CAPS Director Daniel Sanford said the new center will assist students with any issues involving writing and language learning.
“I wanted to create one coherent recognizable location that students could go to for writing and language support at this university,” Sanford said. “A writing center is a really incredibly important piece of the sweep of academic support programs that are offered at any university.”
Kathryn Denton, program specialist for the Language and Writing Center, said advanced writers will be available during open hours to assist students with writing in all subjects. In addition, students can get help with multi-lingual writing and composition.
The new center is unique because it offers writing and language together, she said, supporting every language that is offered at UNM in the Foreign Languages and Literatures department as well as Spanish and Portuguese.
Sanford and Denton put an emphasis on language learning in conjunction with writing to address the multi-lingual and multi-cultural student population at UNM.
“Another thing about UNM students is that they come from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and we wanted to really reflect that in the way that we support students,” Denton said. “Our goal is to be a multi-lingual writing center where our tutors and students can talk across their native languages and about both writing and communicating in those languages.”
Sanford wrote the proposal for the new space two years ago and took the plan to the office of the Provost, he said, who was incredibly supportive of moving it forward.
Since then, CAPS’s number of tutors has gone up from 120 to 160 thanks to help from the Student Fee Review Board, he said. With the new center, CAPS can now offer more adequate space for the growing numbers of tutors and the services they offer.
“It opens up a lot of new possibilities for us to collaborate with other programs like Education Classrooms, and it nearly doubles for us the ability that we have to work with students,” Sanford said. “With the combination of the new space and all the new tutors that we have in place because of the SRFB funding, we’re going to really be able to have even more impact than we do now on student success at UNM.”
Sanford advises that students use the new center “early and often,” throwing away the common misconception that the best time to get support is after being referred by faculty or after a student has already been struggling.
Students do not need to bring in a full or completed draft and are in fact encouraged to actively seek out help before, during and after the writing process, he said.
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The goal for Sanford, Denton and their colleagues at CAPS is to graduate students who are confident in their writing skills, he said, so they can take those skills into graduate schools and on to jobs where they can write and communicate effectively.
“One of the great things about having been here since 2006 is that I’ve really gotten to see the writing and language program grow. It has grown in response to UNM students and how we can best serve our diverse student population here,” Denton said. “To me, the new writing and language center represents the culmination of the work we’ve put in over the past few years in growing our program.”
The center is located in Education Classrooms 208 and 210 in building 67 and is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and from 9 to 2:45 Friday. It will now be open on Sunday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Writing and language support is available during those times, whether by appointment or walk-in. Students can also find support online at CAPS@unm.edu.
