their writing. But despite the range of support they provide, in many institutional contexts, writing centers are still significantly underused, especially by students in their first year of college (Bowles 14; Masiello and Hayward 57). This underutilization presents a challenge for both instructors and writing center staff, who must navigate students’ perceptions, misconceptions, and motivations to foster greater engagement with these resources.
Faculty attitudes and teaching practices can have an influence on how students understand and engage with writing centers. When instructors view the writing center as a meaningful partner in helping students grow as writers, they are more likely to help combat the perpetuated notions that writing centers still function as remedial services (Carino 105-106). Instead, they tend to talk about it in class, recommend it to students, and frame it as a valuable resource, not just for struggling writers, but for anyone looking to improve. However, not all faculty members share this positive view. Some do see writing centers primarily as remedial spaces meant for struggling students and can unintentionally discourage students who do not perceive themselves as “struggling” from seeking help. Others may simply be unsure about what the center actually does or what tutors can help with. These misunderstandings, whether based on outdated assumptions or a lack of familiarity, can potentially make it harder for students to take advantage of the support available. For first-year students in particular, many of whom are still adjusting to the expectations of college-level writing, those mixed messages can make the writing center feel irrelevant or even intimidating, which may lead to lower rates of use.
During my time as both an undergraduate and graduate peer tutor at the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) University Writing Center (UWC), I grew accustomed to this variability firsthand. Through informal conversations with faculty in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, I learned about faculty perspectives that were quite revealing and troubling. These conversations were meant to help the UWC learn how faculty were engaging with the center and how they could better shape the practices to support student needs. Most faculty expressed general support for the UWC, yet many were unsure about what actually happens in a consultation. When asked to describe its purpose or what a student might experience, several hesitated, offered vague answers, or admitted they were unsure. This gap extended beyond logistics to a deeper misunderstanding of the UWC’s pedagogical role in student development.
Only one instructor clearly articulated that the UWC isn’t a “fix-it shop,” a persistent misconception about writing centers that frames writing centers as remedial services for grammar correction and proofreading (North 435). Writing center pedagogy instead emphasizes student ownership, collaboration, and long-term skill development through conversation and revision (Lunsford 5-6). The instructor who made this distinction had prior first-hand experience working at the UWC, making her insight an exception rather than the norm.
More striking than the lack of knowledge was how it shaped faculty engagement with the writing center itself. One professor confessed, “A lot of my reluctance to really talk about the writing center a ton to my students is because I’m afraid I’m going to tell them the wrong information.” This hesitation revealed a significant barrier: when instructors are unsure about what the UWC offers, they avoid promoting it altogether. This silence matters. For many students, particularly in first-year composition, the instructor is their primary source of information about campus resources. If instructors say little to nothing about the writing center, there’s a chance that students may never know the center exists.
During my four years as a tutor, I saw the consequences of this disconnect. Students arrived with wildly different expectations: some expecting full-scale editing, others assuming they could drop off papers for review. Most had only heard of the UWC when their professor mentioned it in passing or offered extra credit, and even then, they did not know what to expect. Engagement with writing support was inconsistent and, seemingly, was closely tied to how (or whether) faculty discussed the UWC in class.
These experiences led me to consider how faculty perceptions shape student access to writing support. Instructors can either reinforce or challenge misconceptions, influencing whether students approach the center with curiosity or avoid it entirely. While existing research offers insight into faculty attitudes and strategies for promoting writing center usage, there is limited research focused specifically on first-year composition instructors. Given the pivotal role these courses play in shaping students’ academic writing identities, understanding how instructors in these classrooms promote writing center engagement and how their pedagogical values shape that process is especially important. Understanding this dynamic is crucial for creating equitable and effective writing support, particularly for first-year students still developing their academic identities.
This study examines how first-year composition instructors at UCF perceive the UWC and how those perceptions inform the ways they incorporate it into their teaching. By identifying strategies that effectively encourage student engagement, this research seeks to make writing centers more visible, accessible, and integrated into writing instruction, starting with the faculty who introduce students to them.
Writing Centers and Academic Success
The role of writing centers in nurturing both writing proficiency and overall academic success is well-documented. Research by scholars such as Jesús José Salazar, Joseph Zuccarelli et al., Frank Devlin, Lori Salem, Carol Trosset et al., and Muriel Harris demonstrates that writing centers not only improve students’ writing outcomes, but also promote independence and help close achievement gaps, particularly for underrepresented populations.
Numerous studies demonstrate the benefits of writing center visits on student performance. Salazar’s 2021 meta-analysis of 82 studies revealed that students who used writing centers performed 31.2% better on writing assessments than their peers who did not, with 40.6% of struggling writers showing significant gains (70). Similarly, Zuccarelli et al.’s 2022 study found that students with multiple visits achieved higher grades in writing-intensive courses in addition to their improved writing skills (7). The frequency of visits is crucial, as students who engaged with writing centers more regularly demonstrated greater improvements than occasional or non-users.
Data provided by UCF’s University Writing Center shows similar patterns. Between 2019 and 2024, students who visited the UWC while taking Composition II were twice as likely to successfully complete the course. Additionally, more data showed that students in four-year programs who used the UWC during their first year had a 96% retention rate, with 62.6% graduating within four years. Students who did not attend the UWC within their first year saw lower rates: a 91.8% retention rate, with 58.7% of these students graduating within four years. Though external factors influence these numbers and causality cannot be claimed, the data suggest a positive association between writing center engagement and academic success.
