Writing Support
Welcome to Writing Support in the MAX Center! This unit of the MAX Center includes professional staff and peer writing tutors who offer individualized and collaborative support for writers and their texts throughout the writing process. Staff and peer tutors work with students on a variety of writing projects, including:
- Essays for classes across the disciplines
- Capstone papers and honors projects
- Personal statements and related application materials for graduate school, grants and scholarships, study away programs, employment, and other opportunities.
Writing Support Statement of Purpose
We provide individual onsite and remote writing support to all members of the Macalester community at every stage of their writing processes. We partner with other departments and offices across campus and at other institutions to promote research and development in writing and writing pedagogy. Our undergraduate peer writing tutors consult with student writers and support research into writing pedagogy, center policies and programming, and campus outreach.
Because we serve a diverse community at an institution dedicated to inclusivity and global citizenship, we acknowledge that writing pedagogy, like all of higher education, has equal potential for oppressive or liberatory power, and we strive to cultivate the latter while dismantling the former. We recognize that our students do not come to Macalester with uniform skills, educational backgrounds, privileges, and intellectual capital, and that none should suffer academically as a result of those differences. We are determined to increase access to liberatory knowledge for all students and to develop a daily practice of anti-oppressive pedagogies.
This work includes a commitment to outreach and education about the broad validity of various world Englishes and their dialects, and the sociopolitical implications of academic writing. It includes our support for writers from historically marginalized or oppressed groups, such as international and/or multilingual students, first-generation students, and students of color; and for conversations about writing that challenge historical notions of “standard” academic English by interrogating and broadening traditional conceptions of audience, purpose, and meaning. With faculty and student collaboration, we strive toward a common understanding of effective assignment design, writing process and assessment, and writer development, in the hope of reaching a more consistent, humane, and equitable definition of success in writing.
Commitment to equitable writing pedagogy
Jake Mohan wins Martinson Award
Jake was awarded the 2022-2023 Martinson Award for Innovation from the SLAC-WPA, the association of Small Liberal Arts Colleges-Writing Program Administrators. Said the award committee: “Over the past several years, MAX has championed the needs of multilingual writers and equitable writing practices through new tutor education materials and a revised mission statement. While many centers have engaged in antiracist practice with attention to multilingual writers, what impressed us most about the work of MAX is how it engaged faculty in changemaking.”
In fall 2022, the Mac Weekly profiled Jake and his work in the MAX Center.
“Unlearning White Supremacy in Writing”
In spring 2022, MAX Center writing tutors wrote and published an open letter in the Mac Weekly about how academic writing can be taught and evaluated in a more equitable and inclusive way.
Research
With funding from the Mellon Foundation, Writing Coordinator Jake Mohan recently prepared two documents exploring the social, cultural, and racial dimensions of how we teach students to write. These two documents are intended for instructors and tutors hope to deepen their understanding of anti-racist and anti-oppressive pedagogy, and make their spaces of learning more inclusive and humane.
“Beyond Just: Toward an Antiracist Writing Pedagogy at Macalester” (Google Doc)
“Working with Multilingual Writers at Macalester College” (Google Doc)
Interested in becoming a writing tutor?
We recruit and hire new writing tutors every spring in late March and early April. If you are interested in working as a writing tutor, please contact Cori McKenzie or Jake Mohan.
Additional Resources
AI Literacy and Critical Thinking (Research Guide from the DeWitt Wallace Library)
Writing Resources for Macalester College
DeWitt Wallace Library–Questions and Research Help
DeWitt Wallace Library–Citation/Research Management Tools