QWC tutoring appointments are now available for Summer Session I. We will be open M-F, 9-4, in Kimpel 316. Graduate tutors are available for one-on-one and online tutoring May 21 through June 29. We will be closed Memorial Day and Friday, June 1 (Walmart Shareholders Meeting). You may login to the scheduler to set your appointment now for summer session help. QWC tutors also will be available throughout Summer Session II.

Many students tell us they can’t find open appointment times in April and May. Fortunately, our software upgrade has a new waitlist function. We encourage students to try using the list during peak times. Clicking on the clock dial above each date on the scheduler opens the sign-up form. After a user registers, the system sends notifications by email or text message when we have cancellations or no-shows. The open times are available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you need additional details or help, read our instructions or call us during business hours at 575.6747.

We’re having the busiest week of our tutoring year. Many students have joined the waiting list, and our hardworking staff is doing a great job keeping up with the heavy traffic. By week’s end, some calm will return. We wish all students success with their semester-ending paper assignments.

The QWC’s Mullins tutors will complete spring duty this Thursday evening, May 3. We’ll return to Mullins in the fall semester. The QWC in Kimpel 316 will be open Dead Day, Friday the 4th, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Appointments are still available on our web-based scheduler. We’ll also be open in Kimpel M-F of Finals Week, 9-5. Appointment times are limited during exam week, so schedule your slot as soon as you can! The QWC will re-open the first day of Summer Session I.

We are proud to announce that QWC graduate tutor Alice Stinetorf, a first-year fiction writing student in the MFA Program in Creative Writing, has been awarded the prestigious Walton Family Fellowship in Fiction. The $10,000 prize will provide Alice a year off from her duties as an English Department teaching assistant, but she will continue her work this fall as a QWC tutor.  

This year’s fiction judge Leslie Daniels described Alice Stinetorf’s short story “Test of Faith” as follows: ”I found a sophisticated relationship with language and storytelling. The piece starts out soothing the reader with an almost timeless laying out of story: earthy, bucolic, with a simple and devout relationship to religion. Into a lovely portrait of a young couple awaiting a child comes a creeping sense of claustrophobia. The action and suspense are well crafted. The story has a spectacularly weird turn that helps its descent into a mad portrait of a marriage and of faith.”

Congratulations, Alice!

The Writing Center has teamed up with the Office for Campus Sustainability (OCS) to create Greenbloggers, a 90-day blogging competition for University of Arkansas students interested in sustainability issues. The winning Greenblogger will be awarded $500.

Competitors register on the OCS site and then receive an OCS email with simple instructions and rules. Greenbloggers visit the UITS site and create a free WordPress blog. All participants are encouraged to create their sites throughout the spring and summer. The summer months may provide students new to blogging an opportunity to become what OCS Interim Director Carlos Ochoa describes as ”Wordpress ninjas.”

The official competition begins this fall, on September 3, and runs 90 days. Greenbloggers may write about the campus, local, or national sustainability issues that move them: energy, food, community gardens, water, soil, design and manufacturing, recycling, etc. Greenbloggers will be judged on writing quality, use of media, overall content, site traffic, and participation in OCS events. Writing support is available through the QWC, and UITS provides a useful link to WordPress resources and tutorials.

Students interested in learning more about our sustainability minor, our university’s ambitious commitment to carbon neutrality, the new campus community garden, or the many opportunities to get involved with campus sustainability projects, should visit the OCS site. The QWC looks forward to the fall and what we’re sure will be the great addition of the Greenbloggers.

Amy Hardin, who serves as the University Libraries’ English subject specialist, has informed us of a useful new database. Students writing papers in Composition II and other literature based courses should pay a visit to Gale’s Literature Criticism Online. Users can narrow search by date, author, or title of work. The resource has criticism on short fiction, poetry, drama, and Shakespeare. We took Gale for a test drive this morning and quickly located some good critical essays on Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” To find the database on the library site, select the “Databases” tab on the library homepage. On the Databases page, click “subject”; then click ”English and American Literature” from the A-Z listing, followed by “Literature Criticism Online” (and you’re there!). Have fun.

Andrea Lunsford, author of the The St. Martin’s Handbook, and publisher Bedford St. Martins provide great online support resources. Included are the Andrea Lunsford Videos, which cover topics from argumentative writing to plagiarism. Students experiencing difficulty starting a paper might benefit from Lunsford’s Writer’s Block, a short film that features a variety of students discussing their techniques for breaking the block.

Students working on senior papers, Honors theses, and long research projects should drop by Mullins 102 on a Monday evening to catch a Zotero presentation. Zotero is free Firefox plugin that helps you gather, organize, and cite your research. Developers have even created Android and iPhone mobile apps with scanning capability. Beth Juhl, Web Services Librarian, says Zotero has “a much lower learning threshold than RefWorks or EndNote,” and she loves Zotero because it’s also a “a great tool for taking notes while you read and for keeping your notes organized.” Beth Juhl’s Zotero Libguide has a demo film and all the great info you need on upcoming training sessions.

This year’s nationwide RecycleMania has begun, and for the fifth consecutive year the University of Arkansas is pitted against our SEC foes. Last year we brought home first place in the Grand Champion category. To help the Razorbacks repeat as recycling champs, register online with the Office for Campus Sustainability. Faculty who would like a class presentation also may contact the office. The 10-week contest runs until March 31.