Importantly, the benefits of writing center usage extend beyond remedial support. Frank Devlin’s student survey revealed that even high-achieving students saw improvements in thesis clarity, organization, and argument structure following tutoring sessions (152). This supports Salazar’s argument that early engagement with writing center tutors can help students develop more effective writing practices, which they can carry throughout their academic careers (Salazar 76). These studies suggest that writing centers provide support for students at any skill level, enhancing both the mechanics and conceptual aspects of writing.
Writing centers also play a critical role in supporting overall academic achievement in underrepresented and diverse student populations. Studies indicate they can help close achievement gaps for first-generation, minority, and multilingual students (Salazar 77; Salem 158; Trosset 42). By offering targeted support in writing-intensive courses, writing centers can help “reduce the achievement gap in higher education for those diverse students who may be struggling writers” (Salazar 78). Salem and Trosset et al. emphasize that international students and English language learners disproportionately benefit from writing center visits (Salem 158; Trosset et al. 40). However, Salem also emphasizes the need to adapt traditional, non-directive writing center pedagogy to better support diverse learners (162). These studies suggest the importance of writing centers in promoting academic equity, as they provide resources that help level the playing field for students from diverse backgrounds.
Faculty Attitudes Toward Writing Instruction
Faculty attitudes toward writing significantly influence how writing is taught, discussed, and valued in the classroom. In writing-intensive disciplines, instructors often embrace writing as a process and emphasize revision, critical thinking, and development (Murray 17; Tobin 5). These instructors frame writing as a skill students develop over time and actively mentor students through the iterative stages of writing. As a result, students understand writing as a means of engaging with ideas, testing arguments, and refining their thinking.
Not all instructors share this perspective, though. Some instructors hold traditional views of writing instruction that emphasize grammar, mechanics, and adherence to formal academic standards. While this approach can be important for helping students build foundational skills, it may overlook the more complex and iterative aspects of writing, such as critical thinking, argument development, and revision (Tobin 11; Murray 20). Consequently, students in these environments may come to see writing as a formulaic task rather than an evolving process of discovery and intellectual growth.
Faculty Understanding of Writing Centers
Faculty understanding of writing centers, often shaped by their education and pedagogical values, significantly influences how they promote writing resources to their students. Those who see writing centers as collaborative, developmental spaces are more likely to integrate them into their teaching. Others, however, maintain a remedial view and perceive writing centers as spaces for grammar help or struggling students (Harris 36; Masiello and Hayward 57). This deficit model has the potential to stigmatize writing center use and deter students from seeking help.
This disconnect can hinder students’ willingness to seek help, particularly for those who already feel insecure about their writing abilities. At Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Malcolm Hayward found that many faculty saw grammar and punctuation as the writing center’s primary domain (5). This narrow view may lead some instructors to dismiss writing centers as irrelevant to their course goals. Similarly, Wendy Bishop notes that some instructors view writing centers as threats to their classrooms, and that others are “worried about peer tutors and the coordination’s potentially subversive interactions with their students” (32). This tension is familiar at UCF’s UWC, where tutors are trained to avoid overstepping by not attempting to teach course content or rhetorical concepts. These boundaries, while helpful, speak to a broader issue of mistrust or misunderstanding.
Further, a lack of awareness regarding the range of services offered by writing centers can contribute to misconceptions among faculty. Lori Salem suggests faculty may not fully understand how writing centers can complement their instructional approaches, leading to underutilization of these resources (152). Many instructors are unaware that writing center services often extend beyond tutoring sessions, including workshops, writing groups, and online resources. This gap in understanding can hinder effective collaboration between faculty and writing centers, ultimately impacting student engagement and success.
Strategies for Encouraging Students to Use the Writing Center
To encourage students to visit the writing center, instructors may benefit from intentional, strategic approaches. Successful strategies rely on faculty involvement, motivational techniques, and clear communication of the center's value. Two primary approaches emerge in the literature: writing center promotion in the classroom and the use of incentives and mandates to increase visits.
Promotion in the Classroom
Promoting the writing center within the classroom can normalize its use and reduce student anxiety. The instructor plays a key role in this aspect of learning because their perceptions of the writing center influence how they discuss it, and when they can help demystify the writing center, their students feel more inclined to take advantage of their services (Harris 40; Bishop 32). Ryan and Kane found that interactive demonstrations of writing center sessions helped students reframe the writing center as a supportive, nonjudgmental space (159). Similarly, UCF’s University Writing Center offers classroom visits where tutors come into their classroom and give a presentation about the UWC and its services, which can help alleviate some of the unease about visiting a tutoring service.
