Composition Forum 46, Spring 2021
http://compositionforum.com/issue/46/

Design and Implementation of the First Peer-Staffed Writing Center in Thailand

Martha Olson, Sutraphorn Tantiniranat, Molly McHarg, and Weraphon Carmesak

Abstract: This paper describes the design and establishment of the first peer-staffed writing center in Thailand, including its inspiration, its planning, the tutor-training process, and its implementation up to and through the COVID-19 pandemic. As writing centers are relatively unknown in Southeast Asia, the writing center in focus was a fortunate confluence of factors: a motivated faculty dean, a visiting English Language Fellow, and a writing center specialist. These combined to provide the framework for collaboration with university faculty. The process involved exploring writing center methodology, training peer tutors, and progressing a community of practice. Although the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed some of the writing center’s activities, it continues to be a model for other universities in the region and beyond.

Introduction and Context

Although writing centers have become a de facto element of many Western universities, especially in the U.S., they remain under-represented in Southeast Asia. A search in the WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) clearinghouse for “writing center” or “writing centers” yields many thousands of results; however, add the words “Asia,” “Southeast Asia,” or “Thailand,” and the results are limited. Likewise, a search of ComPile, which includes the Writing Center Journal in its database, yields few significant results: a couple of articles and a blog about emerging writing centers in China (WLN Journal). In this paper, we describe the development of the first peer-staffed writing center in Thailand.

The HU-SO English Writing Center at Burapha University, in Chon Buri, Thailand, was established in October 2019, but its foundation was laid in 2018. The driving force behind the writing center was Suchada Rattanawanitpun, a teacher and administrator who was then the head of the Western Languages Department. As a graduate student in the U.S. decades earlier, this academic had had a friend, a fellow Thai graduate student, who was struggling with writing her research, and who had finally found help at the university’s writing center. Now, having achieved some power within Burapha University, Dr. Suchada decided that she wanted to establish a writing center there.

As she envisioned it, the writing center at Burapha University would serve not only the approximately 800 English majors in the Western Languages Department, but also the university student body (approximately 10,000 students), faculty members (approximately 1,000), and any community partners who might need assistance with writing projects. Dr. Suchada, along with the faculty members in the ad-hoc committee overseeing the project, wanted the writing center to have a foundation of best-practice objectives and procedures, so that it would be able to serve the maximum target population productively, both in the short term and in years to come. However, because Burapha was the first public university in Thailand to establish a writing center, there were no local models for the best way to establish this foundation. At first, the idea was to at least partly monetize the writing center through referrals to faculty members wishing to freelance as editors and proofreaders for other professionals requiring this kind of service, in addition to providing assistance to students needing help with writing skills.

In the fall of 2018, Martha Olson, one of the authors of this paper, was assigned to Burapha University as an English Language Fellow through the U. S. State Department’s English Language Programs. She had experience as a journalist and academic, but her knowledge of writing centers was limited to a short visit, once, as a graduate student. English Language Fellows are expected to take on secondary projects in addition to their teaching hours, and so the yet-to-be-established writing center presented itself as a great opportunity.

As luck, fate, or circumstance would have it, Ms. Olson attended a Thailand TESOL Conference in early 2019, where she attended a short presentation by a teacher and academic, Molly McHarg, who had ten years of experience in establishing university writing centers in the Middle East and in training students to become peer tutors. Dr. McHarg happened to be living in Bangkok, and was invited to Burapha University to give her Thailand TESOL presentation to the ad-hoc committee overseeing the establishment of the writing center. Everyone at the university was energized by what they learned. Peer tutors had been an essential element of the Middle Eastern writing centers that had been pioneered by Dr. McHarg, and soon the ad-hoc committee was committed to the idea of training Thai students as peer tutors to provide consultations in the writing center at the university. Dr. McHarg’s experience with the nuts-and-bolts operational procedures and practices of university writing centers also was recognized as a valuable resource.

At this point it became clear that the writing center at the university could benefit from Dr. McHarg’s expertise over the long term. The Regional English Language Office in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok received a grant from the U.S. State Department’s English Language Programs to fund Dr. McHarg as an English Language Specialist. In the fall of 2019, the ad-hoc committee appointed Weraphon Carmesak, one of the authors of this paper, to be the director of the writing center. Dr. McHarg also visited Burapha University to conduct two weekends of faculty advising and peer training for writing tutor positions, and spent many hours consulting on physical, procedural, and policy issues. The HU-SO English Writing Center had its opening ceremony on October 22, 2019, with dignitaries from Burapha University and the U.S. Embassy, Bangkok, in attendance. A follow-up visit to assess progress took place in mid-December, and a second set of peer-tutor training, to be conducted by Dr. Sutraphorn Tantiniranat and Weraphon Carmesak, was scheduled for February/March 2020.

