Writing Center Policies

Scheduling Policies

To assure adequate revision time (even for proofreading and editing) and to promote writing independence, consultants will not provide assistance on any writing projects due within two hours of the scheduled session.
To ensure equal access to consulting services at the UCEW, we limit undergraduate students to two, non-consecutive, 40-minute scheduled appointments per week.
Certain communities of learners may have three, non-consecutive, 40-minute sessions per week. Those communities include faculty, staff, graduate students, undergraduate students whose first language is not English, students registered at Student Accessibility Services, and undergraduate students with reading comprehension difficulties.

If you cannot make a scheduled appointment, please cancel it by accessing your online UCEW account through bqia.podou.net/UCEW. Cancellations must occur no less than one (1) hours prior to the appointment time.
Writing Center staff will not cancel appointments for you.

Missing an appointment without cancelling is called a no-show. No-shows impact the consultants who anticipate your session as well as a student who could have been seen in the spot you missed.
If, in one semester, you accumulate three no-shows, your online scheduling privileges will be suspended for the remainder of the term.
If your privileges are suspended, you may continue to utilize UCEW services, but on a walk-in basis only.

Plagiarism occurs when writers claim—deliberately or inadvertently—someone else’s writing as their own. Florida Atlantic University identifies plagiarism as an academic irregularity with serious consequences.
If plagiarism is apparent, a consultant will help the student identify, eliminate, and/or rework the questionable text. In the event of a second incident, the student’s instructor will be notified.

Consultants may not help students with tests, mid-terms, or final exams unless the course instructor has written on the exam paper explicit instructions which permit outside assistance.

If you would like to provide your instructor with proof that you attended the UCEW, request that a notice be emailed to your instructor through WCOnline.
Additional limited information can be provided to your professor by contacting the UCEW Director or Assistant Director.

Our aim is to make students self-sufficient so that they can learn to track their own patterns of error.
Writing consultants will help students identify and track patterns of error in their writing and coach them on eliminating those patterns so that they can proofread their own work, but consultants will not edit an entire paper for a student no matter how short the paper.