The Writing Center

Referral Guidelines for Faculty

The Writing Center’s mission is to be an inclusive campus resource by providing one-on-one guidance to students at any step in the writing process. Our staff understands the need for certain courses to have assigned Writing Center visits to ensure student success and comprehension of course content. However, we kindly request that all professors who require visits to the Writing Center fill out this form at least a week before their students come in so our staff has time to prepare and equip themselves with the nature of the assignment. If you require multiple visits during the semester for multiple assignments, please include the assignment prompts and date ranges of all required visits.

When discussing visits to the Writing Center with your students, it is important to remember that appointments are meant to be collaborative and allow for students to have an open discussion about their writing. To protect the academic integrity of students and staff, we have regulations in place that define what our staff can and cannot help with. 

1. The Writing Center is not an editing service. Our staff will not write your student’s paper for them, but rather, we encourage collaboration in our space. We expect students to come to the Writing Center equipped and with some ideas about what they need help with and what direction they would like to take their paper.
2. If a professor has given a student feedback or edits on their work before a Writing Center visit, it is that student’s responsibility to either show the tutor their edits or discuss the professor’s expectations with them.
3. Our tutors currently use APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago 18th edition, CSE 8th edition, and iEEE, but we are happy to learn other styles to assist your students. If you use any of these citation styles for your assignments, or if you use some other style (or an older version of a style), please include that information on your assignment prompts so that we can provide accurate advice to students who come in for help.
4. Tutors are trained to give students suggestions on their work. However, students are never forced to implement changes we suggest.
5. Writing Center tutors help with writing, not course content. If one of our tutors notices a student is struggling with course content, we will advise them to reach out to you and will notate that in our appointment summary.
6. If you require students to meet with Writing center tutors or offer extra credit for visits, please remind students to let us know. We will send you an email at the end of the work week informing you of their visit.
7. If you have an upcoming writing assignment and would like to send us materials to have on hand for your students' visits, please send them to writing-center@usca.edu.
8. The Writing Center is happy to accept drop-in visits, but please encourage students to use Navigate to schedule appointments. A link to a short video on how to set up an appointment can be found online.

Writing Center Student Referral Form