Don’t look for any red pens at the University of Georgia’s Jill and Marvin Willis Center for Writing.
“The bulk of our work is really about relationships with student writers,” says Rebecca Hallman Martini, associate professor of English and director of the center. “It’s a collaborative space, and it’s a non-evaluative space. We aren’t grading students. We have the opportunity to ask students about their goals and how we can best support them in reaching those goals. That’s at the heart of what we do.”
Writing Center consultants don’t redline student papers. Instead, meetings are conversations that hopefully lead to more clarity around a student’s writing goals. Still, the center offers lots of bare-bones editorial assistance that’s well within reach. (Photo by Chamberlain Smith/UGA)
The Center for Writing is based in Park Hall and housed in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, but it is a resource for the entire campus. The center also offers writing and tutoring space in the Miller Learning Center, the main library, and the McBay Science Library.
Martini is an expert in the study of college writing centers and student composition in general. Her first book, Disrupting the Center: A Partnership-Based Approach to Writing in the University, came out in 2022. Her current research focuses on the student experience with writing centers.
Since coming to UGA in 2019, Martini has transformed the center, starting with the space itself. She and several students repainted it, secured some donated furniture, and worked with UGA’s Facilities Management to fill in the rest.
While the buzz of one-on-one tutoring sessions is nearly constant, it’s not uncommon for students to visit on their own to focus on their work. Martini recently applied to have the center recognized as a UGA Well-Being Hub, focused on the community’s mental health.
Martini also formalized the center’s academic approach. She created an upper-level English class, Writing Center Theory and Practice, that’s cross-listed for both graduate and undergraduate students and is a prerequisite for the center’s writing consultants.
At its core, the course is experiential learning. The curriculum includes studying the scholarship around writing centers; prospective consultants must submit some of their own work, and one month into the class they start tutoring writing students.
A Trusting Relationship
Writing center consultants don’t copy edit, proofread, or mark up papers. They don’t hand out ready-to-go essays if a student needs one for class that afternoon. And they certainly don’t consult ChatGPT.
Instead, consultants evaluate a student’s writing on a big-picture level. And they teach writers how to self-evaluate. They coach, they challenge, and they offer suggestions. Most importantly, they build trust and confidence.
Under the inspired leadership of Director Rebecca Hallman Martini, the future of the Jill and Marvin Willis Center for Writing is looking bright. (Photo by Chamberlain Smith/UGA)
“Every time you come in, you don’t know what to expect,” says Yuliia Kabina, a doctoral student in English who is in her second year as a writing center consultant. “Every session is unique, and it’s always rewarding when writers start thinking critically about their own work. They identify what can be improved and make corrections as we go through their writing. That tells me the session went well.”
The center employs more than a dozen master’s and doctoral students as consultants, and three additional doctoral students serve as assistant directors. Before Martini arrived, the center didn’t have any undergraduate consultants. Now there are 16, all of whom are students from the Writing Center Theory class.
The undergraduates aren’t all English majors either. The cross-disciplinary experience ensures that writers from across UGA can find guidance at the writing center. Kabina was invited to join the staff when she started her doctoral program. An experienced researcher who had also taught English as a foreign language and literature in groups, she wasn’t necessarily sure she was ready to work with students one on one.
“You need to be knowledgeable about different kinds of writing, but you also need to explain how a student can tweak their writing depending on the genre,” she says. “The first sessions were tough, but you get truly invested when you see the results.”
For instance, Kabina helped one student with applications for graduate programs in physical therapy. She got into six of the seven schools to which she applied.
Every consultant has similar success stories. They work with students on preparing applications to UGA colleges and programs, lab reports, literary analyses and class essays and presentations. The assignment is as varied as the day.
The bulk of our work is really about relationships with student writers. It’s a collaborative space, and it’s a non-evaluative space. We aren’t grading students. We have the opportunity to ask students about their goals and how we can best support them in reaching those goals. That’s at the heart of what we do.” — Rebecca Hallman Martini, associate professor of English and director of the Jill and Marvin Willis Center for Writing
Center Support
Jill Willis AB ’84 earned a degree in English from UGA and then embarked on a decades-long career in journalism, publishing, fiction writing, and public relations. She is also a supporter of the teaching of writing.
Willis and her husband, Marvin, both raised in Decatur, are parents to one UGA alumna, Julia Willis Grove BS ’16, and one almost-alumnus, Marvin IV, who will graduate from the Terry College of Business in December. And they are recent Bulldog benefactors.
In April 2023, Jill and Marvin designated a $1 million gift to the center, which now bears their name.
“Marvin and I are firm believers that a student who graduates college as a confident writer will have a stronger chance of success in their career path than one who hasn’t honed that skill,” Jill says. “Marvin, who graduated from Georgia State with an accounting degree and a good writing foundation, will be the first to tell you that an accounting job isn’t just adding up columns of numbers. It’s also writing reports, proposals, and letters to clients.”
Jill Willis keeps in contact with Martini and offers support when she can. “After meeting with Dr. Martini, we realized the center has the potential to reach many more students with the proper funding. She has the background and drive to implement the kinds of changes that will truly make a difference.”
Nowhere are those changes more visible than in the center’s facilities.
While Park Hall remains its headquarters, the center has received the green light to expand its satellite locations into full-service writing centers. That larger footprint, Martini says, is the most effective way to reach students across the entire campus.
“The gift is huge,” Martini says. “At some other schools, writing centers are closing down, but I think this is a recognition that we are going to be here for a while.”