Incentives and Mandates
Several studies indicate that mandatory writing center visits significantly increase continued student participation (Clark 34; Bishop 37; Gordon 161). Irene Clark’s research emphasizes that students often need a direct push, such as a requirement from their teacher, to attend writing center sessions (34). This aligns with the idea that many students, though aware of the benefits of writing center support, often fail to visit voluntarily due to time constraints or lack of self-motivation. Similarly, Bishop’s survey findings show that students overwhelmingly attended the writing center when their instructor required or strongly suggested it, underscoring the critical role teachers play in driving engagement (37). Barbara Lynn Gordon found something similar, stating that, when students are required to use the writing center, they “come to appreciate a service that many would not have otherwise tried” (161). Additionally, Clark and Bishop found that a large percentage of students who did visit appreciated the support and were likely to recommend the center to others, suggesting that mandates help bridge the gap between awareness and action.
Integrating a writing center into a visit can also make writing center use feel integral rather than punitive. Bishop describes a TA who required students to visit the writing center for their first paper, and then write a reflection on the experience (38). This approach made the visit part of the course’s writing and revision process. UCF’s UWC supports similar efforts by providing faculty with examples of assignments that integrate writing center visits, both for required and optional credit, in a document titled “Integrating the University Writing Center into Your Course.” These tools help faculty integrate the center in meaningful, pedagogically aligned ways.
Methodology
This study documents and analyzes firsthand accounts of how three first-year composition instructors at the University of Central Florida perceive and incorporate the University Writing Center into their teaching practices. Grounded in oral history methodology, this research prioritizes the lived experiences and perspectives of faculty members to better understand their relationships with the UWC. This project was submitted to the University of Central Florida Institutional Review Board (IRB) under form HRP-250, Request for Not Human Subjects Research (NHSR) Determination, and was determined not to constitute human subjects research. Accordingly, this study was conducted in compliance with institutional guidelines for research ethics.
My choice of oral history was informed by my experience as a writing center tutor and by calls within the field for more narrative-based, qualitative work. Scholars have emphasized the need for research that captures the lived realities of writing center stakeholders, including their beliefs, memories, and motivations that shape how they interact with writing support (Hallman et al.; Smitherman 1; McKinney, Strategies for Writing Center Research 62). Oral history allows for the collection of reflective, participant-driven narratives that situate individual experiences within broader institutional and pedagogical contexts. As Carey Smitherman explains, this method creates space for stories that might otherwise go unrecorded, especially about institutional history and faculty engagement (1-2). Valerie Raleigh Yow similarly argues that the subjectivity in oral history is a strength, revealing how people make meaning of their experiences over time (25). That emphasis on reflection, interpretation, and context makes oral history particularly useful for this project.
Following Smitherman’s model from the Writing Centers Research Project, this study emphasizes the preservation and interpretation of faculty voices as a way to better understand the evolving role of the UWC at UCF. Rather than aiming for generalizability, the goal is to foreground the depth and complexity of individual perspectives. Participants are positioned not as data sources, but as co-narrators of a shared institutional story that reveals both the practical strategies instructors use and the pedagogical values that inform their engagement with writing support services.
The research is guided by the following questions:
How do these FYC instructors perceive the role and effectiveness of the UWC?
In what ways do these instructors incorporate the UWC into their courses, assignments, and instructional practices?
What barriers do these instructors perceive in encouraging student engagement with the UWC?
What suggestions do these instructors have for improving UWC services and faculty collaboration?
These questions reflect years of conversations I have had with both students and instructors, which made clear how faculty understanding of the UWC shapes if, when, and why students seek writing support. The methodology centers those instructor experiences, with the aim of bringing their perspectives into larger conversations about writing center integration and visibility.
Participants
This study includes interviews with three instructors who currently teach or have recently taught First-Year Composition courses at UCF. I selected participants from a range of instructional roles within the department: one graduate teaching assistant, one non-tenure-track instructor, and one tenured professor. Each has engaged with the UWC in some way, whether through assigning extra credit for visits, recommending the center to students, or participating in center-led workshops and events.
My goal in choosing this group was not to produce a representative sample in the statistical sense, but rather to gather a range of perspectives shaped by different levels of experience, job roles, and relationships to the UWC. Each instructor brings their own institutional knowledge, teaching philosophy, and set of assumptions about writing support, and it is those nuances I wanted to capture.
As implied in the previous section, imposter syndrome (which can admittedly strike at any stage of one’s career) and learning a new, specialized discipline can act as barriers to publication in writing center studies. In addition to these potential barriers, participants commented on several others, including lack of time, resources, and support; the ways writing center reviewer and editor ethos can extend the publication process for too long, leading to frustration, delays, and, sometimes, thwarted or wasted efforts; and a disconnect between the ways work is received at conferences and other informal venues as compared to its reception in scholarly journals, a disconnect that can also lead to extended timelines to publication and discouragement from publishing altogether.
