On July 28, 2025, former Director of Memorial University’s Writing Centre, Ginny Ryan, said on CBC’s St. John’s Morning Show with Jen White that she viewed the merger of the Centre with other student services as the “ultimate demise” of the Centre.
Ryan, who worked at The Writing Centre for 21 years, explained that it began as a small team with a director and eight or nine tutors and gradually increased to 30, both undergraduate and graduate tutors. Over the years, she said, the Centre saw thousands of students.
She said the Centre would help a student with any stage of the writing process, including understanding an assignment, drafting, revising, or editing. It was usually one-on-one tutoring. She said The Writing Centre would also send someone to classes at an instructor’s request to do exercises that would do much the same.
According to Ryan, they received reports from students that their grade averages increased after attending tutoring sessions. She said the Centre also helped students acquire critical thinking skills. She said the tutors also gained valuable experience, became better writers themselves, and have gone on to become educators, doctors, nurses, etc.
Ryan said that two of the three people who ran The Writing Centre and were unionized employees are being replaced by three non-unionized employees, and were given little notice.
She also expressed concern that no one currently at the Academic Success Centre has any background in reading and writing, and therefore, it will become more generalized. She said streamlining means making a system more efficient and effective by employing faster or simpler working methods, but to her, efficient and effective are not compatible. She said efficient means faster, simpler and cheaper, but effective means having people on the job who have a background in reading and writing pedagogy.
View the transcript below:
Jen White: We’re now learning more about the ripples of the spending cuts at Memorial University. Acting President Jennifer Lokash joined us here on the show on Friday to explain the more than $20 million dollars in reduced spending. And among the units affected by that reduction is The Writing Center. The president said in a public letter that the Centre is, quote, “being merged with other student academic success services.” Ginny Ryan was the director at the Centre for more than two decades, and she’s in the studio with us now. Good Morning.
Ginny Ryan: Good morning.
JW: Thank you for being here.
GR: I’m glad to be here.
JW: So, Ginny, for those who aren’t familiar, what services were offered at MUN’s Writing Centre?
GR: Well, The Writing Center, both through its director and through all the tutors who were trained to work there, would help a student with any stage of the writing process, whether they were struggling to understand what was required of them by an assignment, or whether they were struggling to understand the text that they were supposed to write about. Not that the tutors would explain anything, but they would use a Socratic method to ask questions that might lead to understanding. Then we would help the student if necessary with drafting the piece, revising the piece, or editing the piece. So those are all parts of the writing process, and it would be usually one-on-one tutoring. Also, The Writing Center would send out somebody to classes by an instructor’s request to do exercises that would do much the same thing wherever it was required.
JW: So you’ve since retired several years ago now, but how many people worked with you while you were there?
GR: Oh my goodness. It started as a very small team, maybe eight or nine tutors and me. I eventually acquired a secretary and the number of tutors gradually grew to as many as 30, some of them being undergraduate tutors and some of them being graduate tutors.
JW: And the Centre recently marked its 40th anniversary. What can you tell us about the history of the Centre?
GR: Well, the Centre was started 40 years ago by someone named Katherine McManus, and she came to this concept with a good grounding in writing pedagogy, reading and writing pedagogy. She developed a wonderful tool in The Writing Center. And once she was done, the Writing Center moved under the auspices of the Faculty of Arts. And at that point, I was hired and asked to, well, I was asked to be an evangelist and try and get The Writing Centre known about and used by students all over the university, which I think I did.
JW: And how many students did you see or did you encounter over your time there?
GR: I no longer have the numbers, although I one time did, but I’m sure we saw thousands.
JW: And what did it mean to the students to get this kind of help during their academic career?
GR: We got many, many thank you’s from the students. We got reports back from them that their grade average had risen. And then there’s the less measurable, but I’m sure very important aspect of developing critical thinking skills, which I think that we helped them to acquire. And those are invaluable, of course. I mean, whether you’re going to be building bridges or determining somebody’s health status or teaching or whatever, I think that what we did was help people to be more on top of things, more ready to be critical thinkers.
JW: What did the Centre mean to you while you were there?
GR: I loved the work. I loved working with the tutors. The tutors themselves gained so much from the process of teaching. Many of them have gone on. Well, you yourself, oh no, you weren’t a tutor, I’m sorry.
JW: No, I was a student, but I remember you coming in and speaking to our classes.
GR: Tutors have gone on to be educators, doctors, nurses, a whole gamut of things. So that aspect I really loved. I loved seeing them become better writers themselves. And then, of course, I really liked working with the actual students, which I always continued to do and which I saw the tutors do. And the students would say thank you after a session, which as a former teacher I had heard very little of. And I would see them leave sometimes with perkier steps and with a sense of intent because now they felt they were on the way to doing their assignment. So it was all kind of a win-win. I mean, it felt very good to be helping people and it felt really good to see the tutors developing skills to be able to help people.
JW: So we know that the Centre will not be functioning on its own anymore, that it’s going to be merged with other success services, as MUN calls it. What is it going to mean for the university not to have this separate dedicated resource anymore?
GR: Well, I see this as the ultimate demise of The Writing Center. I know that it’s going to be merged with CITL’s Academic Success Centre. And so what I did was I looked very carefully at MUN’s mandate, which is many pages long or at least several pages long, and I looked at what the Academic Success Centre does. First of all, it should be known that apparently two of the three people who ran The Writing Centre, worked at the Writing Centre, and who were unionized employees, are being replaced by three non-unionized employees. And they were given very little notice about this, which is unfortunate. But what it’s going to mean, I went to the website of the Academic Success Centre to see what kind of work they do. And they have one very good program called PAL, which is peer-assisted learning. But anything to do with critical reading and writing, it seemed like they were really more brokers than anything else. The one resource that I saw put up on their site was something they borrowed from the University of Toronto. So it doesn’t seem as if there’s anybody currently there who has any kind of a background in reading and writing. So I can only assume that things are going to become a lot more generalized. I don’t know how much student engagement there’s going to be if they’re going to be relying on handouts from other universities and perhaps software packages. I don’t know whether they’re still going to be employing student tutors. I don’t know who’s going to train those tutors if there are tutors. So I see the whole engagement part of Writing Centre work as quickly sliding down the tube. I mean, one thing that I was very interested in was the notion of streamlining. And so even though I thought I knew what streamlining meant, I went and looked it up. And it says making a system more efficient and effective by employing faster or simpler working methods. And to me, efficient and effective kind of don’t jive with each other because efficient is what I understand to mean faster and simpler and aka maybe cheaper, but effective means having people on the job who have a background in reading and writing pedagogy and who are prepared to engage with passion with the students. And I don’t see that part happening. So streamlining to me doesn’t seem like a very auspicious future for the Writing Center.
JW: And especially in terms of literacy in this province and having student success, I mean, it seems like you would need the dedication there from staff to help people. I feel like students are really going to miss this.
GR: I think they are too. And I don’t understand how people that were doing the job so well have been let go and it’s been given to people who presumably don’t have nearly as much background in critical thinking, reading, and writing pedagogy.
JW: All right, Ginny, thank you so much for coming in and talking with us about this today.
GR: Thank you.
JW: That’s Ginny Ryan. She was the Director of Memorial University’s Writing Center for 21 years, and the Centre is now being merged with other student academic success services. The Morning Show has reached out to MUN on this topic, and we are still waiting for a response from the university.
Matt Barter is a graduate of the Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty at Memorial University of Newfoundland, holding a degree in Political Science with a minor in Sociology. He enjoys reading thought-provoking articles, taking walks in nature, and volunteering in the community.
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