At the Writing Center, we understand that writing is a necessary skill for communicating in classes, in the workplace, and elsewhere in life; however, it is also a complex task that is often difficult to do well. All writers–even the best ones–get stuck sometimes. The Writing Center’s role is to support everyone at UNLV who is working on any writing project. We help writers gain skills that help them feel more confident and prepared to revise their current paper as well as work on future ones.
Our consultants are trained to have conversations with writers to understand how they feel about their writing, what concerns and questions they have, what their goals are, and how their writing practices have or have not been working for them so far. Consultants also want to see the assignment instructions to understand the expectations of the field, genre, and audience. And the consultants’ primary goal is to help the writer make meaningful revisions to their work by collaborating to identify areas in the writing that might be confusing, might not connect to other ideas, might need more support, might not fulfill the criteria in the instructions, and more.
Because we want to help the writer improve, the Writing Center is not an editing and proofreading service. Instead, we help writers learn grammar rules and identify their patterns of grammatical error. That way, they can take that knowledge into future writing tasks and start doing that work on their own. Of course, that does not mean writers can’t and shouldn’t return to the Writing Center! The more they come, the more they learn.
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Values Statement
At the UNLV Writing Center, our writer-centered approach fosters an understanding of writing as a series of choices writers make based on context, audience, purpose, and genre. We work with writers in any discipline on any writing task (except for legal documents) to help them develop, improve, and transfer writing skills into their personal, academic, professional, and civic lives.
The Writing Center is primarily a site for teaching and learning. We consult with writers at any level of expertise to help them develop their own strategies for making informed choices about writing. For that reason, we do not edit or proofread papers for writers, but we help writers identify their own mistakes and find tools to correct them. Because writing is one of the chief ways we create, communicate, and critique knowledge, the Writing Center plays a central role in the life of the university.
Antiracist and Inclusion Statement
Following the example set by UNLV in its Commitment to Diversity, the UNLV Writing Center staff recognizes that institutional racism exists at the individual and systemic level. Racism in educational settings results in inequalities that have negative impacts on student success and retention. It functions both consciously and unconsciously, and it is important that we regularly check our biases and privileges. Through that work, the Writing Center staff want to learn and grow in order to elevate the voices of marginalized individuals.
As such, we wish to outwardly state our pledge to value the linguistic, cultural, and racial diversity of every writer and writing consultant. In the document linked below, we list our beliefs and the actions we are committed to taking to make the Writing Center an inclusive space for the exploration and exchange of ideas in thinking, writing, talking, and learning. It is a living document.