Writing Center Policies and Procedures

Our Writing Center will be a positive place of growth for writers within the LCC community. To achieve this, we will engage with others who teach and support writing across our campus. We will employ a dedicated and diverse staff trained in writing-center pedagogy.

The Writing Center supports student writers in the LCC community by providing assistance that facilitates growth and development in critical thinking and writing. As such,

• We value the lived experiences and diverse perspectives of writers, including those who staff our Writing Center.
• We value high quality interaction between Writing Assistants and students, aimed at improving both the writing and the writer.
• We value assisting student writers in making strategic decisions about the preservation of their own voices within their written work.
• We value writing as a complex skill that everyone can improve with practice and support.
• We value compassionate feedback for writers from the moment their ideas take shape through the final stages of polishing their written work.
• We value collaboration with faculty.

To ensure a successful appointment, students should bring a specific writing task to work on, along with any ideas, notes, drafts, the assignment, and any other relevant course materials; students should be prepared to take an active role in the appointment by letting the staff member know what they would like to focus on within the allocated time.

Students can expect assistance on the writing issues that concern them most and improvement in their overall writing ability after repeat visits.

Students should not expect an editing service, a flawless paper, or staff who know the individual requirements and preferences of every LCC instructor. It may be necessary for a student to meet with their instructor to clarify expectations and requirements.

Appointment confirmation emails include a cancellation link. Students can also cancel or reschedule an appointment by calling 517-483-1907 or emailing writingctr@lcc.edu.

Please let us know if you are running late for your appointment by calling 517-483-1907, visiting the live chat on our homepage, or emailing us at writingctr@lcc.edu. We will hold appointments when practical or assist with rescheduling if necessary. If you are late for your appointment and have not contacted us, we will consider you a no-show and open up the time for another student who needs assistance. Repeated no-shows can result in having appointment privileges suspended.

Note: If you are having technical difficulties with WebEx that are preventing you from attending your appointment, after notifying us that you are running late, please call the LCC Help Desk at 517-483-5221.

If proof of a visit to the Writing Center is required in order to earn credit from an instructor, it is incumbent upon the student to gather the necessary information that will be reported to their instructor. Most instructors will ask students to provide, at minimum, the date and time of the visit, the first name of the staff member, and a brief description of the feedback they received. Some instructors, however, will require more detailed information. Please note: Though the Writing Center does not routinely report student visits to instructors, instructors are able to contact us for verification of a visit, so students should be sure to report accurate information. Writing Center staff are not permitted to sign their names to student papers.

Students who visit the Writing Center must abide by the College's Student General Rules and Guidelines and Student Code of Conduct. Any student who does not comply with these rules for appropriate conduct may be denied services.

The Writing Center assumes no responsibility on behalf of students who choose to submit plagiarized material for LCC courses. Additionally, the Writing Center assumes no responsibility for reporting plagiarism to instructors or college administrators. However, Writing Center employees do reserve the right to refuse assistance with written material that is plagiarized.

The Writing Center will assist students with any writing or writing-related assignment, including homework assignments that are related to improving writing. These homework assignments might include but are not necessarily limited to reading responses, reading comprehension questions, informal reflections, paragraphs, discussion board posts, and skill-based exercises. Just as we do not edit students’ papers, we do not check homework to ensure accuracy. These responsibilities lie with the student writer.

We also understand and respect that instructors often assign homework to assess students’ understanding of course concepts and that too much help with homework can compromise the instructor’s intent. Our goal is to ensure that students understand what is being asked of them in homework assignments, to clarify wording, to perhaps look at a few worksheet questions with the student (or, as a better practice, to offer similar example questions of our own), and to model behaviors that enable the student to find answers within course textbooks and other instructional materials. Writing Assistants guide students through their work rather than doing the work for them.

The Writing Center will assist students with a variety of composing tools and software, including but not necessarily limited to word processing, slides for presentations, writing for web publishing, spelling and grammar checkers, and citation generators. We recognize that learning how to use a variety of composing tools can improve students’ writing and writing processes.

Knowledge of composing tools will vary among staff members. While we will do our best to connect students with staff members who have some familiarity with the tools they are using, we do not train our staff in the use of composing tools or software and cannot guarantee that we will be able to provide expert-level assistance. Our approach will focus on helping students at a basic level by working alongside them to use tools, including those from the instructor, that can help them communicate more effectively.

Technical support questions about D2L, WebEx, and student email should be directed to the LCC Help Desk.

We strive to assist student writers in making strategic decisions about the preservation of their own voices within their written work, while fulfilling the expectations for writing in an academic context. We know that writing is an invention born of a need to communicate textually. This need for diverse groups of people to communicate textually means that writing, much like speaking, is born out of and rooted in the various needs of those people; as such, writing is not, and indeed, cannot be removed from the cultural and situational context in which it is produced.

We do not pretend that the writing done in U.S. academic institutions is "normal," but we do recognize that it is common and adheres to shared conventions and expectations. We also recognize that academic writing, in and of itself, varies across cultures. The way an academic in the U.S. is taught to write is not the same way an academic from other parts of the world is taught to write. With this understanding, we embrace the notion that U.S. academic writing is also culturally situated and draws on Westernized and European ways of thinking, knowing, and being, which, as is expected, creates a distinct cultural, racial, and philosophical orientation to writing.

We also understand and recognize that many students in the U.S. speak and write in ways that vary greatly from the highly formalized writing they are expected to do not only in college, but at the K-12 level. This understanding helps our highly trained staff work with students more competently, more honestly, and more humanely.

As a member of the International Writing Centers Association (IWCA), the LCC Writing Center adheres to the IWCA's position statement on the use of "they" as a singular pronoun in writing. The IWCA recognizes that using "they" as a singular pronoun may be met with resistance by faculty and other readers of student work. The IWCA recommends for students who make use of the singular "they" to put the following footnote in their documents: "In this paper, I deliberately use the generic singular "they." This usage has historical precedence for the last 400 years, and it is grammatical, as confirmed by linguists. Further, it includes people whose gender identity is not represented by the he/she binary, which erases many members of our community. This impulse toward inclusive linguistic representation is seen in style guidelines by professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association (APA). The use of singular "they" is endorsed by the International Writing Centers Association, an Assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English."