Frequently Asked Questions

The Writing Center is a friendly, free service open to anyone with a USM ID. While we mostly see undergraduate students, we also support graduate students, staff, and even faculty through various writing projects.

 

The Writing Center is located in Cook Library 112, just behind where Starbucks used to be.

 

During the Fall and Spring semesters, the Writing Center is open Monday through Thursday from 10am to 6pm, on Fridays from 10am to 2pm, and Sundays from 3pm to 6pm. The Writing Center is closed on Saturdays and during any university-wide holidays and breaks. We are also closed for winter intersession and offer limited hours in the summer.

 

Yes! If meeting in-person isn’t possible for you, the Writing Center offers online appointments with streaming sessions during regular hours and asynchronous E-tutoring appointments for people who can’t access regular hours.

 

To make an appointment, go to usm.mywconline.com and create an account using you W ID number. Once you have an account, you’ll be able to access the Writing Center’s scheduler and click open an appointment slot to book a time that works for you. White squares signal that a spot is open, and when you book an appointment, it will be color-coordinated with the type of appointment you’ve chosen. You can click that appointment again to make changes to your appointment, access a web chat when it’s time for your online appointment, or to retrieve e-tutoring documents after the tutor is done working on your feedback.

 

Writing Center tutors include graduate and undergraduate students. The USM English department specially chooses graduates students to work in the Center. Undergraduates are only eligible to apply once they’ve completed English 335, a course meant to develop their ability as tutors.

 

The Writing Center can help with writing projects across all disciplines at USM. While all of our graduate tutors are in the English program, our undergraduate tutors come from across the university, including STEM courses, the arts, the humanities, and more. Even if your tutor is unfamiliar with your discipline, they are experts at helping with the writing process and finding information to support your writing project.

 

The Writing Center offers three kinds of sessions. When you make an appointment, the first dropdown menu will allow you to pick one of the following:

• In brainstorming sessions, visitors work with tutors in creative, relaxed ways to generate ideas, overcome anxieties that come with getting started, and make plans to move through a project on a timeline that works for them.
• In accountability appointments, visitors use the appointment to block out a time to do the work of writing. Tutors help set reasonable goals for the time and work alongside the visitor. Visitors benefit from “body doubling,” an effort that subconsciously encourages people to stay focused, while also giving the visitor the confidence to know that there is help if they need it.
• Feedback appointments enable visitors to discuss works in progress with a tutor for help with all levels revision, including structure, argument, and organization, and refinement, including final edits like formatting and grammar.
• If you’re not sure what kind of appointment you need, that’s okay! Your tutor can help you pick the option that works best for where you’re at.

 

For most appointments, you should have access to a description of the thing you’re working on (including prompts, rubrics or anything else provided in conjunction with the piece of writing) and the work you’ve done so far, no matter what stage it’s in. You should also have something to write with (pen and paper, print outs, or laptop computers work fine—phones are hard to work on and even more difficult to share). Depending on the situation, you may also want to have a way to access Canvas or the course syllabus.

The most important thing to do before coming is to think about the questions and concerns you have regarding the writing process and your own experience as a writer. The more thinking you’ve done about the kind of support you desire, the more a tutor will be able to figure out ways to help. The Writing Center is a judgement-free zone and the ultimate goal is to help you be more confident about your writing and your ability to write.

 

You can choose to book either 30 minutes or an hour, depending on what you’re working on. The actual work time of the appointment will be a bit shorter so the tutor can complete a session report at the end of the meeting.

When it comes to feedback sessions, it’s important to have a realistic idea of how much work can be done in the amount of time you choose to meet. While 30 minutes is probably okay for anything shorter than three pages, you will likely need an hour for anything up to ten pages long. Additional sessions may be advised depending on the length of the project and the work that needs to be done.

 

In order to assure access for all potential visitors, we ask that everyone limit themselves to a maximum of three appointments a week.

 

If you walk in and don’t have an appointment, the staff will help you schedule one. Most of the time, you can be scheduled to start your appointment in the next 30 minutes.

 

Visitors can choose whether or not to share their session report with faculty. Some faculty might require students to forward session reports to receive credit for class, but we will only provide a session report if it is requested by the visitor. Tutors will also review any information that is put into the session report with the visitor before submitting it. The session report will not disclose anything the student is uncomfortable with sharing.

The Writing Center believes in maintaining the confidentiality of visitors in all cases, unless their health or well-being seems to be at risk. Writing Center studies find that people have better sessions when they can trust their tutor.

The Writing Center supports all forms of writing that a member of the USM community may desire, and while most of that work is supporting writing for classes, the Center is not an extension of any classroom. The tutor’s primary responsibility is to the individual who has come to see them, their writing goals, and their long-term development as a writer.

That said, most of the time, visitors are often excited to share session reports with their teachers because it shows engagement with the course, and instructors love to see that.

