Santa Clara University

The first thing you will see when you enter the HUB, etched in large letters across the back wall, is “To Celebrate and Support SCU Writers and Writing” announcing what the writing center is all about.

Writing is our “hub,” our means and our end. Students write their way into Santa Clara University by crafting compelling letters of application; they write their way out by their senior theses and capstone projects. In between, students write to demonstrate what they are learning, what they know; and if they write well, they also write what they believe, what they care about. Faculty ideas, whether through their research or their pedagogy, find life in what they write, from developing curricula designed to inform and incite their students to reporting or creating or challenging conclusions in their fields.

Writing is who we are. Celebrating and supporting is what we do.

In Varsi Hall 145, writing at SCU now has a physical identity, both venue and vision…a venue where students will be trained as peer tutors and teaching assistants, a vision by which the needs and accomplishments of all SCU writers (students, faculty, and staff) will be supported and celebrated.

Trained tutors and teaching assistants support student writers, helping you to fully understand what your assignments are designed to accomplish, helping you to determine what you want to say and how you want to say it, and then helping you revise and edit what you have written.

All writers need support; in fact, more experienced writers know they need a second set of ears, to “hear” if what they’ve written makes sense, and a second set of eyes, to see that their writing is free from errors. Hub tutors are an informed audience that can help you become a better writer one paper at a time.

Beyond individual and small group support, each quarter, the HUB will sponsor various workshops, from the “Terrible Ten: Writing Errors that Make Faculty Crazy and How to Avoid Them…the errors, not the faculty” and “Punctuation Perils and Pitfalls,” offered Spring 2009 to other workshops for students on writing personal statements, proposals, etc., workshops for faculty on designing writing prompts and developing grading rubrics, and workshops for staff, including a biweekly peer-editing workshop.

If there’s a an area or issue that you think SCU students, faculty, or staff would be interested in, please send your suggestions to Dolores laGuardia, HUB Director, at dlaguardia@scu.edu.

Writing itself is a celebration, a confirmation of who we are, what we think, what we care about. To that end, the HUB will sponsor fiction and poetry readings, special interest book groups, etc., including participating in National Day on Writing. On 20 October 2009, writers and writing all over the US will celebrate the power of the written word; at SCU, our celebration will include inaugurating our Books that Matter collection whereby faculty will have donated the book or books that had a significant impact on their lives. There will be readings and refreshments to celebrate this important contribution to the HUB’s identity. (Thank you, Sherry Booth, whose idea this was.)

If you have any ideas of how the HUB can celebrate writers and writing, please send your ideas to Dolores laGuardia, HUB Director, at dlaguardia@scu.edu.