Writing Center

The Writing Center provides individualized peer-feedback to Union students working on writing projects for any class across the liberal arts, sciences, and engineering curriculum. We support students working on personal statements for graduate and professional school, essays for study abroad or internship applications, scholarship and fellowship statements, job application essays, and more. We offer one-on-one peer review conferences at any stage of the writing process, from understanding an assignment and idea development to structuring, revising, and polishing a draft—and everything in between.

Our staff of specially trained writing mentors—Union undergraduates from a range of different majors—work with their peers in an open, supportive, and enthusiastic learning environment. Our goal is to help students find meaning and purpose in and through their writing at Union College, both inside and outside the classroom.

The Writing Center is located on the second floor of Schaffer Library, Rooms 226 and 227. We are open during the term, Sunday through Thursday, 3-11pm, by appointment only. The Writing Center is closed on Friday and Saturday. Learn how to make an appointment.

The Writing Center typically opens during the first week of classes each term. Because we are staffed by students, the Writing Center is closed over the summer and during breaks, when classes are not in session. If you have questions, please contact us!

At the Writing Center, we are first and foremost a community of readers and writers. We believe that all writers need warm, friendly, constructive feedback—from readers who care deeply about ideas and the power of student voice. That's who we are and what we do. Our approach is collaborative and conversational: our staff of student writing mentors engage their peers in lively discussion about ideas, along with the situation, purpose, audience, style, organization, clarity, coherence and voice of different writing projects. We work with students on sentence-level issues and grammar, but we prioritize “higher-order” concerns in student writing—from understanding the assignment to idea development, thesis, structure, and argument, including the use of evidence, paragraphing, topic sentences, transitions, word choice, and so on.

Whether we’re working on sentence-level issues related to grammar and usage, or focusing on ideas, organization, structure, and argument, our goal is to help students develop strategies for revising their own work—as we reflect on how we write and why, and come together to affirm the power of student voice.

The Writing Center is closely connected to the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program at Union. Learn more about the mission of the WAC program.