One-third of College Writing Course Instructors Do Not Mention the Writing Center to Students: An Audit of Syllabi

Abstract

Many students who visit a college Writing Center (WC) do so on recommendation from a course instructor, so the way that instructors introduce the WC to students is crucial to get-ting them “in the door” to help them improve their writing. The first point of contact that students have with their instructors and course materials is in the syllabus. Drawing inspiration from audit methodology used in social science research, I collected a representative sample of 40 course syllabi for general education writing-intensive courses with the goal of evaluating how professors describe the WC to their students. This is the first study that analyzes a representative sample of college course syllabi to investigate how professors describe the Writing Center to students, a factor crucial in directing students to the WC. I found that over a third of course instructors never mention the WC to students in their syllabus. About half of those who do mention the WC either describe it in vague, general terms or for assisting with proofreading. The findings from this study suggest that WC administrators ought to find multiple ways to communicate with course instructors in order to more clearly convey the WC’s purpose and benefits to their students, especially in general education courses taken by underclassmen unfamiliar with institutional resources.