By then, however, COVID-19 had become a serious consideration. In mid-March 2020, Thailand, along with the rest of the world, began to shut down completely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In its five months of operation up to that point, the HU-SO English Writing Center had provided 62 peer consultations to Burapha University students, nearly all of them English majors seeking help with a writing assignment.

Theories informing the program

The theories underlying this program are threefold. First, the value of academic writing centers generally has gained increasing currency since the years leading up to the turn of the century, when pioneers such as Stephen North, Kenneth Bruffee, and Muriel Harris published their ground-breaking articles. Linguistically speaking, writing is “where the rubber hits the road” in terms of thought organization and linguistic ability, and academic writing, with its specific formulaic requirements and formal vocabulary and grammar, is commonly one of the most difficult for students to master (Padgate 32). Although writing centers have become a regular feature on American university campuses, they are fairly rare in other contexts (Hodges et al; McHarg). A study of the HU-SO English Writing Center’s conception, development, implementation, and outcomes can provide insight and an example for how a writing center in an unusual location can take root and flourish.

In addition, associated research on the value of writing centers to second-language English learners (Blau et al; Williams; Cogie; Moussu) has shown that these students, who are expected to write across curricula at Western universities, may be especially challenged by intercultural predispositions, a fear of being seen to need help, and the additional cognitive burden of accomplishing an already challenging task in a language they are struggling to master. In many cases, English learners at Western universities are referred to a writing center as remediation for perceived failings in understanding “standard” academic genres and protocols. Even when consulting with peer tutors rather than faculty members, ELL students who visit a writing center in the West will most likely interact with someone from a different culture and linguistic background. This cultural and linguistic mismatch between tutor and tutee can pose a challenge to those seeking help (Williams & Severino; Canavan).

However, little research has been conducted on English-language learners in writing centers within their own contexts. One anticipated dissertation that has been awarded the IWCA 2020 Dissertation Grant is Jing Zhang’s Talking about Writing in China: How Do Writing Centers Serve Chinese Students’ Needs? (IWCA website). Although there is robust writing center activity in the Middle East, which has presented many opportunities for research in that demographic, almost all of those are writing centers that have been integral to the various Western university presences in that region (Hodges et al; McHarg).

Some of the earliest established Writing Centers in Asia were in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and Korea and Singapore (394). A search of the “Writing Center Directory” for the East and Southeast Asian region (https://web.stcloudstate.edu/writeplace/wcd/Asia/asiaindex.html) yielded ten at Japanese universities, two in Singapore, one in Taiwan, two in Hong Kong, two in China (Macau and Suzhou) and one at a private language school in Vietnam. There may certainly be more, as this directory requires writing centers to nominate themselves for inclusion. In addition to Japan, China is emerging as a fertile landscape for writing centers. A recent conference titled “International Symposium of English Writing Centers in Chinese Universities (2020),” was held October 31 to November 1, 2020, at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, and a follow-up post by Professor Fang Fan on the WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship blog lists at least nine Chinese universities with English writing centers that have emerged over the past 15 years (Fang).

The HU-SO English Writing Center is somewhat anomalous in that it arose in a public university outside the nation’s capital, was founded on principles based in Western academic methodology and practice, and now continues to be sustained by local Thai colleagues. As such, it offers a wealth of information and opportunities to explore the affective and effective differences inherent in this situation, a topic which will be discussed later in this article.

Finally, the idea of a peer-staffed writing center, in which students are trained to consult as peer tutors, and which gained traction in the late 1900s in the U.S. through the work of Harris, Bruffee, and others, is one that may be foreign to many universities, especially in cultures where there is a relatively more rigid academic hierarchy. As an example, in Thailand, many primary and secondary-school students approach the teacher only when asked, and, even then, often do so on their knees.

