Posted on April 27, 2021
Victoria King, staff writer
The Writing Center is one of the most important services provided by
Daytona State College. Dozens of students use it for different purposes
every day.
Laura Henning, a Writing Specialist at the DSC Writing Center, shared
information about her main responsibilities. Her job is a lot more than
just tutoring students. She also develops handouts and materials for
online distribution such as the MLA and APA Info Guides and Learning
Glass videos. Students enjoy watching her videos and find them helpful
when they are having problems with citation styles. Henning said that
she also trains and mentors new tutors, facilitates workshops, and works
with faculty members through embedded classes and other forms of
department outreach.
She also excitedly noted, “As a Writing Specialist, I’ve also had the
opportunity to participate in awesome professional development
opportunities like WAC/WID (Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the
Disciplines), and attend/present at conferences like SWCA (Southeastern
Writing Center Association).”
Students can book an appointment with a tutor through the DSC website www.daytonastate.edu/cwc or email cwc@daytonastate.edu and communicate with them personally in chat, e-mail, teams-meeting or in person on campus.
Teresa Rizzo, a current student at DSC, mentioned that she has been
using the Writing Center for many different classes. The Writing
Specialists helped her work on her spelling and grammar mistakes. They
also taught her to work with DSC’s online library and find good sources
for her assignments, which ultimately helped her to get excellent grades
on many of her assignments. Rizzo emphasized how friendly and polite
the tutors were toward her during her multiple sessions with them. She
highly recommends using this valuable resource.
Students can use the Writing Center tutors to help them correct
grammar errors on discussion boards or understand assignment
instructions. Sometimes the students use different tutors to help with
one assignment depending on who is available at the time. Structuring or
reorganizing writing assignments is one more very common issue that
students face.
If students have any difficulties with assignments, they can simply
make an appointment with a Writing Specialist who will be ready and
happy to help. “Students come to the Writing Center for all sorts of
reasons because they come for all sorts of classes and all kinds of
backgrounds,” Henning said. “No one session is ever the same, even with
students I’ve been working with semester after semester.”
Henning explains that at the start of a session, she always asks
students what they prefer to work on. “Sometimes it turns out that there
are other more pressing concerns that need to be addressed first,” she
explained. “Tutoring is really all about finding the balance between
what a student wants and what they need, as well as navigating that
invaluable third space between student, teacher, and tutor.”
Writing Specialists are here to help students succeed. All they need
to do to start this journey toward success is to contact the Writing
Center at cwc@daytonastate.edu.
