To request a Writing Center appointment, first log in and then fill out our appointment request form.
The Writing Center Portal is a resource for Writing Center staff and for students who use the Oregon State University (OSU) Writing Center.
Students should feel free to browse the site. (ONID authentication is required to access most resources on this site.) You will notice that the Portal provides you with forms that streamline your interactions with the OSU Writing Center. If you want to make an appointment, if you want to submit and receive feedback on your paper online, the Portal is where you can do that. Even if all you want to do is contact a writing center administrator and ask a question, this is the place to do so.
If you are a staff member, then this site has been designed to provide you with the resources you need to do your job. Working at the Writing Center affords you the opportunity to broaden your professional reach. Whether or not you plan on becoming a writing specialist, the lessons you will learn while working here will be broadly applicable throughout your professional career, unless, of course, you don't plan on working with people. Facilitation is a difficult skill to learn, and, though it's certainly important to be able to analyze student writing and determine its strengths and weaknesses and formulate revision strategies for student writing, it's facilitation that's the real focus of our work here. The reasons for this should become clearer the longer you work here, until, ultimately, non-directive facilitation becomes second nature and its value—both to the writers we work with and to us—becomes self-evident.
In concert with that facilitative approach, this website is wiki-like. As a staff member, you can create pages and resources and help improve this site. Indeed, you'll be expected to do that. Any attempt by Writing Center faculty to create a comprehensive resource for writing assistants would be doomed from the outset, for one very important reason: writing assistants know too much. As the people who conduct sessions and meet with students on a day-to-day basis, writing assistants, by definition, know things that those of us who are one level removed from the day-to-day do not.
It is in that spirit that I invite you to participate in the creation and maintenance of this website. If you find something wrong in it, add a comment to the page so it can be fixed. If you think there's something important that needs to be included, create a new page and send it to the rest of the staff for feedback.
Thanks, in advance, for your attention and work in keeping this an up-to-date and valued resource.