Much research has shown the benefits of peer tutoring in American and European universities (Bruffee; Vandenberg; Dinits and Kiedaisch; Ianetta and Fitzgerald), both to the tutees and to the tutors themselves. For universities in other contexts such as in Thailand, however, empowering students to provide feedback and guidance as non-experts can be an unusual, and possibly even subversive, concept (Dinits & Kiedaisch), and could raise questions about the appropriateness of the writing center’s staffing. Many Thai parents and students expect native-English-speaking teachers to be tutors in an English writing center, based on the assumption that they will provide more accurate models of English. However, this assumption overlooks the fact that English is evolving into an international language that belongs to all English users, not just native speakers (Canagarajah; Pennycook). Moreover, recent articles (Lape; Olson) suggest that multilingual writing centers in Western contexts, which are moving away from an “English-centric” constriction, might be more inclusive and better serve a demographic that is linguistically diverse.

As writing center theory increasingly examines the reality of World Englishes against the currency of “standard” English (Matsuda; Canagarajah; Pennycook; Denny), this idea of post-colonial linguistic power and the agency of local language is one worth exploring. The concept of agency, in this context existing within the framework of literacy, is a different and intriguing line of thought; in the big picture, as posited by Baynham (qtd in Ahearn), “it is important to understand literacy as a form of social practice (or agency), and to investigate the way it interacts with ideologies and institutions to shape and define the possibilities and life paths of individuals” (128). This understanding of the HU-SO Writing Center, as it negotiates the sociocultural intersection of local needs and administrators with international ideas of what a writing center is and does, will, it is hoped, be the subject of further research and analysis in the future.

These are but a few of the many considerations that need to be examined when planning an English writing center in countries where English is not the first language (Jones-Katz). Because the HU-SO Writing Center is unique in its context, it can provide a window into some of the challenges and opportunities a writing center such as this can provide in this region, and in underserved regions globally.

Program Structure

Overseeing the HU-SO English Writing Center are collaborating committees comprised of instructors in the Department of Western Languages. There are three different teams: the academic team, the administrative team, and the public relations team.

The Academic Team:

• Plans and designs services which include peer consultations and workshops, and also researches and disseminates English writing resources for the center.

• Plans and designs the rules for use of the center.

• Plans and provides peer-tutor training.

• Provides information for the HU-SO English Writing Center web page.

• Checks and evaluates the quality of the center’s services.

• Develops and facilitates ongoing professional development for peer tutors.

Since the center opened, the academic committee has recruited two cohorts of peer tutors and held two peer-tutor trainings for each cohort. The details of the recruitment and training will be described in the next section. Also, to develop the center to serve the users’ needs, the committee has been planning to provide more activities and services in order to both publicize the center and to help tutees become better writers. Arising from our observation and results from the initial phase of operation, there are possible areas of research that the team is interested to explore. These include topics such as peer tutors’ self- and professional development; tutees’ needs of and attitudes toward peer tutoring; and perceptions of faculty members of the HU-SO English Writing Center.

The Administrative Team:

• Plans and supervises the appointment system.

• Collects, manages, and analyzes statistical data that can be used to improve services.

• Designs and archives the intake form for tutorial sessions.

• Manages schedules for each peer tutor.

• Recruits and trains peer tutors.

• Evaluates and revises the system to improve efficacy.

In order for the center to run smoothly, the committee has established appointment and data collections systems. An intake form records information including the tutee’s name, year of study, reason for consultation, and preferred time and date for the consultation, which allows the receptionist to manage the queue for consultation sessions. Information recorded also will be used as data to improve both the appointment system and services. In addition, the committee provides a visitors’ book for everyone who signs in. This provides evidence to show how many students use the writing center services and what major they are from. Also, to evaluate the satisfaction and performance of both peer tutors and tutees, a questionnaire is provided for tutees after every consultation session. This data will be used to improve services, the peer tutor training, and the systems used to support the center.

The Public Relations Team:

• Plans and designs marketing strategies for the center and its services.

• Develops Facebook page, and any other useful outreach channels.

• Publicizes writing center activities and services through all channels.

• Strategizes and manages the branding and image of the center.

• Checks and evaluates the public relations system and the avenues of outreach.

Initially, in 2019 and in the beginning of 2020, the writing center used posters as the primary means of promotion and publicizing information. In early December, a half-hour interview with Dr. Suchada, who had by then been promoted to Dean of the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty, and Ms. Olson, the English Language Fellow, aired on a local television and radio media network. Another channel of outreach was a Facebook page, “HU-SO English Writing Center,” which continues to be used to disseminate news of the writing center and to publicize the center’s services.

Peer Tutors

Peer tutors are one of the most important elements of our writing center. Students need to complete the recruitment and training process to become peer tutors.

In the initial phase (Fall, 2019), 14 undergraduate and graduate students made up the first batch of tutors. These students expressed an interest in peer tutoring or were recommended by their English faculty. Candidates needed to have a minimum 3.00 GPA in their English courses.

