The Odegaard Writing and Research Center (OWRC) is an interdisciplinary writing and research center that aims to support UW students, staff, and faculty on their diverse writing and research projects through one-to-one tutoring sessions, group tutoring sessions, workshops, and other programs. We serve nearly 5,000 students with over 10,000 one-to-one writing appointments each academic year. Our tutors are undergraduate and graduate students from a wide range of academic fields, and we provide a rich learning environment for writers and tutors alike.
Mission
The mission of the OWRC is to support the long-term development of writers and researchers across UW—undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff—through high-quality, conversation-based peer learning.
Vision
In the service of justice, equity, and inclusion, the OWRC seeks to be a national leader and a campus-wide resource for transforming how writing is learned, taught, and understood on the UW-Seattle campus. We imagine that this transformative work creates opportunities to learn, provides the space to negotiate and critique dominant academic discourses, and empowers students with agency to choose one’s way of being and writing. We firmly believe that there are many ways of making meaning and achieving one’s ends with writing, that writing is a relational act, and that all writing involves negotiations of power.
Service Commitment
The OWRC serves students with a wide range of abilities and social, economic, cultural, ideological, racial, ethnic, gender, and linguistic identities. We value and honor diverse experiences and perspectives, strive to create a welcoming and respectful learning environment, and promote access, opportunity, and justice for all. We strive to support all writers–including tutors and staff– in writing and research development while achieving their personal and academic goals. We seek to be proactive in foregrounding linguistic justice as a center through trainings, professional development opportunities, and ongoing revision of policies and support offerings, and we seek to create a culture of listening to and learning from historically marginalized voices and literacies.