Welcome to "Better Know A Department: Summer Edition!" Our (recently graduated) tutor Aparna sat down with Dr. Nikos J. Mourtos from the Department of Aerospace Engineering shortly before the Spring semester ended. Dr. Mourtos has taught at SJSU for an impressive 33.5 years (he began in January 1985) and is the Chair of the Department of …
Continue reading Better Know a Department: Aerospace Engineering
We are always so proud of our tutors here at the Writing Center! The latest news? Ariel Andrew, one of our recently graduated tutors, was just published in The Peer Review! Her article, "Who Do We Think We Are, Anyway?: Writing Tutor Identity Formation through Storytelling" is available here. Want a sneak preview? Here's just one …
Continue reading Writing Center Congratulations and Summer Tutoring!
It's summer!* Time to do your happy dance! *(Well, it is Final Examination Makeup Day...but the Writing Center is closed until Summer Session begins...) First, we expect that you'll spend several days doing this: But, then, reality sets in. You head back to your summer job: and/or to summer school: But, no matter what, you're still determined …
There are just a few days of finals left! As you finish up these last papers and projects of the semester, you might be hoping for some downtime and to start planning some fun. And when we say "fun," we definitely mean "reading." So, if you're searching for some books to look forward to over …
We’re so happy to welcome our newest member of the Writing Center staff, Amy Russo. As the Coordinator of Multilingual Writing Support Services, Amy will be working with a wide variety of students here at SJSU. Let’s settle in and learn a bit more about our newest Spartan: The Write Attitude: Why is learning …
Continue reading Better Know our Writing Support Services: Interview with Amy Russo
In our Fix-it Police series, we've done a lot of work on things we've found that are concretely wrong. Misused commas and apostrophes, for example, are grammatical concepts with finite rules, but stylistic choices are decidedly more complex. This week, let's look at DQ's campaign for what they call a "$5 Buck Lunch." Here, we …
Apostrophes are notoriously one of the most commonly misused forms of punctuation. We have a myriad of posts on the topic (see here, here, and here!). In fact, they're so widely misused that even The Tonight Show is not immune from their peskiness. Take a look at the opening clip from the show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0_A6KtjgnI Steve Martin, before …
Continue reading The Fix-It Police: Apostrophes are your Best Friend
All good things must come to an end, and that's especially true this year at SJSU. While we are happy so many of our beloved tutors are graduating, we'll be sad to see them go! But, never fear, we asked each of them to offer one final piece of advice for us. Ajah: The closer you …
Continue reading The Wrap-Up 2018: Parting Advice from Graduating Tutors
Our tutors are always hard at work as they strive to provide the latest and greatest academic resources for you! Kerri, one of our graduating tutors, has just created a new video for the Writing Center featuring tips from her interview with SJSU's Professional and Technical Writing Program Director, Dr. Mark Thompson. Watch this video on …
Continue reading New Writing Center Video: Kerri’s “Preparing and Delivering Presentations”
On Friday, we had our last Writing Center meeting of the year! (Never fear, we'll still have summer tutoring available. Keep an eye out for flyers soon!) For a bit of symmetry, we thought we'd ask a companion question to our first "Ask a Specialist" post of the school year back in September. What metaphor …
Continue reading Ask the Specialists (May): Writing is like…
