Academic Success Center Offers Free Writing Workshops

By James Trent

On February 1, 2018

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73 percent of employees want a candidate with strong written communication skills.
Photo Courtesy of Essay Writing Workshops

Concord’s Academic Success Center (ASC) is offering a series of free writing workshops throughout the semester for students to develop their writing skills outside of class.

The Writing Skills workshops, mostly taught and hosted by Dr. Tina Powell, are scheduled to begin on Jan. 23 in the Student Center state room. The workshops are designed to “help students understand certain writing issues, provide them with tools to improve, and facilitate a workshop environment where students can work on their skills,” according to the schedule. The workshops cover many useful writing skills like forming a thesis or proper sentence structure, as well as an “MLA Boot Camp” and a week devoted to properly using sources in papers.

Director of Retention Dr. Sarah Beasley is excited about the workshops that she and the ASC organize for the student body. “Sometimes there are specific skills that students need work on,” she says, “but you don’t have the time in just one class to focus just on sentence structure, or just MLA. So, we thought it was a wonderful idea that the Academic Success Center partner with [Dr. Powell] to do these workshops that are open, not just to English majors, but to all students on campus.”

The second week of the workshops is devoted to plagiarism and taught by Steve Jarvis. Dr. Beasley notes that “Faculty requested it a couple years ago, just because they were seeing… not intentionally students cheating, but a misunderstanding about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. We started that a couple years ago, and then Dr. Tina Powell approached us about doing a series of writing workshops.” Steve Jarvis is the program coordinator for the ASC, and has taught other workshops in previous semesters, including Course Selection 101 in spring 2017.

This workshop can be valuable to both new and graduating students. New students will find it valuable as strong writing skills are useful throughout an academic career in most fields. Senior students will find it useful in the real world as well. Writing is necessary for resumes, workplace communication, or any professional memos or documents. In fact, The National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that 73 percent of employers want a candidate with strong written communication skills. “Written communication was the number three most desired quality overall, behind leadership skills and ability to work as a team member,” according to Inc.

The Academic Success Center also offers other services and workshops students may find useful. Some of these include Drop-In Tutoring, where students can get help from other students in any class they happen to be struggling in, or SMARTTHINKING, which is an online, 24/7 tutoring service for most classes.

For more information about these writing workshops or any future workshops, contact Dr. Tina Powell at tpowell@concord.edu or Sarah Beasley at sbeasley@concord.edu, or visit the Academic Success Center in Rahall room 243.