In December 2019, a second batch of peer tutors, all 2nd-to-3rd-year undergraduate English majors, was recruited. For this second call, we interviewed candidates to assess their oral English proficiency and their attitude toward being a peer tutor. Additionally, a sample paragraph was distributed to the tutors to test their English writing proficiency as well as their ability to provide feedback.

However, the second batch of peer tutors’ training was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. They were able to complete their training in a remote session via Microsoft Teams in July, 2020.

Peer Tutors in the Writing Center

From the October 2019 opening until the mid-March 2020 COVID-19 closure, peer tutors worked, as their schedules permitted and based on appointment bookings, between 1:00 and 5:00 PM from Monday to Saturday. Each session was booked for 30 minutes, although some sessions were shorter or longer. After a tutee made an appointment for a consultation, the administrative staff would inform peer tutors of their tutoring session on a daily basis. A tutor would not know whom he or she would meet, and a tutee could not choose a specific peer tutor. There was no walk-in service for students to meet with a peer tutor, although the writing center was open during most afternoons for students to make appointments, use the computers and research materials, or to do group work at the writing center’s conference tables.

The Administrative Committee created a LINE group chat (a communication app widely used in Thailand) to enable all the peer tutors to keep in touch, get to know one another, and share experiences and concerns across cohorts. They also have opportunities to meet with one another at the writing center, as it is an open space for all.

The Operation of the HU-SO English Writing Center in the First Six Months

From October 22, 2019 to February 14, 2020, the writing center held a total of 62 writing consultations; all tutees were second- and third-year English major students. Because many second-year students enroll in the Paragraph Writing course, they are assigned writing assignments throughout the semester; those instructors recommended that their students visit peer tutors in the writing center. However, only around one third of all the students enrolled in this course made an appointment with the peer tutors.

Similarly, many third-year students enroll in the Essay Writing course, and that instructor encouraged the students to consult peer tutors as well. Of those students enrolled in Essay Writing, about half consulted peer tutors; it is notable that the instructor offered extra credit to students who visited the writing center for help with an assignment. Other than these consultations, there were two others: one for an engineering student looking for help with a paper, and another for a fourth-year English major who was completing a scholarship application.

As mentioned in the Theories Informing the Program section, the fear of being seen to need help in this Thai context may have played a role in the limited number of students seeking writing support. During the writing center rollout, we aimed to mitigate this potential challenge by building on writing center research that indicates writing centers should provide a comfortable, non-threatening, and relaxing environment that will lower the affective filter for learners. During training, we stressed this point to the peer tutors so they would be supportive and nonjudgmental in their dealings. Furthermore, although peer tutors were encouraged to keep a record of what occurred during each tutorial session, this information was not shared with faculty members, but will be reviewed by the committee for the purposes of training and research. Finally, we felt that this peer-tutor support could, in fact, aid students with the greatest fears of being seen to need help, because they would be helped by peers on a relatively equal level of hierarchy as opposed to receiving help directly from faculty.

Administrative Support

The HU-SO English Writing Center was able to remain active only through the support of volunteer staff of the ad-hoc committees and the Department of Western Languages. Three part-time receptionists staffed the center during its first six months; all were students who received scholarships from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and were assigned to work in the center according to their contract with the faculty. However, in order to provide full staffing coverage for the center, faculty members also volunteered their time. Their work was supplemented by faculty members who pitched in to help with every aspect of the writing center’s operation.

Financial expenses were divided into two main parts: compensation for the peer tutors and center operating costs (e.g. publicizing cost, office staff, etc.). To date, the Western Languages Department has supported the funding for both parts. As seems to be true for writing centers universally, funding for this writing center was, and continues to be, a major challenge.

Assessment

Because the HU-SO English Writing Center was new, it took a while to segue from the triage of the startup to reflection and assessment. However, peer tutors were able to reflect on their Fall, 2019, training immediately afterward with an online survey via Google Form and short written reflections, as well as in March 2020, with a collaborative writing activity, which was a letter to the second cohort of incoming peer-tutor trainees.

The ten peer tutors who had completed the peer-tutor training in October also responded to a Google Form survey, sent out in May 2020. Of those, seven had actually continued in the writing center as peer tutors. The seven working peer tutors self-assessed that 1) they had been well prepared for writing center consultations, 2) they had been mostly able to provide helpful consultations to the students they consulted with, and 3) they had improved their own writing skills through their work in the writing center. All were open to working in a writing center, or as writing tutors, in the future.

