Loyola University Maryland

The Writing Center

Resources for Graduate Students

The Loyola Writing Center is a great resource for advanced academic writing. Grad students can access assistance conveniently online through Zoom. Graduate students may schedule appointments with Graduate Tutors through the Loyola Writing Center email while we configure our new appointment app Accudemia. Please note, however, that a one-hour appointment can cover only a certain amount of information in a paper, probably 5-7 pages, depending on the topic and style of writing. If you have a long paper, you may need to plan on more than one appointment over the course of the week. In order to ensure everyone has equal access to the center and to create productive working conditions for our tutors, we do not allow back-to-back appointments for the same paper or the same student. We also do not allow any student more than three hours' worth of appointments in a given week.

APA Style Guides

You say your prof is a stickler for APA style? No problem! We have a complete series of How-To YouTube videos that walk you step-by-step through all the formatting. They cover different kinds of papers (literature reviews!) and offer detailed guides for creating reference pages and citing particular kinds of sources. They even show you how to do the formatting in MS Word. Take me to the APA style videos!

Graduate Writing Groups

Research has shown that graduate student writing success increases as peer support increases. As one scholar put it, "graduate students tend to be their own best resource." With this in mind, the Writing Center helps graduate students organize and run informal peer groups, in which students support each other in their writing projects.

Graduate student writing groups consist of a cadre of grad students and one group leader, who is either a Loyola Writing Center faculty member or a Loyola graduate student serving as a tutor at the Writing Center.

Groups are free to set their own meeting schedule but usually meet one hour per month at a mutually agreed upon time and place. The group meetings revolve around a relaxed (but focused) conversation about the writing concerns/experiences of its members. Such groups offer ways for grad students to pool knowledge and available resources, provide emotional and practical support to one another, share drafts, expand their thinking about their writing processes and products, and enhance their connections to the larger graduate community. If you are interested in learning more about how you can participate in a Writing Center sponsored writing group, please email us at lwc@loyola.edu.