Rough draft for new writing center

Center for Academic Sciences, English and ESL departments provide extra essay help

ANGELICA LOPEZ Reporter @angietography

Writing an essay requires a series of steps such as planning an outline and editing drafts before the final paper is complete, which can be difficult for some students.

The Center for Academic Success, English and ESL departments are teaming up to open a writing center where students can get direct help from professors and tutors during the beginning stages of writing essays in Spring of 2019.

The Center for Academic

Success currently offers many services, including 30-minute appointments with a tutor to go over already written papers.

Center of Academic Success

Director Crystal Kiekel said the writing center would be offering a similar but also different service.

“It’s almost like you go home and you sweat, and you’re nervous, and you go through the whole thing and then you bring it to a tutor,” Kiekel said. “You find all these different ways to improve it and then you go home and improve it. Which is a fine process, but this would be a different approach. This would be where you can come in and actually work on your paper, and as you’re working on your paper somebody can just come by and answer that question right then and there. So you can have somebody help you in the process itself and not to look at the end product”

The writing center is planning to be in the Center for Academic Success computer lab 5148.

English professor Marra Kraemer said students having access to computers in the center could be an efficient way for students to focus on writing their papers.

“The first priority is that they’d they have a quiet positive place to work and that’s nice,” Kraemer said. “It can help students who are

Years ago, a biology professor prepared a Great Horned Owl that was found dead on campus.

“When we have a dead animal you know that we're going to keep our collections for study pools we'll skin it to preserve the skin and stuff it,” DeVaney said. “And that one when it was skinned by our now retired faculty member, it had big ulcers on its liver, which would be an indication that there was some rodenticide poisoning.”

Kramer’s colleague Monique Cleveland contacted Plant Facilities about their concerns. Kramer was not satisfied with the response.

“They basically just sent us some of the company who makes the poison's literature and told us that it was safe,” Kramer said. “We found other places that say that it's not safe, but they didn't really address the concerns that we had.”

Plant Facilities did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the situation.

Kramer decided to contact Pierce College Interim President Larry Buckley directly. After Kramer emailed him, Buckley responded, essays. busy because they have a place on campus where they can write their essays but also it allows access to faculty and tutors right there. So if you’re typing your essay and you have a grammar question you could just ask instead of waiting or forgetting about it for later.”

English and ESL Department Chair Brad Saenz said they want students to have all the help that they can get in the writing center.

“Right now most of the assistance that students get is peer tutoring,” Saenz said. “The idea is to have the writing lab supervised by a professor, so they can also assist as well as having the student tutors assisting. We at least want to have one at any given time.”

In addition to tutoring, the Center for Academic Success currently offers free Student Success workshops that range from English to nursing to math. These workshops, specifically relating to English, would also be included in the writing center. Kiekel said the English department plans to add sharing the concerns of the faculty.

“Paul [Nieman] shared with me that the request to address what was once an exploding rat population, actually came from faculty and staff who were concerned about human health consequences,” Buckley wrote in his email. “I asked Paul to check further with our vendor regarding the specific use of bromadiolone. While he and I have discussed in passing some preliminary comments from the vendor, we have not yet discussed a formal response from them.”

DeVaney met Buckley on Friday to discuss the situation, and offered some alternative solutions, including installing Barn Owl boxes.

“There are some some organizations here locally that will provide for a nominal fee, and some of us faculty will be happy to sponsor some of these Barn Owl boxes,” DeVaney said. “That is just a nesting site for these owls and if they're then attracted to the campus it gives them a way to stick around. A single Barn Owl can eat a thousand plus rodents every year.” more workshops such as reading, writing, research methods, why use research, summarizing, paraphrasing and many more.

DeVaney warns that any solution will take some time. If the rodenticide is removed, DeVaney said they should wait at least two or three months to not possibly poison any birds.

With Assembly Bill 705 coming up, students enrolling into Pierce will be placed directly in to English 101. Kiekel said although those students are capable of passing, they need to make sure they have the resources available to them.

“We also recognize that in order for capable students to be successful they need help,” Kiekel said. “None of us are successful on our own. We all need help. There’s a certain amount that we can do without help, and there’s even more that we can do with help. If we’re going to ask students to be doing more we need to be stepping up and making sure that we’re supporting them more.”

The plan is to have the writing center open a couple days a week for a few hours. However, finding open time and space for the learning skills classes and

“I expect a fairly rapid recovery of the ecosystem in this case,” said DeVaney in an email follow up. “If rodenticide is removed soon, I think we can expect a productive spring with baby rabbits and squirrels.”

Whatever the solution that is reached, Kramer knows he wants the bait traps removed from campus.

Some of Kramer’s frustration comes from a lack of knowledge prior to the installation of the traps.

“We would have liked to have known when they were going to do this,” Kramer said. “And nobody was notified. As far as I know nobody knew a thing about it and I've talked to at least a dozen faculty members about it.”

According to Kramer, anyone should’ve known what the result of placing bait traps on the ground would be.

“It was obvious what was going to happen. I don't see any hawks flying around anymore like you see every day and it's just something that spreads through the ecosystem,” Kramer said. “I'm an English teacher and I can tell you I could have told you what was going to happen.” jmanes.roundupnews@gmail.com