Writing Center - Mission Statement

The Webster University Writing Center is designed to give students, faculty, and staff access to the writing resources used by professional writers, including state of the art computer hardware and software and trained writing coaches. Created by the faculty and overseen by a Writing Board consisting of a representative from each department as well as Academic Resource Center staff, the Writing Center plays a scaffolding-coaching rather than an instructional role in the writing program. Within this framework, writing is viewed as the tangible outcome of a complex problem-solving process whose goal is to communicate ideas clearly to a pre-specified audience. This view assumes that writing can never be completely mastered because each effort is a new, context dependent problem-solving task. Webster, therefore, devotes considerable resources to the Writing Center and invites all its members to make use of these resources because it believes that writing provides people with potent and efficient means of communication and of solving problems. It is potent because it can be used to influence the thoughts and actions of others; it is efficient because it makes thinking tangible enough to examine its possibilities and its flaws. Within this view, writing becomes the integration of the communication techniques and the critical thinking abilities necessary for people to function successfully and productively in a complex society that requires its members to be lifelong, independent learners.