Our Services

The Speer Writing Center is located in Evans Student Center, right across from Chick-Fil-A. Look for the water fountain on the far wall, and we're directly to the left of it. Our door is wrapped, we have a green nameplate that says “Writing Center” above the door, and we place a sign on an easel outside when we’re open. You can’t miss us!

For online undergraduate and graduate students, we’re also online! You can schedule online synchronous appointments with us, so we’re able to provide assistance even if you are not physically on campus.

The easiest way to make an appointment is to email us at OBUSpeerWritingCenter@gmail.com with your topic/assignment and a few days and times you are available to meet. We'll make an appointment and email you back a confirmation with the day, time, and name of your consultant. If you’ll be meeting online, your consultant will email you the link close to the time for the session, so be on the lookout for it!

The simple answer is no. Writing Center consultants won't check papers without the author's interaction. Instead, consultants work one-on-one, or side-by-side in person, with students to help them become stronger writers. That way, what's learned in the Speer Writing Center doesn't stay in the Writing Center. Put a different way, you can learn how to apply the lessons from the session to your other pieces of writing. We aim to make better writers, not just better writing. 

We can help by responding as readers to encourage you answer the following questions:

• Am I meeting the assignment's requirements and specifications?
• Is my focus clear?
• Are my supporting examples clear & do they make sense?
• Am I using the correct structure, grammar, and formatting?
• Is my style appropriate for the assignment's genre and the class' professor?

Whether in person or online, standard sessions are 30 minutes. You can request an hour-long session, but those are often difficult to schedule due to limited staffing.

At the beginning of each session, you can expect your consultant to ask about your assignment and to see your prompt; therefore, you want to have your assignment handy so that you can share it. Your consultant will ask about your questions and concerns and if you have a particular element you want to address. He or she will also double-check the larger, global elements of your paper like thesis, topic sentences, and logic of argument. If you don’t have any specific questions, your consultant could ask you to read aloud from the beginning of your work. You can expect to conclude the appointment with ideas and tools to use in your writing. Often consultants in online sessions will ask you to screen share your paper, email it to them so they can screen share it, or work together on Google docs.

While there's never a bad time to come to the Writing Center, we think the earlier in your process that you visit, the better. In fact, we recommend multiple sessions if you're writing a longer research paper. If you schedule a session as soon as you receive your prompt, we can help with all parts of the writing process such as

• Interpreting the assignment/prompt

• Formatting lab reports

• Exploring unfamiliar genres (like exegeticals!)

• Generating topics

• Discussing ideas

• Unfreezing your brain

• Organizing material

• Fleshing out a thesis

• Tightening structure

• Minimizing grammatical errors

• Clarifying research methods

• Checking MLA, APA, and Chicago Style citations

We also want you to keep in mind that there’s a limited number of elements we can feasibly address and discuss in a single 30-minute session. If you have a longer paper, there is a good chance we will not get through all of it in just one session.