Many participants, especially those in staff and non-tenure-track roles, stated they did not have the structural support or time needed to publish. For example, Janelle said she “didn't necessarily think about [publishing…] because I was still working, busy, and stuff, but just recognizing that there were people in writing centers who had the kinds of positions that allowed them to do much more scholarly type work, like do studies and get ethics approval, and that kind of thing, and be faculty members and do that kind of work. And that was not the kind of position that I had.” Bella also acknowledged the competing demands on directors’ time that can make publishing difficult. She “understands why people wouldn't [publish]. Because it is incredibly time consuming. And you know our center's been crazy busy this semester, and we've had a million workshop requests. And so it’s like, when things are like this, it's like, yeah, how would you have time for [publishing] on top of everything else.” She went on to say, “it's tough when [research and publication is] a relatively small percentage of what you're supposed to be doing for your job, but it's also something you really care about. It's like, ‘Okay, How am I gonna manage this?’” Similarly, Khloe stated that it is difficult to “balance in writing time and publication” when writing center directors’ roles are often filled “with turmoil” and “up in the air.” Yet, she notes that they must “carve out time” to publish in order to maintain their credibility on campus: “when people are questioning my professionalism, where people are questioning my belonging in a university or the existence of my line, or if I'm a teacher (right now I'm arguing for faculty status at my institution), and one of the things I have is, ‘well, I've actually published more than the majority of your core faculty, who haven't published at all since they started working here. Here are the plans that I have for my research agenda[...] I think that is helpful.’” These concerns are of particular significance in a higher education landscape where contingency is the norm and the value of research is being called into question.
While participants appreciated mentorship throughout the publication process, they also noted it could lead to delays and overly extended timelines that further discouraged them from publishing. In some cases, authors revised extensively through several rounds of peer review, only to have their piece rejected. For example, Bella explained that a manuscript was “reviewed [and revised] three times and ultimately rejected.” Bella noted she was “unhappy, to say the least, at the end” and would have preferred it if the journal would have rejected the article at the beginning “because I ended up spending a year and a half on this thing that will probably never see the light of day, because I have no interest in going back to it at this point.” Similarly, David submitted a piece to the same journal and was asked to revise and resubmit. After revising substantially, the piece had to go to new reviewers because the original reviewers were unavailable. The new reviewers asked for many of the revisions to be reverted, so David made substantial revisions again and sent it back for a third round of review. After “months of radio silence,” the piece was rejected. David decided to submit the manuscript to a different writing center journal and went through two additional rounds of peer review there, only for the journal to become unresponsive for more than 10 months. At the time of our interview–nearly four years after he had submitted his first draft to the first journal–his piece remained unpublished, and he had not heard back from the editors of the second journal. David called his experience “disheartening,” and while many factors, including inconsistent communication, backlogs, and reviewer turnover were involved, he also pointed to the mentorship model of reviewing as a potential stumbling block for authors. Writing center journals, he stated, have “almost cultivated a culture of hyper revision at that level where you know it’s almost micromanagement in some ways” (David).
While long timelines to publication and unresponsive journals are exasperating, they can also have tangible negative effects on scholars’ careers and can limit access and representation in the field. Long timelines to publication and extensive coaching through revisions can discourage newcomers and marginalized scholars from entering disciplinary conversations. David noted, “There needs to be a decent enough turnaround time” so we can get people, especially students and those new to the field, “acquainted with [publication], and to get a sense of what [the discipline] looks like” (David). Long timelines can also hinder career advancement. During the four years David waited to hear about his manuscript, he had gone up for tenure and promotion–without this publication on his CV. While this did not affect his case, it can have serious repercussions for many academics. In a different situation, for example, David decided to pull a manuscript from a writing center journal because the editors had been unresponsive for more than a year and their co-author did need the publication for their tenure and promotion dossier. When they resubmitted the essay to a general education journal, the co-authors received “feedback right away.” David lamented, “it sucked because I really believed in that piece. But there were material consequences for it not going through, and we had to make sure [my co-author] got [it] through [to publication for tenure]” (David).
Many participants also commented on the role of writing center conferences in publication. Most spoke highly of the feedback they received at these conferences and were grateful for activities such as publishing workshops and journal editor meet-and-greets. However, one participant observed that writing center conferences can set up unrealistic expectations for the publishing experience, which can also slow down the publishing timeline and be discouraging to newer authors. She stated, “it does feel like we end up having very different scholarly conversations, right, in a conference, which I hope we think of as part of our scholarly conversation that we have in our profession...some of them are very ‘scholarly’ scholarship and research and RAD…presentations. But we also have a lot more scope and space for human-to-human and curiosity about, like, ‘oh, what happens in your center? Our center is different.’ And then it doesn't feel like there's a lot of space for that in publications, which is, I don't know, maybe a bit odd” (Janelle). She went on to explain: “writing center conferences and professional associations [are] so welcoming, and are like, “yes, great presentation about this stuff that you're doing…just tell us about your program.’ [...] And then [there is a very different] response to a publication, which is like, ‘where's the scholarship, it needs to be grounded in the scholarship,’ which is not the experience we had at conferences or in other professional associations.” She expressed how this can be discouraging and “a bit jarring” (Janelle). Although none of the other interviewees spoke about this disconnect, it resonated with the two first authors who have both had similar experiences where their work was received much more positively at writing center conferences than it was in the peer review process.
Data Collection and Analysis
I conducted individual interviews over Zoom, each lasting around 50 minutes, and with consent, the interviews were audio-recorded. They were semi-structured and open-ended, allowing for rich, narrative responses while giving participants freedom to guide the conversation. I used guiding questions to prompt reflection on their teaching, their involvement with the UWC, and their departmental experiences, while encouraging them to share stories, memories, and reflections in their own words.
The following questions guided the conversations:
What kinds of experiences have you had with writing centers, as a student, instructor, or in any other role here at UCF or at any other university?
