Need Help Writing an Essay?

New Director Refines the Writing Center's Mission

The Extension School's Writing Center offers free tutorial service to any registered Extension School student who needs help with writing. It is a valuable resource, and Tom Jehn, the Center's new director, is committed to developing it. To serve students better, the Center now offers longer tutorial sessions--50 minutes instead of 30--so that tutors can discuss more substantially students' drafts and writing concerns. To ensure greater consistency in the services the Center offers, Jehn is also focusing on tutor training. Throughout each semester, tutors will participate in development seminars on tutoring strategies, sharing as well as honing their expertise.

"I think that one of the great strengths of the Writing Center has always been the dedication of the tutors to the students who came for help, and our largely new team of tutors will continue that tradition," Jehn stated. "Our mission becomes clearer now, too, as we really commit our Center to helping students figure out how to revise their academic writing. What we know is that simply editing--or 'fixing up'--a student's essay doesn't help him or her as a writer. . . . We want students to assess and solve, on their own, a draft's problems with . . . its thesis or evidence, or its motive, organization, or counterargument." The goal in part, Jehn explained, is reinforcing what students learn in the Extension School's Writing Program courses. It is these larger issues of argumentation--and the vocabulary shared by academic writers and teachers--that the new Writing Center is emphasizing in its services.

The Center's staff of eight tutors includes five Harvard College students: Deirdre Mask, Irina Serbanescu, Matthew Sussman, Jean Yu, and Kathy Huang. The staff also includes three tutors--Tracy Geary, April Sharkey, and Andrew Szanton--who have taught or tutored either at the Extension School or elsewhere. Geary is a tutor at MIT and has served as a teaching assistant for EXPO E-25 Academic Writing and Critical Reading, as has Sharkey. Szanton has taught writing at the Extension School and has tutored for several years at the Writing Center. The undergraduates have tutoring and publications experience, having worked as peer tutors in courses or in community out-reach programs; Huang, for example, conducts adult education classes each week as well as citizenship classes in the Chinese community.

"We're aware," Jehn noted, "that some Extension School students might ask whether a college student can offer them the wise counsel for writing that they might expect from someone older. But besides the tutoring experience that the undergraduate tutors bring to their position, they have something that I think is most valuable: they understand the protocols of academic writing. They know how to write essays that earn As at Harvard, and they have the keen desire to share their strategies with students of any age."

"A good tutorial," he continued, "as with any educational experience, has far less to do with the age of either teacher or student than with both participants' intellectual curiosity and generosity of spirit. I think that people who come to the Center will find that the sessions will help them tackle their writing assignments with greater confidence and facility."

The Writing Center offers both scheduled appointments and drop-in hours. As midterm essays come due and business increases, Jehn recommends that students make appointments in advance.

Tom Jehn (second from left) is joined by Writing Center tutors Kathy Huang, April Sharkey, and Matthew Sussman.