In addition, the 3rd-year English majors in the Essay class received a Google Forms survey asking for their anonymous responses to a series of questions about their experiences at the Writing Center. Ten questionnaires were completed and returned. Seven respondents rated their experience as “Very positive” and three as “Positive” on a Likert scale of 1-5; responses to other questions were instructive and provided input going forward.

Finally, the authors of this paper collaborated to produce an annual report on the establishment and operation of the HU-SO English Writing Center. Because it was in English, and the Burapha University administration might not have been able to read it well, in the future the authors plan to create an annual report in Thai language too, to demonstrate the center’s value and utility to the community.

Program Constraints

The challenges to the program’s growth and development are several. In the past six months, one of the most challenging aspects of continuing the work of the writing center has been the COVID-19 pandemic. Peer-tutor training was interrupted for several months as attention shifted to urgently migrating courses to online platforms during the country’s lockdown. The peer-tutor training that had begun face-to-face in mid-February was concluded remotely. During the closure, the plan was to reopen the writing center online at the beginning of the academic school year in July, with Microsoft Teams as the platform for making appointments and peer-tutor consultations. There was limited publicity for the new format, and no tutees used the remote writing center during that semester. Although it was hoped that the writing center could resume in-person peer consultations in the semester that began in December, a new COVID-19 outbreak in Thailand required remote learning to recommence, and another semester has passed with neither in-person nor remote writing center consultations. It is hoped that in the coming 2021-22 academic year, which will begin in June 2021, in-person writing-center consultations, along with peer-tutor training sessions, will be possible.

Even without the pandemic, the HU-SO English Writing Center has a host of challenges. Like many other writing centers, the first and most radical need is financing. Up until now, the writing center director and members of the various committees have simply added writing center work to their already demanding schedules and duties. Like university staff almost everywhere, they have many other commitments in terms of teaching load and extracurricular university responsibilities, research, and community contributions. A merit system in which the director, committee and volunteer teachers could obtain extra credit for their contribution in the writing center would boost morale of those who help develop and run the center.

Carving out a line in the university budget for the writing center seems to be a Catch-22: It’s not a legal entity yet, and so is not eligible for direct funding from the university. Fortunately, Dr. Suchada, the department head who had initiated the HU-SO Writing Center back in 2018, has now ascended to the position of Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and historically she has worked tirelessly to accomplish her goals. Likewise, the HU-SO Writing Center director and the ad-hoc committee members also are committed to the continuation of the writing center. As of now, the writing center is funded as a project through the university’s Western Languages Department.

For the writing center to be successful over time, it needs to gain acceptance and value in the minds of potential tutees, not only for English majors or those in the Western Languages Department, but across the university and community. This will take time, favorable reviews, and publicity. As mentioned above, almost all the tutees who used the writing center in the first six months were second- or third-year English majors incentivized by their instructors. This is in line with a discussion in a recent IWCA webinar on assessment that reported that 90% of students who visited writing centers do so because of an in-class recommendation from teachers (IWCA Zoom, wsps.edu 2020 annual results, 09/14/2020).

First-year students’ lack of engagement might be because their writing assignments are relatively basic; most of their English courses at Burapha University focus on grammar and speaking skills. One follow-up recommendation was to add and promote grammar consultation as a new service for these students and to advertise this service to first-year students on orientation day in coming semesters. Another idea is to embed writing center peer tutors in first-year English classrooms as additional aides to work with students in troubleshooting difficult areas. The absence of fourth-year students as tutees in the writing center must also be approached differently. They generally are enrolled in only one English course, and rarely even come to the university campus. They may also feel that they have little to learn from a peer tutor who may be at their level, or even below. One way to address this is by recruiting more graduate students as peer tutors, as well as by increasing awareness of the advantages of peer review of student writing regardless of level.

In addition, the writing center needs to demonstrate its value to other faculties and departments within the university, and to the community at large. One proposed way to accomplish this is through targeting English-minor students in other departments. Another initiative that was in the planning stages before the COVID-19 pandemic was a series of open workshops on topics of general interest, such as writing resumes, or exploring international study exchange programs. Because the writing center was still in its first year, the organizers wanted to focus on its basic operations before branching out to a wider target audience; however, eventually it will need broad support to achieve its full potential.