If someone new to the department asked you what the UWC is or what it is for, how would you describe it?
Can you tell me the story of your relationship with the UWC: how it started, how it has evolved, and how your view of the center has changed over time?
Can you walk me through a time when you brought the UWC into your teaching? Maybe through an assignment or extra credit? What worked? What did not?
Can you think of a student whose writing changed noticeably after visiting the UWC? What happened?
Did that experience shape your sense of what the UWC can (or cannot) do for students?
Have you ever had a moment where getting students to use the UWC did not go the way you hoped? What did that experience show you?
When you think about what the UWC does—or should do—how well do you think it fits with the goals you have for your students’ writing?
If you could tell the UWC one story from your teaching that captures what you and your students need most from a writing support service, what would it be?
When planning out your class, how did you decide to incorporate the UWC into your course?
After each interview, I transcribed the recordings following Smitherman’s recommendation. This practice helps capture the tone, nuance, and meaning that might be lost with outside transcription, especially when participants express sarcasm, hesitation, or emotion (Smitherman 3). After interviews were transcribed, I began analysis by closely reading each transcript, making initial notes on recurring ideas, surprising insights, and emotionally resonant moments. I compiled responses into a table organized by question, which allowed me to compare how instructors’ experiences and perceptions aligned or diverged.
Using this table, I conducted a thematic analysis to identify patterns across narratives. I tagged repeated phrases and concepts such as “student resistance,” “extra credit,” “collaboration,” “misunderstanding,” and “relationship.” These were grouped into three broader themes: experience with and knowledge about writing centers, attitudes toward the UWC, and integration of the UWC into the classroom. These themes allowed me to further dissect the interviews to look for things that might have been overlooked when creating the table.
Throughout the analysis, I treated the transcripts not as decontextualized data, but as reflective stories, guided by oral history’s emphasis on context, narrative, and meaning-making over quantification. Rather than abstracting findings, I aimed to preserve the specificity of each voice, noting where stories complemented or challenged one another. This interpretive approach revealed not only what instructors believe about the UWC, but how those beliefs formed over time and why they mattered to their pedagogy.
Oral Histories
This section presents the findings from three oral history interviews conducted with instructors who have previously taught first-year composition at the University of Central Florida. To protect the privacy of participants, pseudonyms are used throughout. The participants included one graduate teaching assistant (“Reagan”), one non-tenure-track instructor (“Nathan”), and one tenured professor (“Sara”). Each instructor brought a unique perspective informed by their institutional roles, teaching experience, and varying degrees of engagement with the University Writing Center, which shaped how they talked about the center’s role in student writing development. These stories reflect a range of insights, sometimes overlapping, into how faculty members understand, interact with, and integrate the writing center into their teaching practices.
Rather than aiming to generalize findings across the entire Department of Writing and Rhetoric at UCF, these oral histories prioritized depth and participants’ individual experiences. Open-ended conversation allowed instructors to articulate their understanding and perception of the UWC in their own words, eliciting reflection, memory, and personal interpretation in the process. The result is a set of narratives that reveal not only practical concerns, but also deeper insights into pedagogical values, assumptions, and institutional relationships.
In this section, I present the narratives of all three participants to discuss the three key points of focus: knowledge of the UWC, attitudes toward the UWC, and the ways in which the UWC is integrated into courses. These subsections allow for the cross-discussion of the experiences of these instructors, providing a fuller picture of their perceptions of the UWC.
Knowledge and Experiences
Across all three interviews, participants described their knowledge of the writing center as deepening only after entering professional or graduate-level writing instruction roles. Each instructor’s path to understanding the UWC reflects a broader issue in writing center scholarship: the center often only becomes visible and meaningful to instructors when they are either directly involved with it or have explicit opportunities to observe and reflect on its practices.
Sara
Reagan’s early interactions with writing centers as a student were, by her own account, forgettable. She described her early exposure to writing centers, both at Valencia College while completing her associate’s degree and at UCF as an English major, as minimal and “not worth recounting.” Like many students, she didn’t hear much about the UWC until she started taking classes in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, which houses UCF’s writing center. During this time, her sessions focused on drafting, refinement, and citations, but she referred to these encounters as “general and textbook,” noting that she did not truly engage with the center on a deeper level until she worked there for one semester while enrolled in ENC 4275: Theory & Practice of Tutoring Writing, the course required for all new tutors at the UWC.
Through this course and her three weekly required practicum hours, Reagan began to understand the writing center beyond its surface-level image as a generic tutoring service. She was able to understand the work tutors did outside of the standardized sessions she experienced and how the center functioned as a pedagogical and communal space. Reagan said that her relationship with the writing center “became a lot more nuanced and more frequent” once she became an instructor. For Reagan, teaching shifted her relationship with the UWC from passive observer to active partner, and it was that shift that shifted her view of the center to a meaningful resource for both her students and her teaching.
Nathan
Nathan expressed a somewhat similar trajectory. He didn’t recall the writing center being a part of his undergraduate experience, stating that his first interactions with a writing center were while he was completing his graduate coursework at UCF. During this time, he started to learn about its purpose and potential through conversations with those involved in the UWC. When asked to describe the UWC, rather than framing it as tethered to the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, he emphasized its reach across disciplines and levels of experience, describing it as “a resource for everybody at the university level, regardless of what they’re working on.”
