From Monday to Tuesday, students and tutors come to the Writing Center in the Tang Institute either aid or seek help in writing, in any subject.
Since its founding in the late 1980s, the Writing Center has journeyed from a tucked-away corner in the basement of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library to the basement of Bulfinch Hall to its current home in the Tang Institute. What started as a handful of students peer-editing papers, the Writing Center has expanded to host over 25 tutors, accumulating 147 hours of active sessions last fall.
Andover’s Writing Center was founded riding off a wave of creating similar spaces dedicated to providing feedback on student writing created at colleges and preparatory schools across the country. The Writing Center, though managed by the English department, supports students in writing assignments across all classes with writing including History and Philosophy & Religion classes.
Kevin O’Connor, Emeritus Instructor in English, who ran the Writing Center in the early 2000s, elaborated on the motivations behind the Writing Center. He highlighted how it can serve as an important place for academic support.
“Especially at a boarding school, it’s important to provide all the benefits that can be provided by an on-campus situation. [Given] the tight schedule of all students and teachers during the day, it only made sense to offer writing help in the evening during study hours. At the time in the ’80s, there was a lot of enthusiasm on a national level for institutions, both colleges and prep schools like Andover, to [have] a writing center… It also coincided with another kind of movement in English department pedagogy: teaching [the] practice of writing across the curriculum,” said O’Connor.
The Writing Center has undergone many iterations, evolving from two to four nights a week, paper-based to digital, including scheduled appointments in addition to walk-ins, and changing locations three times before eventually moving to the Tang Institute following a post-Covid-19 boom in demand. Marissa Schwalm, Instructor in English and Director of the Writing Center, described the expansion of the Writing Center after the pandemic.
“Historically, the number of students and the hours of operation have varied, but it was always relatively small… During the Covid-19 year, we did online sessions… We started in a small glass room overlooking [Garver]. It became clear very quickly that we needed more space because we often had lines out the door. During Covid-19, when everyone returned, we were all packed into that small room. Thankfully, colleagues supported our vision, and we now use the Tang Institute at night, including smaller rooms for those with sensory needs,” said Schwalm.
O’Connor emphasized the Writing Center’s commitment to preserving authentic work. When he ran the Writing Center, an important consideration was how students could help each other while maintaining academic integrity. Today, the Writing Center’s philosophy remains similar, according to Writing Center Tutor Bianca Mohamed ’26.
“Writing isn’t like a science where there’s a right or wrong. It’s about, how can I help this person develop their own voice [and] style? What am I seeing here that this person should also see? I think we hyperfocus on things we don’t need to hyperfocus on. [It’s about] acknowledging the parts of the writing that you don’t necessarily see at first. I’m not trying to give a student advice that they already know that they’ve heard a million times. I’m trying to give a student advice that will work for them that I think based on what I see will help them become better at what they can do,” said Mohamed.
The Writing Center is currently working to expand its future operations, based on data used to track student needs. Peer tutor Melinda Wu ’25 mentioned the Writing Center’s new Instagram account and special tutor training sessions.
“Having the Instagram [account] as a guide on how to make appointments, cancel them, Writing Center appointment etiquette, and whatnot will probably help. We’re also thinking [of] adding a calendar [on Instagram so] that students may want to bring more of their personal projects and personal writing… and I know we have history training sessions coming up for the tutors, so equipping tutors better to help out with high-level work in History 300 and whatnot is going to be a really big thing moving forward,” said Wu.
