The Death of a 'Writing Center'?

March 30, 2016 by Thomas Spitzer-Hanks

Two weeks ago today the North American writing center community was shocked and saddened to hear that the University of British Columbia, one of the largest and oldest universities in Canada, ranked among the 50 most reputable universities in the world by U.S. News & World Report, Times Higher Education, and The Academic Ranking of World Universities while educating 58,000 students on two campuses that occupy nearly 15,000 acres, plans to close their writing center in September 2016.

Featured Center: The Writing Center at Mississippi State

March 23, 2016 by Thomas Spitzer-Hanks

Today we are restarting another feature from vintage Praxis: the Featured Center. This feature's original purpose was to provide an opportunity for writing centers to share information about their operational practices and the philosophy behind them; today's center, The Writing Center at Mississippi State, has very generously shared a great deal of information that not only offers other centers the opportunity to think critically about their own operational practices but about why those choices were made. AXIS would like to thank Stacy Kastner, Rich Raymond, Kayleigh Few and Sava Kolev for their cooperation.

Lamb Kebab in the Writing Center

March 09, 2016 by Thomas Spitzer-Hanks

This week I received another reminder that there is very little in this hyperconnected world of ours that doesn’t eventually figure in an encounter between writer and writing center consultant. The writing center is the kind of place where a consultation devoted to lamb kebab and the mechanics of writing ends up also being about the difficult, hazardous aspects of human sociality.