SAW Center

Located in the Reference Area of the Williston Library, the SAW Center is a place where students work together with experienced peer assistants to develop as leaders who think critically and creatively and who write and speak persuasively.

SAW Center Hours

Sunday	2 pm – 10 pm
Monday	10 am – 12 pm; 4 pm – 10 pm
Tuesday	10 am – 12 pm; 4 pm – 10 pm
Wednesday	4 pm – 10 pm
Thursday	4 pm – 10 pm
Friday	10 am – 2 pm
Saturday	closed

Appointments
Students may schedule a 50-minute appointment to meet one-on-one with a SAW assistant by calling x2651 or by visiting the SAW Center in person. Students are welcome to make multiple appointments and to request to work with specific assistants. SAW requests at least 24 hours notification if cancelling an appointment.

What We Do
SAW assistants provide mentorship in writing and speaking through a collaborative, conversation-based education/learning model. Rather than editing or “fixing” students papers or speeches, SAW assistants engage their peers in conversation with the goal of helping each student develop transferable skills for effective rhetorical action, including the ability to make conscious and deliberate decisions about how to negotiate diverse discourses and environments. They will ask students critical questions to elicit ideas, listen actively to understand the students’ reasoning and intentions, and offer guidance and resources.

The focus of such conversation is determined together by the assistant and the student and may range from developing strategies for organization, facilitating critical thinking, negotiating diverse audience expectations, creating an argument, strengthening sentence-level writing, outlining a speech, to practicing delivery.

Because our focus is on the development of the writer or speaker—not necessarily on perfecting the specific product at hand—students are welcome to visit the SAW Center at any stage of the writing or speaking process (from brainstorming to final revisions), with any type of written or spoken project (from application essays, to science lab reports, to oral reports in political science), at any stage in the writer or speaker’s development (from less-experienced to highly-accomplished students).

Who We Are
Students who staff the SAW Center work with all members of the College community on a variety of writing and speaking projects. Together with SAW mentors who work in the context of specific course, all SAW assistants complete "Peer Mentoring: Theory and Practice," a semester-long credit-bearing course taught by the Coordinator of SAW to prepare for working collaboratively with their peers. Once in the program, they continue their education through participation in regular organized discussion groups and faculty-led pedagogy workshops.

Students interested in working for SAW can apply here online.

See the list of current SAW Student Staff.

See recent SAW Center stats.