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Barnard's
Writing Center Remains Progressive Model for Inter-Collegiate
Discussion
Barnard's
highly regarded writing program is hosting discussions on
the cutting edge of writing instruction and theory this fall,
including a gathering Friday and Saturday October 17-18 that
has drawn student writing tutors from Dartmouth, Tufts, Mount
Holyoke, Swarthmore, and Wellesley, among other selective
colleges.
Barnard's Writing Fellows are leading workshops for 90 student
colleagues from other colleges on the best approaches to writing
and instruction during the two-day Peer Tutor Conference.
Writing Fellows are the specially selected and trained Barnard
undergraduates who work with their fellow students to strengthen
writing in all disciplines. The fellows work with students
enrolled in Barnard course at all levels and various disciplines
across the curriculum and also staff the Erica Mann Jong Writing
Center, named for novelist Erica Jong, a Barnard graduate.
The Writing Center is a resource available to any Barnard
student.
The philosophy of the program is:
- Writing
is a process that happens in stages, in different drafts.
- Writing
a paper may stop, for instance, when the paper is due, but
a piece of writing is never really be finished.
- Writing
is about revising and re-thinking ideas.
- All
writers, no matter how accomplished, can benefit from discussing
their work with an intelligent reader and then revising
it.
While
offering basic grammatical and style assistance, the writing
fellows are by no means mere copy editors. They enter into
a dialogue with their peers about their writing, helping the
writer to state his or her main argument clearly, offering
suggestions on organization, evidence, complexity and clarity
of thought.
"A good writing program should not have one specific
model of what good writing looks like," says Lecturer
Pam Cobrin, director of the Barnard Writing Center.
It was this notion that inspired an October 3 meeting of 22
Writing Center Directors from colleges in the metropolitan
New York area, who convened at Barnard to discuss how to maximize
effective writing by students.
Led by Cobrin, the group represented New York and Yeshiva
universities, the State University of New York at Stony Brook,
and the University of Connecticut main campus at Storrs, among
others.
.The Writing Center is part of a larger Writing Program that
was launched in 1990 by Senior Lecturer Nancy Kline Piore.
"Our program is aimed at helping the Barnard community-and
Columbia students enrolled in Barnard courses-to strengthen
their writing by taking full advantage of the writing process,"
said Piore. "The writing fellows are a force for good
writing throughout the College."
The center is intended to help struggling writers and to serve
as a soundboard and resource for more accomplished writers,
said Cobrin, who serves as a faculty consultant at the Writing
Center, which opened in 1992.
Barnard's Writing Fellows, who are drawn from majors across
the curriculum, are the backbone of the successful Barnard
Writing Program. To maintain that success, Cobrin believes
inter-collegiate dialogues like the one on October 3 and the
meeting of undergraduate peer tutors this weekend are essential
to Barnard's reputation as a college devoted to excellence
in writing.
Barnard will expand this commitment to writing in the winter
of 2004 by hosting a one-day Young Writers Institute for public
high school students in New York. This pilot program will
involve Barnard's Writing Fellows and will expand the idea
of the high school essay contest Barnard has run for the past
15 years in the public high schools.
No matter the age of the writer, Cobrin and Piore believe
the cornerstone of the Barnard Writing Program is the give-and-take
between Writing Fellows and their peers as they work toward
better writing. "Every writer needs a reader," Piore
says.
Contact: Glenn Slavin in the Barnard Office of Public Affairs,
212-854-7522, or gslavin@barnard.edu
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