The UVM Writing Centers offer free writing support to graduate students through the Graduate Writing Center. The graduate writing consultants do not correct papers for students or write comments on drafts. Instead, they engage writers in conversation and activities to help them move forward with writing.

The Graduate Writing Center can assist you with:

• analyzing the expectations and options of a writing assignment or task
• talking through drafts and ideas
• approaches to getting and working with words on the page
• approaches to anticipating and addressing audience expectations and needs
• expressing your ideas effectively

All of the Graduate Writing Center’s services and events are free to UVM graduate students.

The UVM Graduate Writing Center strives to welcome and be accessible to all UVM graduate students and thus to critique and counteract any barriers rooted in ability status, class, ethnicity, gender expression, immigration status, language, national origin, race, and religion. Through our post-consultation feedback form or by contacting the Graduate Writing Center, please let us know what more we can do to create a space that facilitates access, exchange, inclusion, and respect for UVM graduate students and their writing projects and goals.

In 1982, Kathy Skubikowski, a faculty member in the English Department, created the Writing Center as a Living/Learning Faculty-Designed Program. The first group of tutors lived together in a suite in L/L and worked with about twenty students over the course of that first year.

In 1983, Kathy took a position at Middlebury College and Sue Dinitz, also a faculty member in the English Department, became the director. Since then, the Writing Center has been directed or co-directed by Sue Dinitz and Jean Kiedaisch, who retired in 2008. The Writing Center now serves over 1,600 students each year through its tutoring sessions and workshops.

In 1984, the Writing Center joined with the TRIO/Student Services Program to become part of the Learning Cooperative, an academic support center for all UVM students. A second Writing Center location opened in Howe Memorial Library in 2000, and in 2009 the Writing Center moved entirely to the library to be located with the new Writing in the Disciplines Program.

In January 2016, the UVM Graduate College launched a new Graduate Writing Center under the leadership of Nancy Welch, professor in the English Department. The Writing Center became the UVM Writing Centers, which now includes the Undergraduate Writing Center, directed by Sheila Boland Chira, and the Graduate Writing Center, coordinated by Nancy Welch. Also in January 2016, the UVM Writing Centers joined with the Writing in the Disciplines Program, directed by Susanmarie Harrington, and the Foundational Writing and Information Literacy initiative, directed by Libby Miles, to form the University Writing Initiatives (UWI). UWI provides coordinated faculty development and student support for writing at UVM.