About the RWC

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Mission

The Rockowitz Writing Center provides tutorial services that help students become better academic writers. It is the goal of tutoring to improve students' reading and writing processes, how they engage texts and write papers, and in the effort help students actively participate in their own education and to appreciate the educational value of all the courses offered in the college's curriculum.

The Center's mission is realized through tutorial practice based on the following principles:

A tutor at the Center should work as a peer with student writers, focusing on the writing process, questioning students about their writing and prioritizing the most critical issue in every session, while creating a nonjudgmental learning environment.

The Rockowitz Writing Center is a peer tutoring program. Successful student writers are the experts in how to write successful academic papers. They can explain the process and advise their peers with authority—and, in the process, add to their own learning and improve their own writing.

The Center's tutorial services are process oriented. Tutors aid students in improving and strengthening the academic writing process they practice, from reading (whether assigned texts or researched sources) to thinking (e.g., thesis development) to organizing (through outlines or drafting) to writing, revising, and proofreading. Through creating better products—richer readings, more persuasive arguments, more polished prose—student writers will enhance their processes, and vice versa.

Tutors use the Socratic Method in their tutorial practice. Questioning makes students investigate their own thinking and more effectively understand and express their ideas. Inquiry-based tutoring technique also assures that student writers will think, and write, for themselves, applying, adapting, and extending their expressive abilities.

There are often more issues in a piece of student writing than can be addressed successfully in a single tutorial; to try to fix or focus on every error, confusion, and faulty usage can overwhelm the student writer and undermine learning. Prioritizing the most important or prevalent reading, critical thinking, or writing issue, e.g., understanding the assignment, thesis development, or the grammar error that occurs most often or most obscures meaning, is most likely to make the biggest difference in the piece of writing under review and in the development of the writer.

While tutors must analyze student writing and recognize error, tutorial practice must be nonjudgmental. Other than to determine how best to help the student become a better critical reader and academic writer, the tutor makes no judgments about the quality of the writing, the kinds of error, or the level of the student. Tutors do not discuss grades; they focus only on progress.

Founded in 1976 by Charles Persky and Ann Raimes, the Hunter College RWC is a comprehensive service at the college that reflects the growth and development of pedagogical thought and practice within the City University of New York in relation to both critical reading and academic writing over the past four decades.

History

As illustrated in the RWC timeline, the Center evolved from a small-group discussion program under the auspices of the English Department at Hunter to a limited tutorial program for students enrolled in development writing, composition, and literature courses. The Center was established primarily in response to the influx of students, many of whom were the first in their families to attend college as well as non-native speakers of English, which resulted in response to the policy of open admissions adopted by the City University in the early 1970s.

In time, the Writing Center expanded to serve a wider range of students and addressed the need to provide similar services to students enrolled in developmental reading courses. Operating independently as separate programs, the Writing Center and Reading Resource Center were eventually merged as a single entity reporting to the Provost of the college. The renamed Hunter College Reading/Writing Center (now the RWC) would thereafter provide tutoring services in both academic writing and critical reading.

Now one of the most utilized services at the college, the RWC provides tutorial assistance and academic advisement to undergraduate and graduate students at the college as well as technical support and development to faculty and staff, serving students from disciplines across the curriculum and from all divisions and schools of the Hunter community.

Timeline

1974 - The Hunter College English Department initiates a limited tutoring program to students in Developmental Reading and Writing courses, Freshman Composition, and Introduction to Literature.

1976 -  In response to directives from the Hunter College Senate and Faculty Delegate Assembly, a Writing Center is established under the auspices of the English Department to provide tutoring to students primarily in Humanities courses.

1986 - The Center is reorganized as a tutorial service in academic writing for students and classes from across the curriculum, at every level, and is resituated from the English Department to the Provost’s Office.

1988 -  The Center is a founding member of the City University of New York (CUNY) Writing Centers Association, which is accepted as a regional association in the National Writing Centers Association (NWCA). The CUNY Writing Centers Association will later merge with the Northeast Writing Centers Association.

1988 - The Center enters into a formal collaboration with the English Department to provide alternative instruction for students required to pass the CUNY Writing Assessment Test (WAT) as a graduation requirement.

1994 -  The Center provides dedicated classroom tutoring to Immersion Program classes in Developmental Reading and Writing courses in the extended semester (and still provides in-class service to the program for students in Freshman Composition).

1995 - The Center merges with the Reading Resource Center, a program previously housed within the English Department, and is renamed the Reading/Writing Center.

1996 - The Center publishes a website providing information and web-based resources for students, faculty, and staff at the college.

1999 -  CUNY discontinues Developmental Reading and Writing programs at the 4-year colleges, including Hunter, effecting a change in the student body and in the range (but not in the number) of students who use the Center.

2000 -  The University institutes the CUNY Proficiency Exam (CPE), a standardized reading, writing, and critical thinking exam for all undergraduates. Students must take the CPE before junior year and must pass it to graduate from any of the community or 4-year colleges. Designated as a test preparation site, the Center develops a workshop series on the CPE and creates a 12-week tutorial curriculum on the exam for high-risk students. The Director of the Center is named the college’s CPE Liaison to CUNY, and the Center’s Coordinator consults for the University Office of Assessment with the testing company (ACT) that develops and scores the test items.

2000 -  CUNY mandates that a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program be developed on every campus. The Coordinator of the Center is named a Co-coordinator of Hunter College’s WAC Program, which is housed in the Reading/Writing Center.

2004 -  In honor of a grant received from Anna Cohen Rockowitz, the Writing Center is renamed the Dr. Murray and Anna C. Rockowitz Writing Center (RWC).

2007 -  The RWC inaugurates a satellite center at the Hunter College School of Social Work (SSW). The SSW Writing Center is staffed by SSW students, overseen and trained by RWC staff, and will (2008) initiate an E-tutoring service for students at the school.

2010 - After ten years of administration, the University discontinues the CUNY Proficiency Exam. The Center refocuses its services on the college’s developing General Education Requirement, offering Early Intervention programs to required 100-level courses in the Departments of English, History, and Political Science.

2012 -  Hunter College announces that the RWC will be relocated to the Leon and Toby Cooperman Library as part of the Klara and Larry Silverstein Student Success Center.

2017 - The RWC opens on the 7th floor of the library in the Klara and Larry Silverstein Student Success Center.