About Us

The CSUSB Writing Center, sponsored by the University's Division of Undergraduate Studies, conducts more than 10,000 one-to-one student writing conferences and facilitates workshops with faculty members in a variety of campus classrooms. Many students come to work on papers for composition courses; however, a large number come from a wide variety of courses across the university. Many of the 25-30 student writing consultants are graduate students in the M.A. in English Composition program, while others are graduate and undergraduate students from disciplines across campus. The director is an English Department faculty member.

Writing consultants work with students at all stages of the composing process. They help students interpret assignments, discover topics, expand ideas, clarify organization, incorporate counter-arguments, and cite references, as well as edit and proofread. Several consultants work specifically with ESL students to help them negotiate linguistic and cultural differences in written composition; these tutors also conduct informal conversation groups. As part of the University's Writing-Across-the-Curriculum (WAC) program, Writing Center staff work with faculty members who are designing and evaluating writing components of their courses. They also conduct writing workshops in those faculty members' classrooms, and they read and respond to manuscripts in preparation.

In all situations, Writing Center staff write WITH writers, never FOR them. They work to preserve the integrity of writers' ideas and plans, even as they challenge writers to interrogate and contextualize both their own ideas and the sources they are using.