The DePaul University Writing Center is part of the Office of Academic Affairs and our primary focus in helping writers develop their writing and grow as writers. The Writing Center also supports instructors teaching writing and using writing in their teaching.
Because writing is a central modality for learning and representing knowledge in higher education and given the ubiquity of writing in educational, professional, creative, and personal contexts—The Writing Center helps anyone in the DePaul community with any writing project at any stage of the writing process. This includes students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
The Writing Center allows DePaul University to give students support in ways that align with authentic writing practices, such as seeking feedback from others and revising works in progress. Similarly, we help instructors at DePaul incorporate best practices for teaching and learning writing into their courses.
In all our work with members of the DePaul community, we use and advocate for research-based approaches to and ideas about writing and language. We seek to motivate writers and instructors to: write and use writing, better understand the role of writing in one’s professional and personal lives, and effectively and successfully complete writing assignments.
The Writing Center recognizes that writing and learning to write reflect cultural history and values. We also recognize that those with political and social power have historically used writing itself to marginalize and disenfranchise certain groups of people. Given these realities, we imbue our training, professional development, and work with approaches to writing and language that aim to make writing a force for shaping our future in ways that genuinely honor and celebrate diverse linguistic traditions. See Appointment Strategies: EAL Writers for more information about this commitment, and strategies for how tutors implement it in their appointments.
Through our particular initiatives—Peer Tutoring, the Writing Fellows Program, and Teams—we create spaces for members of the DePaul community to collaborate with others, to grow, and to develop as learners, teachers, and writers.
From 2006-2023, The Writing Center was part of an entity called the University Center for Writing-based Learning, or UCWbL for short. We thought it was funny to turn the abbreviation UCWbL into a verb and for that verb to become the name of this blog, UCWbLing. To honor this history, our blog name remains UCWbLing. You’re welcome 😉