Welcome to the CMU Writing Center and WCONLINE!

The Writing Center offers free face-to-face and online services to all CMU students enrolled in any undergraduate or graduate course and for CMU faculty and staff. Writing Center peer consultants can provide feedback on writing projects of any kind, at any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to final editing.

To get started, register your account by logging in with your CMICH credentials and completing the registration form. (Your username is your global ID--just xxxxx1x, not your email address--and your password is the same as you use for all of your CMU accounts.)

Appointment Policy: In order to ensure equal access to Writing Center resources, two appointments per week limit. Appointments can be created, modified, and cancelled up until 1 minute before the appointment begins. After that, an appointment cannot be created, modified, or cancelled; if you need to cancel your appointment, please call the Writing Center at (989) 774-2986. All appointments must be for the writer’s own work. Appointments booked under a name that doesn’t match the writer who attends or whose name is on the attached draft will be cancelled. 

Missed Appointment Policy: Your account will be deactivated for two weeks if you miss three appointments. A face-to-face or online video conference appointment will be held for 10 minutes and no longer and is marked as missed if you are more than 10 minutes late. Asynchronous draft review appointments that do not have a draft attached at least 1 minute before the appointment time will be marked missed. 

The Writing Center offers the following types of appointments:

Face-to-Face

A face-to-face appointment is an in-person 50-minute appointment with a consultant in Park Library 360. 

Online Video Conference

An online video conference is a 50-minute appointment with a consultant through WCONLINE. Online appointments are similar to face-to-face appointments; however, the conversation takes place remotely through WCONLINE instead of in person in our physical location in the library. Online appointments do not include written feedback on the draft. 

Asynchronous Draft Review

An asynchronous draft review appointment does not involve meeting with a consultant at that time. A consultant will review your draft, provide written comments, and upload the commented draft to your WCONLINE appointment by the end of the day. You will receive a notification via email that the appointment has been edited and that the draft has been uploaded.

This is the only appointment type that includes written feedback, and a 50-minute review generally covers 8-10 double spaced pages. A separate appointment must be made for each draft you would like to submit; if multiple drafts are submitted, the consultant will comment on the most recent draft attached. A draft must be attached (urls and links in the appointment form and drafts emailed to the Writing Center are not accepted--the draft must be attached to the appointment form) to each appointment at least 1 minute before the beginning of the appointment. If you have a longer paper, you are encouraged to book two back-to-back appointments and indicate you'd like the consultant to pick up where they left off in the last hour in the second appointment.

Before submitting papers, remove all consultant, instructor, or peer comments. Before resubmitting papers, make applicable revisions, remove the comments, and indicate where consultants should resume the review.

Please note: Consultants go through a semester of training to work at the Writing Center, and consultants are not available for asynchronous draft review appointments until they are fully trained. The appointment type selected in the form is the type of appointment the consultant will hold; it is not possible to change a face-to-face or video conference appointment to an asynchronous draft review appointment by writing that in the appointment form.

Consultants are not available to work with writers via email or over the phone. All appointments must be scheduled and take place through WCONLINE.

In the event of a university delay or closure, all appointments scheduled during the delay or closure will be cancelled and will not take place.

For more information about the Writing Center, please visit our website.