ABOUT US

The Writing Skills Improvement Program (WSIP) is a presidentially-mandated minority retention/academic support program, which provides professional individual tutoring to minority and economically disadvantaged students taking freshman composition and writing-related courses across all degree programs. Its target population consists of Hispanic, Native American, African American and Asian American, as well as any student receiving financial aid based on need. Over the past 20 years, as the number of minority students has increased, WSIP has steadily served and retained greater numbers of students. Since the inception of the program in 1980, WSIP has aided over 12,000 students individually and over 25,000 students in Weekly Writing Workshops. Minority students, who once comprised the bulk of the composition attrition rate, now pass their English classes (99%) and improve their beginning grades (78%).

The program consists of the following components: a) Individual Tutorials, b) Weekly Writing Workshops, c) Drop-in Service, d) Professional Writing Development Tutorials (for minority graduate students), e) Graduate Writing Institute (for graduate students), and f) Summer Institute for Writing and Thinking (for high school students and school teachers).

An Accountability Study conducted in 1985 attests to the power of WSIP's individualized instruction. This statistical study tracked participants and non-participants for five years and the results indicated that WSIP can improve not only writing, but academic skills in general. The average WSIP participant's semester English course grades before and after tutoring evidenced a difference of 1.37 grade points. The mean GPA of WSIP participants was .91 grade points above that of similarly situated non-participants. Furthermore, passing CGPA's evidenced that after a five-year period, WSIP participants earned higher CGPA's and were twice as likely to graduate as non-participants.

The dramatic success of this program may be attributed to distinguishing features of WSIP which include: 1) an academic base, 2) professional staff, 3) tutor-student-professor conferences, 4) aggressive recruitment, and 5) aggressive student management.