The Writing and Academic Resource Center of AUCA

January 19, 2017

The Writing and Academic Resource Center was founded by Ms. Peg Peoples, now Associate Vice President for Education Initiatives at the Bard Institute for Writing & Thinking, during the two years that she spent creating and teaching in the First Year Seminar Program.  Although recruitment and training of mathematics and writing tutors began in 2010, the WARC officially opened its doors on November 1, 2011. It is one of the WARC’s many traditions to hold a birthday celebration for our center on that day.  

The WARC’s primary mission is to help students succeed in their courses across the curriculum, and in particular, in writing-intensive courses with the help of formally trained peer tutors.  The WARC’s secondary mission is to support faculty across the curriculum in enhancing their writing pedagogy skills and assisting to create writing assignments that help students meet course learning outcomes. Central to the WARC’s mission is the belief that developing a culture of writing, rhetoric, and active engagement in the learning process is one of the most fundamental aims of a liberal arts education. Besides free peer tutoring, the WARC also provides workshops and other assistance with writing that is relevant to students’ academic and professional pursuits, such as scholarship essays, personal statements, and other components of employment, graduate school, and scholarship applications.

WARC tutors assist students with writing, mathematics, economics, and accounting. We are proud to say that our students represent the very best of the AUCA student community. All the applicants go through a rigorous screening process. They are selected on the basis of their overall academic performance, as well as their performance in their chosen area, faculty recommendations, and of course, professional and personal qualities that we assess in a personal interview. Additionally, our writing tutors are required to complete the semester-long Composition Theory and Tutoring Pedagogy course before they apply to the WARC.  

The majority of the students who come to see writing tutors are freshmen, although we are seeing increasing interest from seniors, Master’s and NGA students. As far as economics, accounting and mathematics are concerned, the distribution is a lot more even: we have almost the same percentage of freshmen and sophomores. There are fewer junior and seniors, but still, collectively, they represent over 30% of total tutees.

The WARC’s current initiatives include collaboration with First Year Seminar faculty and integration with other university services, such as Advising. Our most immediate project is an international conference of the tutoring centers within the Bard HESP university network in mid-February. The conference gather learning support center administrators from Bard College, European Humanities University, Bard Berlin, Al-Quds Bard, Smolny College, and Central European University in order for them to share tutoring pedagogies and materials, organizational systems, and technical know-how. We hope that the outcome of this conference will be increasing the scope and the quality of tutoring services among the institutions’ respective academic communities.

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