Mission Statement and Goals

The North Idaho College Writing Center maintains a welcoming and individualized environment in which students of all different levels and abilities can further develop their writing skills. The Writing Center upholds a student-centered environment that stresses the relationship between strong written and oral communication skills and success both in and beyond college. This environment not only helps students become more critical readers and more competent writers but also promotes their success across the curriculum and encourages lifelong learning.

The Writing Center seeks to fulfill its role by providing several different types of services:

• providing for scheduled one-on-one appointments with writing consultants 
• assisting students on a walk-in basis
• maintaining a library of current writing resource materials 
• encouraging Writing Across the Curriculum 
• recording student satisfaction 
• accommodating specific instructor requests and referrals 
• hosting readings by local authors

Goals

The primary goal of the Writing Center is to help students become better writers, not just immediately to compose better papers. As Writing Center consultants, we will help students become better editors of their own work so that they can draft clear, well-written papers, but we will not write, revise, or edit papers for students.

Writing Center consultants want to help students in the following ways:

• teach students to identify both strengths and weaknesses in their compositions, not provide help just in hopes of earning a higher grade on a paper about to be submitted
• teach students how to find and correct their own errors
• advise students about the following features of essay writing:
  • introductory paragraphs:
    • lead-in
    • thesis/controlling idea
    • sub-points
  • body paragraphs:
    • development/support of the thesis
    • primary examples and secondary support
    • organization and transitions
    • sentence structure and variety
    • word choice, grammar, and punctuation
  • conclusions:
    • thesis restatement
    • illustration
    • recommendation of a course of action
    • chronological wind-up
    • prediction
    • quotation and/or dialogue

Consultants can assist students better if students bring a draft of their work to the Writing Center at least a week before the assignment is due.

Students, not Writing Center consultants, are responsible for the work submitted to instructors.