Writing Support for the CSUSB Community
Writers work with consultants on writing projects of all kinds, including class assignments (essays, research papers, annotated bibliographies, lab reports, etc.), scholarship letters and applications, grad-school applications, creative writing projects, text messages, and even Kickstarter campaign pages! Whether you’re just beginning to figure out how to get started on an assignment, questioning whether you need to revise your thesis, or you’re ready to give your writing a final polish, wherever you are in your writing process, we’ll work with you to figure out how to move forward.
Scheduling a Writing Consultation
Most writers use our online scheduling app to make 30-minute or 1-hour appointments to work with a consultant. You can also call, connect with us via Zoom, or come in person to set up an appointment. Once you’ve signed up for an account, you can use the app to set up, adjust, or cancel your appointments anytime and anywhere you have internet access. Click through to the writing consultation page for more information on our writing consultations.
Check out our appointment-making tutorial below.
Walk-in Writing Consultations
We work with you on a walk-in basis whenever we can. During midterms and nearer the end of the term, we can get 100% booked with appointments, but we still take walk-ins whenever someone cancels or doesn’t show up. We allow 5 minutes after an appointment is scheduled to start before marking it as a no-show and taking a walk-in. In that case, your consultation will be 5 minutes short of the usual 30 minutes or 1 hour, but the 5 minute window helps us balance giving you some flexibility and making the most of the time we have available.
Appointment Policy
Our scheduling system is configured to allow writers to book two appointments each week and to have two walk-in appointments each week. Writers can make appointments of 30 minutes to 1 hour in length. The limits are guidelines set in the interest of our student-centered pedagogy of collaborative learning and to maximize our accessibility, appointment availability, and operational efficiency as we seek to provide maximum access with limited resources. If you think you might benefit from having additional appointments or appointments of extended length, please reach out to the Director at njones@csusb.edu. We regularly work with students with accommodations who benefit from extended appointment lengths, recurring scheduled appointments, etc.
Missed Appointment Policy
If you are more than 10 minutes late to a Zoom appointment, 5 minutes late to an in-person appointment, or miss your appointment entirely, your appointment will be marked as a missed in our system. If you don't upload anything for the tutors to review for an email appointment, we'll try to follow up, but if we don't hear from you within 10 minutes of your appointment start time, we'll also mark that as missed. After three missed appointments, you will still be welcome to be seen on a drop-in basis by connecting with our receptionists via Zoom (see below) or in person, but you will need to reach out to the Director via email at writingcenter@csusb.edu before you are able to use the online scheduling system to make appointments again. The count of missed appointments is reset at the start of each term. The policy is not intended to be punitive but is in place to prevent abuse and maintain the efficiency of our appointment availability.