Center for Writing & Learning FAQs

The Center for Writing and Learning offers many kinds of appointments to support faculty in their teaching and provide opportunities for all Puget Sound students to achieve their academic goals.

There are several ways for students to make an appointment to meet with a writing advisor or subject tutor. The fastest ways are to stop by the Center for Writing and Learning desk in Howarth 105 or call 253.879.3404. Students can also request appointments by using the form request appointments. Before requesting an appointment, it is helpful to consult the schedules for the writing advisor and subject tutor hours.

In addition to scheduled appointments, writing advisors and peer tutors also offer many drop-in hours for quick questions and group work sessions. You can find the available drop-in hours on the writing advisor and subject tutor schedules.

Students may also make an appointment to discuss study skills, test-taking, time management, textbook marking, and note-taking; we call these Academic Consulting appointments. To make an academic consulting appointment, please call the Center for Writing and Learning at 253.879.3404.

To make an appointment with someone from the Office of Accessibility and Accommodations or for questions about the Office of Accessibility and Accommodations, please send an email message to saa@pugetsound.edu, visit Howarth 105, or call 253.879.3399.

For other kinds of appointments, or if you're unsure what kind of appointment to make, please call 253.879.3404; we're happy to help.

The typical writing conference is a fifty-minute, one-to-one session in which the student and a peer or faculty writing advisor engage in focused conversation about the student's writing. Sometimes we brainstorm; sometimes we work on organization; sometimes we work primarily on sentence-level revisions. In all cases, the session will offer advice that's designed to be helpful to both the paper and to the student as a writer.

Our advisors are trained to help you with your assignment, no matter the subject.

Your writing liaison is just one of many great advisors available to help you. All of our advisors have been trained to work with papers from across the disciplines, and any one of them will be able to make helpful suggestions.

Please contact the Writing Center by phone at 253.879.3404, by form, or in person at Howarth 109, clarifying that you are working on a personal statement or fellowship application. You will work with one of our faculty advisors. Make your appointment in advance, as these appointments tend to fill quickly.

We frequently work with alumni who are working on personal statements for post-graduation opportunities like fellowships and professional/graduate school applications. First priority for appointments goes to current students, but if you contact the Writing Center by phone at 253.879.3404, by form, or in person, clarifying that you are an alum working on a personal statement, we can usually get you an appointment in person or online via Zoom or Google Meet.

Bring your notes or the working draft of your paper and a copy of the prompt your professor gave you. If your paper uses sources, it may be helpful to bring those as well. Try to be prepared with some ideas of what you would like to work on. Also, the most productive appointments are those scheduled in advance, so try to avoid last-minute, day-it's-due appointments. You don’t have to have a draft to have an appointment; we’re ready to help you brainstorm or talk through a prompt.

Writing advisors will be happy to help you develop ideas for your paper. In that case, bring the prompt and any sources you might be working with.

Writing advisors do not copy edit papers. Rather, they work with you on developing your argument, organization, and ideas. If you have specific technical concerns (i.e., citation styles, proper grammar, appropriate punctuation), advisors will work through any problem areas with you and can introduce you to our many helpful handouts. While we won’t “correct” your paper, we’ll help you become a better proofreader of your work.

• Prepare for your tutoring session. Know what you want to cover. Bring pertinent texts, notes, assignments, and—most of all—your questions. The more specific your purpose, the more on target a tutor can be.
• Be on time. A tutor will wait for 15 minutes. After that, the appointment is canceled.
• If you are unable to keep an appointment, please call 253.879.3404 and let us know whether you will be late or wish to cancel altogether. Sometimes another student is waiting.
• Do not expect a tutor to do your assigned work. A tutor can increase your understanding and support your problem-solving efforts, but a tutor cannot do tasks for you.

Our tutors are eager to conference with you. Let's work together to make the most of your learning experience at Puget Sound.

Working at the CWL is more than just a job; it is a fantastic professional development opportunity. Anyone who's come to work with a tutor or writing advisor knows how useful that can be. But not everyone knows that studies of writing advisors and peer tutors around the country have shown that engaging in peer-to-peer learning not only helps peer tutors and writing advisors to hone their own academic abilities but also teaches valuable interpersonal skills. The application process itself is a professional growth opportunity that includes a written application and a panel interview for finalists. We hope to see your application to become a writing advisor or a tutor. Find more information about hiring here. The deadline to apply for the 2023-2024 academic year is February 15, 2023.

The CWL is fantastic, and the services here are free to current students! Many services are also available to Puget Sound alumni and faculty/staff members.

No, this isn't a service the CWL usually provides. We do proctor the foreign language proficiency exam, which sometimes confuses people, but we aren't a testing center and don't proctor other exams for other purposes (such as make-up exams for classes, exams for classes taken off-campus, certification exams for alumni, etc.). Puget Sound students and alumni in need of a proctor for an exam should contact the department where the credit from the test is going or where the requirement is being fulfilled to request a faculty member to proctor the exam. If the faculty are unavailable or unwilling to proctor the test, we suggest that students contact Tacoma Community College's Certification & Testing Center, which is open to the public and provides proctoring for a small fee.