Tucked away inside CORE in Main sits the Writing Place, a resource for students who want an extra set of eyes on their writing — whether that’s a paper, an application or a story.
Fifty years ago, then-professor Wallace Douglas and graduate student Bob Gundlach, later a Northwestern professor himself, came up with the idea for the Writing Place after noticing many students hadn’t yet developed college-level writing skills.
Originally, the Writing Place functioned as a drop-in clinic with workshops on grammar, composition and different paper styles. However, nearly half a century later, the model has shifted. Now, the Writing Place is a hub for peer-to-peer tutoring, where trained juniors and seniors help other students work their way through formulating, drafting and revising their papers and beyond. The peer-to-peer model has been so successful that the program has even expanded to include a separate service for graduate students.
ELIZABETH LENAGHAN: Getting feedback from peers is just qualitatively different than, you know, getting feedback from mentors or professors or things like that. It’s easier to ask questions and be vulnerable and, and just chat with someone sort of on the same level when they’re your peer.
That was Elizabeth Lenaghan, the founding director of the Graduate Writing Place. Lenaghan began her career with the Writing Place when she was a graduate student at Northwestern herself, and, noticing the utility of the Writing Place’s multifaceted support for undergraduates, pushed for the creation of an entire graduate-student-run program.
While the Writing Place primarily helps students with papers — whether they be short, reflection pieces, final papers or full dissertations — they serve whatever writing needs their clients may have.
LENAGHAN: So writers come in with all sorts of things. We see, especially in the fall, a lot of people coming in with materials for the job market, for instance. Because people who are applying to be professors elsewhere are doing it now to start next fall. So, you know, they would come in and we work sort of synchronously together.
This interdisciplinary approach to writing coaching makes the Writing Place popular with the students it serves. Communication second-year Ellie Cato, a self-described Writing Place devotee, highlights the versatility and skill of the tutors across different styles.
ELLIE CATO: There’s nothing they can’t do. And what I’ve seen, I’ve gone to them with like research papers. I’ve gone to them with analytic papers. I even went, a few weeks ago for to help with an application.
This versatility isn’t necessarily because the Writing Place employs tutors across every discipline for when the need arises. Instead, tutors approach every kind of writing with a general approach that asks the writer to examine their own strengths and weaknesses as they hone their message. Weinberg third-year and Writing Place tutor Andre Rocker explains:
ANDRE ROCKER: You might come in with a piece of writing and think, this is kind of this is too wordy, right? I don’t know if I’m being direct enough. What I want to do when I’m working with the writer is help them understand why they are having that, like, go off. So like, what in your mind? What in your, your previous education has caused you to identify what you’re writing as to where do you, you know, at the same time, you know, I also want to help you recognize your own strengths.
By asking writers to critically reflect on both their ideas and their skillset, tutors help the students that come in strengthen their pieces on their own. For Cato, this more reflective, discussion-based approach to tutoring was what got her hooked.
ELLIE CATO: I have all these ideas. I need someone to bounce the ideas off of or to help weave them together. And I was surprised, like how much I got done in just that one hour session and it kept me going back.
But what does that look like? For Rocker, it’s helping his tutees find their passions and interests within the constraints of the assignment.
ROCKER: So I’ll sort of ask you a question like, what do you like so far about the thesis? You for it, you know, and hopefully we get beyond something like. Oh, well, it answers the prompt. Maybe you’re able to shape something, you’re able to shape this assignment, this one assignment into something that you really want to talk about for a long time.
By shaping the conversation to focus on his tutees interest, Rocker aims to refocus the notion of academic writing as something done just for a grade to be instead about the pursuit of knowledge, inspiration and intellectual passion.
When students come to engage in debate, to expand their thought and to improve their writing and communication skills, everyone — tutees and tutors alike — benefit. By cultivating the Writing Place into something more than just transactional, tutors like Rocker hope that the service can be a catalyst for growth.
ROCKER: You’re going to grow. I think I mentioned that the moments of—the things that spark change aren’t necessarily just big events. If you get a 50 on your paper, your first paper in college, you probably will think, “Yes, maybe I need to change.” Right? But if you are, like anything else, if you are developing a habit of attempting to reach something different in who you are as a writer, you will then become that something different. And I think a great place to do that is at a place where the people staffing it are similarly inclined to improvement, and, to Northwestern students, where it’s free. You don’t have to pay anything for us. And where we generally genuinely want to help. Right? And you usually get a better grade, too, when you come to the Writing Place.
As tutors at the Writing Place hope to help grow each other and their fellow students as academics and as people, the Writing Place itself is looking to grow and evolve within the University. In the age of AI, it can be easy for students to overlook the utility of services like the Writing Place, Lenaghan says. But as more students walk in the doors and give the place a chance, she hopes they will realize how unique the Writing Place is, and how valuable it is to the University.
LENAGHAN: I hope that it will continue to be flourishing and be a space where people continue to value the feedback and one on one assistance that they can get from other individuals. I think that, as AI is growing more and more popular, we see and read and hear a lot of things about how it can be a tutor and it can be, you know, and I think that we offer something unique.
But if the opportunity for better grades, one-on-one assistance and intellectual discourse doesn’t get you in the glass CORE doors, Rocker has something else that may entice you.
ROCKER: If you like the smart food popcorn, like the cheddar white cheddar popcorn, you should also come to the writing place because for some reason, we provide snacks at the writing place and yet, somehow, those are the only ones that aren’t touched. I don’t know, I feel like that’s a pretty good snack.
So, as your writing deadlines — midterm and final papers or internship and job applications — roll around, keep the Writing Place in your back pocket. Maybe you’ll walk out with new ideas, a better paper or stronger faith in your own writing abilities. Or maybe you’ll just walk out with a bag of white cheddar popcorn. Either way, a win in my book.
For WNUR News, I’m Gabby Shell.
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