by Lucie Burns
Contributing Writer
Michelle Soule has big goals as she recently took on the new position of director of the Writing Center. She officially started on Sep. 21, but will not be working full time until Dec. 18.
One of Soule’s main goals for the Writing Center is to expand to larger student audiences. “I’d like to reach out across the curriculum professors outside of the English and communications majors, say business majors, education, etcetera, and just find out more about how they incorporate writing into their curriculum and how the writing center can better serve the students coming in from those different majors,” Soule said.
In the time she has been there so far, she said she hasn’t seen many students come into the center. Overall, she would like to broaden the number of students that the writing center serves and learn more about how the center can utilize skills necessary in a variety of majors.
The Writing Center on campus serves multiple purposes, such as helping with research, writing style, grammar, revision, and more. Tutoring services with trained graduate students are also available for students. Soule would like to introduce a service to the center that isn’t currently offered. “My background is in teaching English language learners, so I would like to develop more materials and resources for students whose first language isn’t English,” Soule said. She believes the introduction of this service may also bring more students to the center.
Soule is familiar with working in writing centers. “I’ve never been a director, but I’ve worked and coordinated with writing centers as kind of an ESL specialist,” Soule said. She worked as an ESL specialist at Queens College in New York City. “Specifically at Queens College, I helped them to develop training materials for the tutors. Especially for the English language learners because the college has a very diverse campus,” Soule said. Her experience with ESL is what she believes the Writing Center can benefit from, along with her other experiences at different writing centers. Previously, she has worked at many different universities, including Seattle Pacific University.
“I’ve been at lot of different schools, so having worked in a lot of different programs, and seen a lot of different writing centers, hopefully I can draw from those different experiences and kind of see what other schools have done, bring some of those ideas that worked at the other places, bring some of them here,” Soule said.
The center’s hours are 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, while Friday it closes at the same time and opens at 1 p.m.. It is located in St. Joseph’s Hall on the second floor. Students should stay tuned for an announcement regarding new services being offered at the center.