This knowledge and understanding of the broader institutional role come directly from hearing from people who have spent years thinking about the UWC’s purpose and place in the university community. While observing former UWC Director Mark Hall’s composition course, Nathan noted his consistent promotion of the writing center as a university-wide resource, which first sparked this newfound understanding. Throughout his time working as an instructor in the department, Nathan has observed various community-oriented efforts made by the UWC that helped reinforce his understanding that the UWC is there for more than just helping composition students.
Sara
Sara’s experience was shaped by visibility and proximity. She did not hear about writing centers until late in her undergraduate education, when she was applying to graduate programs and had a friend who worked at her university’s writing center. During her subsequent graduate programs, she had minimal contact with the writing center, but she started to learn more about it and the practices of giving feedback to student writing because her dissertation chair was the writing center director. It was not until she arrived at UCF, where the University Writing Center was often praised and highly regarded, that she began to develop a deeper awareness.
When Sara first joined the faculty at UCF, the UWC was housed on the first floor of a building that no longer exists. She described being put off by the UWC’s physical space, which appeared undesirable and inaccessible. Her earliest impression of the space was less than inviting: “The door to the writing center looked like a fire door, like you shouldn’t be in there,” she recalled. That physical separation felt like a barrier to understanding the writing center’s practices, and she admitted to not sending her students because she “didn’t know what was going on in there” and “didn’t know what to tell them.” A few years later, the UWC moved to its current, more visible location, where most of the wall separating the space from the hallway is covered in large windows, creating a fishbowl effect. The new space allowed her to see the work of the center more clearly, and she was more open to learning about it, especially after conversations with the administrators and tutors who worked there. She noted, “Being able to talk to the tutors and learn about what was actually happening in the center... really helped. It was community that shaped the center and made it what it was.”
Attitudes
Despite different starting points, all three instructors viewed the UWC positively, seeing it as valuable for student development, collaborative learning, and pedagogical alignment. Their accounts suggest that attitudes toward the writing center are shaped not only by institutional messaging but also by personal interactions, with seeing the UWC in action reinforcing its pedagogical value and the importance of visibility and outreach in shaping faculty perceptions.
Reagan
Now an avid supporter of the writing center, Reagan emphasized that her appreciation for it grew in parallel with her development as an instructor. Equipped with her knowledge of the UWC’s pedagogical practices from her time in the tutor training course, she had a foundational idea of how it could work in tandem with her teaching. But, as she spent more time in the classroom, she began to see it not only as a place where students could get help with unfamiliar genres or citation formats, but as a partner in her own teaching, especially in moments when her students needed perspectives beyond her own.
Reagan’s positive attitude toward the writing center was reinforced throughout her semester of teaching, but especially so by an experience one of her students had when visiting the UWC. This student struggled with time management and organization, so Reagan was quick to encourage him to visit the UWC when an extra credit opportunity arose. After his session, the student mentioned how talking to the tutor helped him work through his ideas and ground him, and he felt more eager to write and complete what he could. For Reagan, hearing about this experience reinforced the idea that the writing center is helpful for things outside of writing, and students are receiving positive experiences that they can take with them, rather than just knowledge they can use to complete an assignment.
Nathan
Generally, Nathan feels an appreciation for the writing center and its work. He expressed that the UWC’s work mirrors his own teaching philosophy, particularly in how it emphasizes student decision-making, rhetorical inquiry, and engagement with writing as a process. He sees the center as a site of dialogic learning that complements his own goals for his course, and he values its role in shaping reflective and independent student writers.
Additionally, Nathan discussed the evolution of the UWC into a more outward-facing resource, increasingly focused on community engagement—a shift he considers significant. He recognized that the UWC goes beyond just helping students in their coursework and has evolved into an entity that is more centered on reaching out to the greater UCF community than it ever has been. Nathan spoke positively of this evolution, even commenting on his desire to attend one of the more popular community events the UWC hosts: the Halloween Open Mic Night. This recognition from someone outside of the writing center is rare and displays a true attentiveness to the ongoings of the UWC.
Sara
Initially skeptical, Sara came to value the UWC after seeing its practices firsthand and meeting tutors who told her about the inner workings and goals of the writing center. She described this as a turning point in her attitude toward the UWC because their emphasis on writing as conversation closely matched her view of writing as a community activity. Through conversations with her students who worked as tutors, she learned they have the experience, language, and tools to offer the kind of feedback that traditional classroom peer review often lacks. Sara stated that witnessing and engaging with students who were passionate about the community that shapes the writing center is exactly what makes her want to partner with the UWC and send her students there.
Another experience that helped her feel more confident in the UWC’s work involved a student with aphasia, a communication disorder that can impact spoken and written language. This student struggled with getting her thoughts to come out as she intended, resulting in writing that was not entirely clear or cohesive. Sara sent her to the writing center to see if there was any support the tutors could give her, and a tutor told her about using dictation tools to assist in her writing. This was something Sara had mentioned to her, but after hearing it from the tutor, the student seemed more willing to try it out. The resulting writing was noticeably better. There were still some issues with it, but it was more coherent, and the student was more confident in herself. The way this accessibility issue was handled pleasantly surprised Sara, and she now feels entirely comfortable sending students to the UWC without having to worry about following up with them on the access end.