 

The Writing Center understands that the University of Southern Mississippi has adopted an AI policy that enables a wide range of policies regarding AI. In general, those policies are grouped into one of three categories:

• Encouraged use of AI (the course uses generative programs intentionally and regularly)
• Permissive use of AI (instructors may allow use of certain generative programs in specific scenarios or under particular circumstances)
• Human-generated tasks only (the use of generative programs are not allowed)

Within these larger groupings, faculty may have their own definitions of what is okay and what is not.

Writing Center tutors cannot know an individual faculty member’s policy and must rely on the visitor’s understanding for context. The tutor will check in with the student about the class policy and may ask to see the course syllabus to confirm, but because they do not have access to any other information (such as class conversations), the tutor will trust the visitor’s articulation of the course policy.

Because GenAI and its relationship to writing is constantly changing, and because the ability and norms of what is produced by these systems shift over time, the Writing Center works to ensure that our tutors follow best practices for tutoring writing. Drawing from essential practices in the field, the USM Writing Center continues to value ideas like the importance of building relationships with the people who use our services, developing the confidence of writers, making writing a social act, and respecting the choices made by people who visit the Writing Center.

The practices described below may evolve over time, but they are crafted with the interest of making the most of a session and ensuring that a visitor recognizes the Writing Center to be a resource they can use throughout their time at USM.

Tutors will not use generative AI programs as part of a session. There are many reasons for this, including ensuring that we are in line with course policies across campus and that any assistance we provide is done from a trained human perspective.

Depending on a tutor’s comfort level, they may help a visitor refine the prompts the visitor wants to use while using an AI program to yield better results.

A tutor will also assist a visitor in critically reading anything generated by AI for both content and style, in the same manner that they might critique any other form of writing and if needed, challenge the writing. This is not a judgement about the tool being used, but standard Writing Center feedback.

If a visitor is using AI in a session or if aspects of the writing suggest that AI might have been used in composing or ideation, a tutor may ask a student about their use of the tool and ask about the policies of the particular course. This is not intended to shame, pressure, or direct a visitor into a different choice, but to better understand how a particular piece of writing came into being and to understand the expectations of a project.

If a visitor is using generative AI in a circumstance where they should not, the Writing Center tutor may encourage them to take a different approach but they will not betray the confidence of session and report the violation to anyone, including a course instructor.

While this may seem like Writing Center tutors are complicit in academic dishonesty, they are trained to understand the following in regard to GenAI and writing:

There are many reasons an individual may use GenAI as a part of their writing process, including course instruction, writing anxiety, interest in the tools themselves, time constraints, language access, disability support, lack of subject knowledge or confidence, concern about writing expectations of a particular course, or lack of awareness of policies. In some cases, this kind of writing support may become part of industry standards and so it should be respected.

That said, there are also important concerns regarding use of GenAI and access to accurate information that is not heavily mediated, manipulated, or invented. Most GenAI writing programs aim for writing that is pleasing, but often at the cost of personal interrogation and the loss of individual voice. Often, the kind of writing produced by GenAI seems to connect to vague concepts of Standard Academic English, which may seem desirable in context of classes, but which also tend to favor the writing norms and ideas of identities tied to institutions of power.

There is also concern about the cost of long-term cognitive off-loading that sees writing as a sort of “mechanical task” that is either correct or incorrect, and fails to see writing and the writing process as a method and means of thinking and sharing ideas. There is concern about how much individuals actually learn and retain when aspects of engagement with a subject are handed off to an outside entity. There may also be further concerns, including biases and issues in GenAI programming and environmental impact that should be considered.

For the tutor, the ultimate goal is to help support the visitor achieve their goals for the writing project while simultaneously also trying to support their confidence and ability as a writer. These various issues might be addressed or folded into a session, but ultimately, the tutor will support the visitor and their choices and efforts.

A tutor will not disclose a visitor’s use of AI in a session unless specifically prompted to do so in a session report or otherwise. A tutor will also not falsify anything that happened in the session. A tutor may omit any form of information regarding writing tools that a visitor used during the session, especially if requested by the visitor. While the idea of omission is complicated, it is necessary in order to maintain confidentiality for the visitor.

As mentioned previously, this confidentiality is necessary in Writing Center work to ensure a trusting relationship between tutor and visitor and to enable authentic engagement. While a tutor will not assist a visitor in violating any policy, the visitor is ultimately responsible for their own choices and what they make known to the audiences of their writing.

 

The Writing Center no longer employs professional tutors.

If an undergraduate student is interested in working in the Writing Center, they must first complete English 335, which is an introduction to tutoring pedagogy. The course is offered every Spring and students must complete English 101 and 102 before enrolling. Hiring for the academic year takes place after final grades for Spring semester are submitted.

Only English graduates with funded assistantships may be placed in the Writing Center. Graduates who have previously worked at the Writing Center will be eligible to apply to be the Writing Center Coordinator. This leadership position places a graduate student in the Writing Center for a year and provides professionalization training for those interested in the field.

Any available front desk staff positions will be listed on Handshake. Positions are most likely to be found in mid to late August. Work-study eligible students are encouraged to apply.