Our Impact
We work with thousands of undergraduate and graduate students from across disciplines and programs.
Undergraduate Impact
Impact Spotlight: Writing Consultations and College Writing Program Success
On average, about half of the Writing Hub users make appointments in conjunction with their College Writing Program assignments. (The other half use the Writing Hub for other courses, advanced academic writing projects, or professional/extracurricular writing projects.)
We have measured a correlation between regular use of Writing Hub one-on-one consultations and improved performance in College Writing Program courses. In general, Writing Hub users are more likely to have higher course grades and show lower rates of D, F, Withdraw, and No Pass.
The effect of one-on-one writing consultations is most significant for freshman students whose first-term (i.e. Fall Quarter) GPAs were below 2.0. Among these kinds of students, regular users show much higher rates of B-grades, and significantly reduced rates of D, F, Withdraw, and No Pass.
These data show that connecting with an undergraduate consultant at the Writing Hub amplifies a student's odds of success in their College Writing Program courses, particularly for students in the B- to C-range of course grades. Working with a Writing Hub consultant can help steer students away from potential failure and toward greater success.
Graduate Student Impact
Impact Spotlight: Effect of Writing Retreats on Graduate Student Well-Being
We run Writing Retreats for graduate students multiple times per quarter. Before each retreat begins, we administer a pre-survey to ask participants about their writing habits, the kinds of things that tend to get in the way of writing, and the common emotional experiences they have with the writing process. We then administer the same survey at the end of the final retreat session in order to measure how these dimensions shift over the course of the writing retreat. In the 2018-2019 Academic Year, we had 104 graduate student participants complete both the pre- and post-surveys for their retreat (about three quarters of all retreat participants for the year).
Our assessment reveals that graduate students experience high levels of anxiety around their writing projects. Nearly 70% of our retreat participants report experiencing anxiety related to their writing projects often or always. We believe this anxiety explains another pattern in our pre-survey data: that graduate students are dealing with high levels of procrastination around their work. Almost 80% of participants note that they procrastinate on their writing projects often or always. From our perspective, procrastination and anxiety are inextricably intertwined: the more one feels anxiety around a writing project the more likely they are to procrastinate, and procrastination in turn causes anxiety.
Our assessment also reveals that our Writing Retreats are an effective programmatic intervention for reducing this vicious cycle. After participating in a retreat, the majority (66%) of participants report feeling anxiety only sometimes or rarely. Likewise, nearly three quarters of participants report procrastinating on their projects only sometimes or rarely.
The key to this intervention is our emphasis on establishing a daily, sustainable writing habit. We equip graduate students with tools and strategies to sit down with their work every day, making steady and sustainable progress that also helps them re-discover their joy and curiosity around their work. Our surveys show the students' buy-in for this approach. Before the retreat, 22% report regularly setting aside daily time and space for their writing projects. After the retreat, that number catapults to 77%. Through instituting a daily writing habit aided by the strategies and community that emerges in the writing retreats, graduate students feel reduced anxiety around their writing projects and are thus less likely to procrastinate.
Writing Hub
Teaching + Learning Commons
(Geisel Library 1st Floor)
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