Public relations initiatives have included a television and radio interview broadcast locally, an active Facebook page, and advertisements on the university’s website, as well as conference presentations at the 40th International Thailand TESOL Conference, in January 2020, at the 12th Annual WCAJ (Writing Centers Association of Japan) Symposium on Writing Centers in Asia, in Osaka, Japan, in February, 2020, an online presentation at the International Symposium of English Writing Centers in Chinese Universities in Zhejiang, China between October 31-November 1, 2020, and an online presentation at the 17th Annual CamTESOL Conference, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Feb. 7, 2021. By nurturing a local and a global presence, it is hoped that this small writing center will gain acceptance, recognition, and funding. The establishment and operation of the HU-SO English Writing Center must be seen as a process of informed trial-and-error, and not so much as an accomplished fact, if it is to become an integral and culturally-appropriate entity within its context.

Lessons Learned

The writing center at Burapha University evolved through a fortunate series of events: the individual determination on the part of Dr. Suchada to create a writing center, based on her U.S. experience decades previously; the placement of an English Language Fellow with a background and interest in writing; the fact that Dr. McHarg, a specialist in establishing writing centers in the Middle East, happened to be in Bangkok and presenting at the Thailand TESOL conference about her experiences; and the ongoing commitment, contribution, and participation of the Western Languages Department faculty and staff to keep it going through its initial growing pains and the subsequent restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic. This kind of synchronicity is not something that may be replicated universally; however, there is a key element with wider application: “If you build it, they will come.” It was as if, once the physical writing center was being formed, the players that would be necessary for its success stepped in to further its progress.

Even so, there are many lessons to be learned from the first year of the HU-SO English Writing Center. In a perfect world, there would have been more time for the Thai faculty, committee members, and writing center director to study the various models of writing centers and congruent methodology, so that they would have had more information to decide what kind of writing center would be best for their own context. Because there was already a U.S. English Language Fellow on site, who then brought in an American specialist with experience in establishing the U.S. model of peer-staffed academic writing centers in the Middle East, these two may have influenced the direction of the Burapha writing center with their vision of “best-practices.”

As acceptance and enthusiasm for this peer-staffed model of writing center grew within the committees overseeing it, along with the enthusiasm of the students who were training to be peer tutors, the training of staff and peer tutors might have been planned and structured differently. Because the organizers were using Western writing centers as their model, they strove to create a safe space where students would voluntarily sign up for tutoring sessions; however, the newness of the concept in this context meant that more motivating factors, such as extra class credit for writing center visits, were warranted. Similarly, the hierarchical nature of Thai academia may have contributed to the perception that Thai-student peer tutors were less than qualified to offer writing guidance.

Conversely, there were advantages to the peer-tutor arrangement in this context: When Thai students opted to go to the English writing center for extra credit, regardless of their standing in the class, as many of those in this profile did, it was not seen as a remedial, or even shameful, visit, as can be the case for English language learners in Western universities. In fact, it was the more proficient students—those who wanted to raise their 93 grade to a 95—who were the first to sign up. Eventually the student tutees came to understand that their consultations in the writing center would be low-stakes interactions with more-proficient students who could communicate difficult concepts in their first language, and who also in many cases knew the tutee, the tutee’s professor, and even the assignment under review.

Finally, and most obviously, a writing center needs paid staff and funding to be successful. Originally, the principals were thinking it might pay for itself via commercial editing jobs for academics wishing to have their articles fine-tuned for publication, or for community members with editorial needs, and with Western Languages Department faculty members moonlighting as contracted editors and proofreaders. If there is no funding forthcoming from the university budget for the staffing and operation of a nonprofit, peer-staffed, writing center, that scenario might become a reality. Budgets across universities are being reduced due to the constraints of the pandemic, so that model might be a viable option, at least for the short term.

When Ms. Olson, the EL Fellow, and Dr. McHarg, the EL Specialist, came into the picture, and it was determined that the writing center would be modeled on the non-profit, peer-staffed, university-funded writing centers in U.S. universities, it became clear that funding was going to be a crucial challenge. In hindsight, at that point, it might have been useful to take the time to examine closely the financial paths available for the writing center, and to work more closely with the administration and faculty heads to find a way to include the writing center as a line item in the university’s budget, whether as an adjunct to the library, as an additional course or service in the Western Languages Department, or some other option to optimize sustainability.

If it will be monetized, continue as a U.S.-model peer-staffed academic writing center, or develop in some other direction, only the principals on the ground can determine. It is hoped that an examination of the development of the HU-SO EnglishWriting Center will serve as an example, a lesson, and a model for other universities in the region.

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