S11A Assessing the University Writing center Impact on Marginalized Students

Presenters

Beth Towle, English and University Writing Center
Stephanie Davis, University Writing Center

Abstract

The Salisbury University Writing Center (UWC) provides writing support to undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff, through one-on-one tutoring sessions, workshops, peer review, and other forms of outreach programming. In recent years, the UWC reached about 20% of Salisbury students through these various supports, and over 90% of students, in post-session and post-workshop evaluation surveys, rated services as “helpful” or “very helpful”. However, despite this apparent success of the UWC and the data we have with our own in-house assessments, we had very little information about how the UWC impacts students in the long-term during their time at Salisbury. Perhaps even more importantly, we did not have data that helped us understand the ways in which our services are used by marginalized student populations, including non-white students and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

In this presentation, we will present our preliminary findings of our large-scale assessment of the UWC, which was supported by a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Fellowship. With the help of University Analysis, Reporting and Assessment (UARA) the UWC was able to track the demographic data (particularly non-white students, transfer students, and students who are Pell Grant eligible), GPAs, and retention rates of writing center users and non-users over a five-year period. We have found that the UWC has a significant impact on the academic success of Salisbury students. Additionally, it serves as an important resource for students who are marginalized within our predominantly white institution (PWI).

Session Recording