By Emily Nugent | Guest Writer
The Wilmer Writing Center director is restructuring to ensure more student participation and regulation of artificial intelligence usage.
Dr. Rachel Willis became director of the Wilmer Writing Center in the fall of 2024. While the Writing Center is a free student resource, usage has diminished this semester. Dr. Willis believes that the increased use of AI in student writing is part of the reason why the Writing Center has seen a decrease in appointments.
“Students could not be making appointments because they could be running their papers through AI to see what they can fix,” said Megan Stiffler, a junior and supervising tutor at the Writing Center.
Dr. Willis has been taking steps towards increasing participation in the Writing Center and has upcoming plans to encourage more students to become recurring users of the tutors’ services.
“This spring we’re doing write nights outside of our normal tutoring hours as students are preparing for things like the student scholar showcase and research projects, we’re inviting students to come in Thursday nights to work with our tutors,” said Dr. Willis.
These write nights will allow students to get active help with their assignments from the tutors. While Dr. Willis plans to increase the usage of this free resource, AI poses a real challenge as students use it in ways that Writing Center tutors cannot help.
“I think that with this frequent use and access to AI writing tools, people are feeling less of a need to visit the Writing Center, we don’t offer proofreading, and AI can help with that,” said Dr. Willis.
Dr. Willis understands that being a student includes many writing assignments and hopes that more people will start to utilize the Writing Center’s offerings.
If you want to make an appointment at the writing center, visit https://lynchburg.mywconline.com/ to learn more.