Integration of the UWC into the Classroom
All three instructors valued the UWC as a pedagogical partner, but integrated it differently based on beliefs about motivation, autonomy, and classroom culture: Reagan emphasized structured support for difficult assignments, Nathan prioritized students’ internal motivation and choice, and Sara focused on exposure and relationships, presenting the writing center as one of several learning options.
Reagan
Reagan initially provided information about the UWC in her syllabus and encouraged students to visit, but she did not have it integrated into any of her assignments or tied to a grade. GTAs were encouraged to sign up for a time slot to bring their students to the UWC for a workshop of their choosing, so this is how Reagan opted to integrate the UWC into her course. During this workshop, she noticed that her students were engaged, asking active questions, and taking notes. She was pleased with the success of the workshop and remarked that she had students refer back to what they learned during that workshop throughout the semester.
Reagan decided to offer credit for a UWC visit halfway through the semester, when her students were struggling with a specific assignment. She recognized their need for extra support and created an extra credit assignment that required them to attend a session and reflect on the feedback they received. This encouraged a fraction of her students to go, but even then, she recognized that they were simply doing it for the extra credit and not applying what they learned to their assignment. Reagan noted that students would write what they were told to do in their required reflections and then would not follow through when working on their final draft. She expressed disappointment, but not surprise, with this outcome because she wanted her students to understand the value of the peer feedback they were receiving. However, she is hopeful they will take that experience with them as they continue through their time at UCF and maybe return to the UWC one day.
Nathan
Nathan, by contrast, avoids assigning points or providing course credit for writing center visits. He wants students to view the UWC as something worth seeking out on their own, not because they have to, but because they see the value in it. For him, requiring visits or offering extra credit risks undermining the center’s purpose by framing it as something students use only if there is a reward attached. He will still encourage specific students to attend if he feels they might need extra support, but he will not tie any sort of credit to visiting.
Instead, he invites tutors to do classroom visits, which are presentations a representative from the UWC gives to introduce the writing center and its services to the students. Because these are tutor-led, students get to actually see who they could be working with, putting faces to this entity they have likely only briefly heard about in class. Nathan mentioned the positive, inviting attitudes tutors have when they visit his classes, and credits that as part of the reason many of his students attend.
Interestingly, when discussing the support his students need, Nathan admitted there was a potential place for extra credit or points tied to an assignment. He acknowledged that the most important conversations he felt like he was having with his students were the ones where they got to think through their research topics and talk through some of the avenues to explore. Then, he mentioned knowing that these conversations could happen at the UWC and even started to say he wished there was a way to make that happen before stopping himself and admitting that it could be the extra credit or points that could get students there.
Sara
Sara’s practices fall somewhere between the others. When she last taught first-year composition, she was still reluctant to include the UWC in her course beyond a syllabus mention or referring a student. She was still unsure what the tutors did, what happened behind that “fire door,” and what to tell her students about the UWC. Without being able to tell her students that she was sure it could help them, she opted not to offer extra credit or any points toward an assignment for attending.
However, after a few years of learning more about the UWC and its practices, she has started to integrate it into the other courses she teaches in ways that can be used when she next teaches composition. For each major assignment, Sara offers her students the opportunity to visit the UWC to discuss the assignment as an alternative to one-on-one conferences. She wants her students to discuss their writing with someone outside of the course, so she tries to push them to go to the UWC for that perspective. She still has some students who opt to have the one-on-one with her, but she has noticed that, more recently, her students choose to go to the writing center.
Discussion
Across all three conversations, one of the clearest patterns was that instructors did not enter their roles with a full understanding of what the University Writing Center does. Instead, their knowledge of the UWC grew gradually, shaped by experience, observations, and personal relationships. Visibility was one of the biggest factors: Reagan’s experience tutoring in the center gave her firsthand knowledge; Nathan’s exposure to writing center work through his involvement in the department shaped his understanding; and Sara’s impression shifted when the UWC moved to a more visible, open location and she began to directly interact with tutors when they were her students. Each instructor’s understanding of the UWC became more nuanced once they had the opportunity to witness or participate in the center’s practices. This suggests that visibility, both physical and rhetorical, remains an important factor in how faculty come to understand writing centers.
This is far from a new development in writing center studies. This finding aligns with scholarship on the persistent “invisibility” of writing centers within academic institutions. In Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers, Jackie Grutsch McKinney argues that writing centers often operate on the margins of institutional awareness, described through generic narratives that obscure their actual practices (7). The oral histories in this project reflect that peripheral positioning: instructors’ knowledge grew through informal encounters, personal observation, and former employment.
Though their attitudes were shaped by different experiences, each instructor expressed positive views of the UWC. Reagan saw the center as a space that addressed student needs empathetically and promoted collaborative thinking. Nathan appreciated the UWC’s alignment with his teaching philosophy, particularly its focus on student-driven decision-making and reflection. Sara ultimately came to view the University Writing Center as a community-oriented space that mirrors her belief in writing as a social, dialogic process. In each case, faculty trust in the center grew when they were able to see how its pedagogy aligned with their own. Personal connections with tutors and staff—whether through classroom visits, faculty meetings, or in-session collaboration—helped reinforce this trust and moved the writing center from the periphery to a central pedagogical partner.
