As I write this in August 2026, I look ahead with anticipation to a new academic year, and I reflect with pride on the past year.
The Workshop’s goal is to participate in fostering a culture of writing on campus; as such, it is our mission to serve all University of Illinois writers, from the first-semester undergraduate to the visiting faculty member. In the last academic year, we provided writing support in about 6,500 individual sessions and reached almost 29,000 students in presentations, writing groups, and resource fairs. The students and staff who comprise the Writers Workshop’s community are diverse, and many of our appointments were with first-generation students (22%), students from underrepresented and minoritized groups (38%), international students (32%), and multilingual writers (42%).
Research conducted at our writing center received national recognition in the last year. Antonio Hamilton, a long-time Writers Workshop consultant, assistant director, and graduate student in Writing Studies, received the 2025 International Writing Centers Association’s Future Leaders award in recognition of his service and potential to positively impact the field. I was honored to receive the 2025 IWCA Outstanding Article Award for “Generous Audience, Activist, Evaluator: Tutor-Teachers’ Knowledge, Practices, and Values for Response to Writing,” published in the Journal of Response to Writing. We also proud had several of our current consultants attend and present at the IWCA conference, where we caught up with several of our alums (shout out to Allison Kranek at OSU, María Carvajal Regidor at UMass Boston, Evin Groundwater at UC Irvine, and Neal Liu at Washburn University). Additionally, we have continued to be active in research in our local context. Undergraduate students in WRIT 300: Issues in Tutoring Writing, conducted original qualitative research on topics like discursive tutoring strategies, GenAI, disciplinary expertise, and multilingual students’ writing experiences, and six of our students presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium.
In the past year, the Writers Workshop has continued to take an active role in campus conversations about Generative AI, and we have developed presentations and resources to foster students’ critical, ethical use of writing with GenAI. We also undertook a digital accessibility review, ensuring our website, presentations, and other resources are accessible for all our users. In the spring, we were proud to be a featured unit in Orange and Blue Week, where we raised nearly $800 to support our services.
As always, I extend my thanks to our outstanding current and former consultants, our reception and admin team, and the writers who help us learn about their amazing research and creative work. The Writers Workshop is passionate about the work we do, knowing that we provide an inclusive and collaborative environment where we and our writers feel safe to take risks and try out new ideas and skills.
The articles that follow were proposed and written by current consultants. I read these pieces as a joyful celebration of the community we’ve built, and I hope you enjoy their reflections on this work.
With best wishes,
Dr. Carolyn Wisniewski
Senior Director, Writers Workshop