Our Services
One-on-One Consulting
The NMSU Writing Center can help your students become more effective writers primarily through free one-on-one consulting. We offer students hour-long appointments to address their most pressing writing needs. Our Center is staffed by graduate assistants who teach undergraduate writing courses through the English Department, but the Writing Center is a service for undergraduate and graduate students of any discipline.
We can work with your students on writing at any stage, from understanding assignment directions to brainstorming to revising final drafts. We are not an editing service but are here to help your students learn more about writing and to write more effectively. Rather than fixing spelling and grammar on your student's papers, we help them identify and correct their own mistakes. Our policy is to not discuss grades or make evaluative comments about assignments or instructors' teaching methods. Please refer your students to our online appointment website so they can come in and see us.
Class Orientations
We would be happy to introduce your class to the services of the Writing Center. In an orientation, we can demonstrate how to make an appointment, explain our services, and tailor our ten-minute presentations to the particular needs of your class. We find that students who have been to the writing center at least once are significantly more likely to return when they need assistance so we invite you to bring your students to the center. However, we can also speak to them in your classroom. If you would like to bring your class to the Writing Center or would like one of our Writing Center Coordinators to come to your class, please email the Director (Kathryn Valentine) at kvalent@nmsu.edu and we will schedule a visit.
Workshops
We offer six workshops every semester to provide students with tools to improve their writing beyond individual consultations. The workshops are designed to help those students working on research papers to improve their research, editing, and revision skills. Although these workshops are primarily geared toward students in English 111, we welcome all writers to attend. Please check our website for information about our next workshops.
Zuhl Library
In addition to our regular hour-long appointments in the Writing Center, we offer drop-in hours Sunday-Wednesday from 7-9 p.m. on the second floor of Zuhl Library at the Student Success Center. These sessions are first-come-first serve and students can expect at approximately 20 minutes of consulting (or more if no one other students are waiting).
Online Writing Center
Please encourage your students to also utilize the services of our Online Writing Center. The consultants running the Online Center are also experienced English department graduate students and instructors. Writers who submit their work to the Online Writing Center can typically expect a response to their work in 2-3 days. Please visit the Online Writing Center page http://web.nmsu.edu/~owc/ for more information and to make an appointment.
Additional Information
Required Visits & Extra Credit
Often instructors encourage their students to visit us by giving extra credit for a visit. If your students need proof of a visit, each writer leaves with a yellow copy of the Record of Visit form which documents when their appointment was, which consultant they worked with, and what they did during their appointment.
We don't encourage making Writing Center visits mandatory. Required visits can be frustrating for the student and consultant because the student is not motivated by their own desire to improve their writing. We do not fix or dictate changes to students. Instead, we are invested in teaching students to become more effective writers—by helping them acquire the skills and confidence to make changes themselves. If you have required Writing Center visits for your class, please let us know by emailing the Director at kvalent@nmsu.edu.
Recurring Appointments
Please encourage your students with multiple writing concerns and large projects to make recurring appointments. Students are allowed two appointments per week. Some students find that working regularly with a consultant they are comfortable with to be a valuable long-term investment. Students working on group projects are also welcome to visit the Writing Center. The entire group will need to attend the appointment unless the instructor allows individual group members to represent the entire group.