The Tri-Campus Writing Center exists to serve the wide variety of students at UConn's Hartford, Torrington, and Waterbury campuses. Accordingly, we serve the varied needs of our students as determined by various levels of proficiency in writing, providing assistance for advanced student writers as well as developing writers. Because the students who visit our Writing Center compose a representative cross-section of the student body, our tutors follow a tutoring practice that is designed to be flexible but also consistent and connected to the goals of writing in a university context.

When students comes to the one of the three Tri-Campus Writing Centers, they can expect to receive guidance from one of our trained tutors with any relevant form, stage, or aspect of academic writing. We stress that using our services manifests a positive commitment to their work and the challenging task of improving it.

Students can go to our centers for assistance with any assignment that involves writing, personal forms of writing like application letters, or in the more basic act of reading as a preparation for writing. In terms of the stages of academic writing, our tutors work with students on generating ideas for writing subjects and approaches, organizing their ideas and material, drafting, and revision. We will also guide students to consider crucial aspects of academic writing, such as their use of other's writing, their own use of sources, proper citation protocols, thesis articulation, structuring and paragraphing, and even basic grammar.

During one of our half-hour or one-hour tutoring sessions, students will be asked to write, taking an active part in their own development of writing skills. The student's writing helps to start a conversation about their writing, through which students learn more about their own writing and our tutors determine how best to direct the student to perform other acts of writing during the session. Our tutors practice a "hands-off" approach, and ensure that the student's writing remains her or his own intellectual property. Our tutors are not editors, and we do not "correct" or edit papers.

Near the end of a tutoring session, we identify areas of writing to work on for the student's next tutoring session, and attempt to schedule a follow-up session. Thus, we emphasize tutoring as an extended process, in opposition to the "quick-fix" approach. Through the course of multiple tutoring sessions students develop a greater self-sufficiency in matters of writing: they become their own tutors.

We keep written reports for all tutoring sessions and allow students the option of having a copy of their tutoring session report sent to their instructor. We maintain this as an option, and do not automatically send tutoring session reports.