The center’s resources will become available during the second week of classes
By Byron Mantoan
The KU Writing Center opens its doors this Fall semester on Tuesday, September 3. The KUWC is located in Room 100c in the Rohrbach Library. Students are encouraged to bring any writing, regardless of class, or the stage of completion, to the KUWC. Both in-person and online appointments can be made at the KUWC’s website. The center’s hours are also available online.
Tutors offer students services to improve and develop their writing skills. Services include reviewing the text for spelling errors and grammar and helping students flesh out the thesis of their essay.
“I value the work the center does for students,” Dr. Patricia Pytleski, the Director of the KUWC, said. “It’s a student resource with trained undergrad and graduate assistant writing tutors to help students with their writing in any class on campus and for their personal writing needs.”
Dr. Pytleski has been the director of the Writing Center since 2013, and although she got her PhD elsewhere, she got her MA in English at KU, even working as a graduate assistant in the writing center from 2000 to 2001.
As Director of the KUWC, Dr. Pytleski oversees the center and its staff, provides training, interviews and hires new staff, evaluates graduate assistants, schedules info sessions for Writing Center tutors to present to classes, and compiles the center’s data in a yearly report.
Dr. Pytleski also meets with writing center directors from other PASSHE schools, completes public relations for the center, helps with the Kutztown University Composition Conference every year, and presents at it with the center staff.
A more recent advancement that is affecting the writing world is generative AI. “The innovations in AI will be ethical discussions talked about in colleges and in classrooms from now on. I personally feel that it is something to be talked about, rather than pretending it does not exist or ignoring its potential effects on writing,” Dr. Pytleski said. “These discussions should also coincide with discussions about academic integrity and honesty so that students still present their own ideas and voices in their papers.”
All students are encouraged to bring out their inner writer with the center’s resources. Whatever the need, the KU Writing Center is there to help.