After more than two years adapting schedules and teaching methods around the ever-shifting COVID-19 pandemic, Salt Lake Community College’s Student Writing and Reading Center is seeing the numbers of students using the service bounce back.
The center’s services – available online and in-person at the South City, Redwood and Jordan campuses – are open to all SLCC students and offer help from qualified instructors on any writing and reading related tasks they might have.
In the spring semester of 2020, COVID-19 pandemic guidelines closed the center to in-person tutoring. Though they remained open for online sessions, Clint Gardner, director of the Student Writing and Reading Center, said the impact wasn’t the same.
“Students kind of went away,” he said. “There just wasn’t much connection.”
In 2019, six months before COVID began appearing in the United States, more than 400 students visited the centers during the first three weeks of the fall semester and more than 1,000 students by the time winter break arrived, Gardner said.
“We were well on our way to having the best year we’ve ever had,” he said.
Now, Gardner said numbers are slightly higher – 1% – than pre-pandemic visits, with 419 students using the centers during the first three weeks of the fall 2022 semester.
“It’s looking good,” he said. “We’ve got pretty strong numbers for fall, and this summer we had the best semester since the pandemic.”
Most meetings are still being held online, but Gardner said students are starting to come back to the center in-person. Of the more than 3,000 appointments the center averages in a semester, the number taking place on-campus is steadily increasing.
Find the location closest to you and schedule a meeting by visiting the Student Writing and Reading Center web page.
