Bronwyn T. Williams, Director

Welcome to the new University Writing Center! On Friday we moved to our new, larger space on the first floor of Ekstrom Library. After fifteen years on the third floor, we’re excited about being in a space that is larger, more convenient and easier to find. We’ve always believed that writing is at the center of the intellectual life of the University, and now

we have a space that is even more at the center of the daily life of the students, faculty, and staff with whom we work. We want to use this space to continue to support and nurture a culture of writing at UofL. Our mission is to support and celebrate writing of every kind, from course assignments to dissertations to job letters to poetry. We think the new space will allow us to continue to engage in that mission and offer us the opportunity to realize plans and initiatives that we’ve had for a number of years. The central location of the new University Writing Center space, just to the left as people enter from the east doors off the Quad, will also allow us to collaborate with Library Reference and other offices.

Although our location – and furniture – is new, our fundamental work will not change. We will continue to work with anyone in the University community on any kind of writing and at any point in the writing process. We will continue to offer individualized response and advice to writers about their current writing projects and any other concerns or questions they have about writing. We will continue to help writers with their current projects, as well as offer advice and suggestions that can help them succeed in future writing situations. That said, there are some new features to our new space that will allow us to grow in important ways. For example, our new University Writing Center includes have multimedia consulting rooms where we can work with multimodal assignments as well as conduct online, video consultations with distance education students.

We also plan to start using the new, more visible University Writing Center space for other writing-related events and activities. We will continue to use the Writing Center for meetings of our Junior Faculty Writing Groups, and plan to start offering writing group activities for graduate students and for undergraduate creative writers. Keep an eye on our social media and website for more news about these opportunities. We also hope to hold other writing events in our new space, such as readings by student and faculty writers.

It is important to thank Dean Bob Fox, of the University Libraries, for his vision and ongoing support that made this space possible, as well as Dean of Arts and Sciences Kimberly Kempf-Leonard for her support that allowed us to have new furniture in the Writing Center.

In January we will hold an official re-opening celebration, and we hope you will join us then to celebrate writing and writers at UofL. In the meantime, come by and see us and enjoy the new University Writing Center.