The vision for The Academic Centers, also described as the writing center and reading lab, is a space where students can drop in for writing and reading assistance and feedback on assignments. The Academic Centers hope to become a college gathering place for everyone who values reading, writing, and intellectual discourse. Additionally, The Academic Center hopes to provide engagement between students, faculty, and professionals in writing and other career fields (authors, editors, publishers, bloggers, speakers, etc.) through ongoing workshops, speakers, and other academic events.

One of the primary goals of The Academic Center is to reach students and faculty across disciplines and skill levels, increasing achievement and academic engagement throughout the students’ college experience. The Academic Center is not intended to be seen only as a place where students drop in because they have weaknesses in college writing and critical reading skills, though we will always serve those needs, too.  Rather, The Academic Center is focused on becoming a welcoming space for all the academic, intellectual, creative, and critical work that is a part of college. 

We are in the process of ensuring that The Academic Center is functioning well on each of our four campuses. Once these spaces are complete, we also plan to add The Academic Center to West Hills, Homewood-Brushton, and Braddock Hills Centers. 

The Academic Center is a work in progress. With the support of college partners, in addition to drop-in tutoring, The Academic Center is establishing, or plans to establish, the following offerings: 

• Regular academic workshops that address using Blackboard and other college-related technology, note-taking skills, Google Tools, college library databases, research & formatting skills, essay structure and organization, editing workshops, writing tips and tools, critical reading strategies, and others
• Inviting Faculty to use The Academic Center as a fresh space for classroom roundtable discussions, classroom presentations/gallery walks, club meetings, and other engagement-oriented activities 
• Establishing and developing supportive programming for international students (EAL), providing opportunities to participate in conversation groups and interact with peer mentors. We hope to grow this facet of The Scholarly Exchange so that we may provide meaningful support for students new to our culture and new to college-level English as an additional language
• Supporting The Big Read through specialized events, writing prompts, and creative writing contest
• Supporting the (hopefully) annual, campuswide Celebration of Student Learning through related workshops across the spring semester
• Coordinating speaker events, town halls, and craft talks
• Encouraging use of The Academic Center for occasional English 101 Writing Lab Meetings  
• Accommodating faculty requests for specialized workshops tailored to course-specific critical reading and/or college writing needs
• Providing workshops for students interested in writing poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction; organizing feedback and revision workshop opportunities to prep student creative work for submission to publications; identifying student publishing opportunities, especially The Phoenix
• Establishing a writers’ salon and reading series
• Celebrating significant dates such as October’s Spooky Stories party and November’s gratefulness activities, Black History Celebrations, poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction contests, scavenger hunts, “student of the semester” awards, and midterm & finals stress relief