This trust-building process aligns with existing research that emphasizes the importance of shared pedagogical values and relationship-building between faculty and writing centers. As Lea Masiello and Malcolm Hayward describe while presenting the findings of a survey focused on the bridges between the writing center in the classroom, these networks of trust come out of discussions of “shared pedagogical beliefs about writing instruction” (73). When instructors perceive that writing centers share their commitment to student-centered, reflective learning, they are more likely to view the center as an ally rather than an add-on or alternative. This underscores the importance of writing centers actively cultivating faculty relationships as part of their outreach.
The integration of the UWC into their courses is where the instructors started to diverge the most, demonstrating varying strategies that reflect their broader beliefs about student motivation. Nathan deliberately avoids tying assignment points or extra credit to writing center visits, arguing that doing so might give his students the wrong message about the value of the UWC. He emphasized organic, peer-based encouragement instead. Reagan takes a more adaptive approach. Initially providing students with information and encouragement, she began integrating the UWC more formally after noticing where students were struggling. Sara admitted to barely mentioning the UWC in her classes during her early years at UCF because she was unfamiliar with it and didn’t want to send her students there without knowing what actually happens in the space. But now, after learning more about the UWC and being able to see the tutors in action, she has fully integrated it into her upper-level courses, encouraging students to visit the center as an option for feedback on major assignments. Despite these differences, all three instructors emphasized that students benefit most when writing center visits are framed as authentic, low-stakes opportunities for dialogue about writing, not as hoops to jump through.
The instructors’ varying strategies for integrating the UWC into their courses reflect ongoing tensions in writing center discourse around required visits and assessment. These instructors mentioned a desire for their students to get something out of their visits to the writing center, and followed it up with a disappointment that students often go just for extra credit and coast through the session without seeming to apply what they learned to their subsequent assignments. This conversation is not new. The drawbacks of requiring students to visit the writing center have been discussed since Stephen North’s “The Idea of a Writing Center,” where he states, “Occasionally, we manage to convert such writers from people who have to see us to people who want to, but most often they either come as if for a kind of detention, or they drift away” (440). It is difficult to get students to understand the value of the writing center if they do not attend tutoring sessions, but if they are not required to attend, or if they are and are begrudgingly going, they might not get the desired outcome, making it difficult to find the right balance between requiring and encouraging students to attend the writing center.
It is important to note the limitations of this project. As previously stated, these are just the accounts of three instructors in a department of more than 50 faculty, adjuncts, and graduate teaching assistants who all have their own experiences with, knowledge of, and perceptions of the University Writing Center. Additionally, the institutional context of this study is crucial to mention. Since the Department of Writing and Rhetoric split from the English Department and inherited the UWC in 2010, it has maintained a strong relationship with the center. This departmental support includes administrative collaboration, shared pedagogical values, and, in some cases, shared personnel, such as graduate teaching assistants who may tutor in the UWC as a part of their assistantships or faculty who have previously worked in the UWC or other writing centers during their graduate programs. As a result, the overwhelmingly positive attitudes expressed by participants may reflect this supportive environment rather than a broader institutional consensus. Future research that includes participants from a wider range of disciplines could provide a more comprehensive picture of how writing centers are perceived across the university and what barriers to integration exist outside of writing-focused departments.
Conclusion
This project began with a personal observation: faculty perceptions appear to significantly influence whether and how students engage with the writing center. Through oral history interviews with three instructors from the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, this study suggests that while perceptions of the University Writing Center are generally positive, they are not immediate or automatic. They are a result of deliberate relationship-building, pedagogical alignment, and increased visibility. Instructors who had opportunities to observe, participate in, or work within the UWC developed deeper trust in its mission and were more likely to recommend it to students in authentic, meaningful ways. They become not only advocates, but collaborators with the UWC.
These conversations provided three key insights that I feel are important for writing center practitioners to keep in mind when trying to cultivate relationships with faculty: (1) faculty members understand the writing center through continued, individual experiences; (2) reluctance isn’t always active resistance; and (3) writing center engagement is tied to pedagogical identity, not always their perceptions of the UWC.
Additionally, this research serves as a starting point for further examination into faculty perceptions of writing centers. This study focused on the perspectives of three instructors in a specific department at one university, but if there is a need for future research, this provides a foundation for research that considers faculty in different disciplines, potentially across various universities. This research could paint a fuller picture of the external perceptions of the writing center, which was a goal I had when I started looking into this line of inquiry in 2021. In this way, the project not only sheds light on current perceptions, but also lays the groundwork for a broader, more comprehensive understanding of how writing centers are viewed and valued across higher education.
The insight this project provides has broader implications for writing center practice and institutional strategy. It reinforces the idea that writing centers cannot afford to remain peripheral or passive in faculty engagement. Instead, centers should proactively cultivate relationships with instructors through sustained, dialogue-based partnerships that acknowledge faculty as co-stakeholders in student development. Tutor classroom visits, co-curricular programming, and even informal chats with instructors can serve as valuable ways to build trust and demonstrate pedagogical alignment.
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