The mission of the Regional Writing Centre is to engage both students and staff in a burgeoning national conversation on writing and to thereby provide all students and staff who avail of our resource with a framework for developing into effective, efficient, persuasive scholarly writers and writing mentors.
History of the Regional Writing Centre
In 2006, €27,000 was awarded to Caroline Graham, Director, University of Limerick Language Centre, and Dr Angela Chambers, Professor of Applied Languages, to develop a number of Writing Centre activities and an academic business plan for the creation of a Writing Centre in UL.
Subsequent to that initial award, Sarah Moore, Dean of UL's Centre for Teaching and Learning, assisted with the expansion of the UL application to take advantage of the newly announced HEA, Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) context.
Subsequently, UL was successfully awarded a 2.5-year, €250,000 budget to fund the creation of the Shannon Consortium Regional Writing Centre.
An inter-institutional initiative based in UL, serving as a nexus of writing activities at the four institutions, the Shannon Consortium Regional Writing Centre won its award on the strength of its recognition of the centrality of writing to teaching and learning in higher education and the importance of writing for not only the dissemination but also the discovery and creation of knowledge.
Seeing the great value of the Writing Centre to the furtherance of many of the university's strategic goals and envisaging the centre's eventual value to the wider off-campus community, the university's administration mainstreamed the Writing Centre at the end of its SIF contract in 2009, placing it under the auspices of the Centre for Teaching and Learning and assuming responsibility for its financial support.
The Regional Writing Centre today
Today the re-titled Regional Writing Centre, UL, continues in its support of undergraduate and postgraduate student writers and collaboration with faculty to develop their own writing and to expand writing-based curriculum innovations.
While writing centres have flourished in American universities since the late 1960s, the Regional Writing Centre is the first of its kind in Ireland.
The value of the Centre is its contribution to the academic success and future professional development of students and staff at UL and its aspirations for writing development for the region.
Regional Writing Centre Annual Report Summary 2020/21
Testimonials
"Damien, Thank you very much in providing valuable input into the assignment! Grade went from B3 to A2, and I’ll take that as an overall win in this tough, uphill battle. For a 3000-word essay, we’ve used 65 references, which is almost half of what I have used during my PhD!" -
"This week was a fantastic opportunity to commit fully to writing and work out the bad habits/aversion I had towards writing - Thanks Lawrence for everything"
"I recently got my results and was awarded a first-class honour for my postgraduate diploma. I'm still in disbelief. I've used your service many times over the last two years and just wanted to show my appreciation for all the assistance. Your help really makes a difference, and I wanted to say thank you!"
"Natasha helped me on how to structure a short report, advised me on how to write a bibliography and overall helped me gain confidence, so when I sat down to write I wasn’t lost and finished rather quickly."
"Safiye helped in going through writing a research paper giving in detail about each section of a paper while taking a research paper as an example . This helped me to discover new things and got a clear picture of a research paper."
"She listened attentively to my project discussion and recommended an additional reading resource. I was comfortable sharing my research with her including my strengths and weaknesses. Thanks so much Naa and the Writing Centre."
"Sara was a huge help in looking at the assignment with me and her advice to look at the key word in the questions and if I need to critically analyse or not made me much more confident in the way I tackled the assignment and any future assignment. I am so grateful to her."
"My sincere thanks Luke for your excellent advice and support. I’m off again!"