About the GWC
The Graduate Writing Center began offering its peer-to-peer services to Penn State graduate students in January 1999. Fifteen years later, we continue to provide consultations for graduate students representing more than 65 different disciplines. Many of these consultations were held with members of Penn State ‘s international student community, including Argentine, Chinese, French, German, Indian, Korean, Mexican, Nigerian, Russian, Thai, and Turkish students. The GWC welcomes any graduate student attending the Pennsylvania State University, regardless of geographic location, English fluency, and/or discipline.
Who Uses GWC Services?
Graduate students are invited to schedule appointments for one-to-one collaborative discussions about any professional or academic writing objective Our consultants commonly assist writers with theses, dissertations, seminar papers, proposals, personal statements, fellowship applications, CVs, letters of application, among many other genres. Some writers come to the GWC to learn more about grammatical concepts such as connectives (e.g. transitions, prepositions, conjunctions) or to discuss the structural difference between exposition and narration. Others visit the GWC for assistance with rhetorical principles including argumentation, syntax and paragraph arrangement, word choice, and audience analysis in whatever writing project they are currently undertaking. These collaborative discussions seek both to generate productive feedback about specific projects and to improve students’ writing and critical thinking abilities in general.
Who are the Consultants?
Peer consultants are doctoral students in Penn State’s Department of English at University Park who have experience in the teaching and tutoring of writing. The GWC is coordinated each semester by a doctoral student in English and is supervised by a faculty member in English. To ask questions about GWC services, please email gwc.psu@gmail.com or call 814-865-8021. We usually respond to email queries within a business day. However, telephone messages can require more than one business day for processing because consultants’ office hours vary.
