The University of Ghana-Carnegie Writing Centre

Editor’s Note: We want to thank Dr. Helen Yitah, Professor of literature and Dean of the School of Languages at the University of Ghana, for this piece. If you would like to write about an international writing center for our Global Spotlight, check out the submission guidelines.

The University of Ghana-Carnegie Writing Centre began operation in 2012 and was formally
opened in October 2013 by the then Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana (UG), Prof. Ernest Aryeetey. The idea of a writing centre for UG evolved from my experience, first in Ghana and later in America. At UG, teaching writing at all levels of the undergraduate and graduate programmes made me aware of the challenges faced by students, while my service on institutional boards and committees drew my attention to the writing problems confronting people in job situations within and beyond the campus. I observed that from freshmen to professors, many members of the UG community need support at various stages of their writing projects, from planning and drafting to proofreading and editing.

As a writing tutor who served at University of South Carolina’s Writing Center and tutored student-athletes on USC’s Enrichment Services Programs, I gained firsthand knowledge of the benefits of one-on-one writing sessions. When I was appointed one of two assistant directors of USC’s First Year English Program in 2005-2006, I learnt a lot about writing administration.

All these experiences informed my concept of a writing centre with a wide range of support services, both academic and nonacademic, not only for the UG community but also for the wider society including the corporate world.

The UG-Carnegie Writing Centre was established through my initiative and was initially run by the Department of English, of which I was chair (2011-2016). The only facility of its kind in West Africa to date, the Writing Centre was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York under the UG-Carnegie Next Generation of Academics in Africa Project (UG-NGAA), which aims to support post-graduate training and enhance faculty research output. The funding was to cover equipment and running costs of the Centre for the first three years, after which the University would assume responsibility.

Between 2009 and 2012, I had tried unsuccessfully to sell the idea of a writing center to various university administrators. Then one day, while at lunch with the UG-NGAA Project Director, Professor Yaa Ntiamoa-Baidu, I mentioned the idea to her. She thought it would fit well into the Project and asked me to send her a concept note, which I immediately did. I worked with her to develop the concept and integrate it into a proposal for NGAA. She later told me that the writing centre initiative was the easiest to sell to the sponsor because it was a novel idea and would contribute positively to the success of NGAA.

Located on top of the University Bookshop, the UG-CWC is a writing laboratory that provides one-on-one, hands-on support to members of the University of Ghana community who need help with a writing project at any stage of development. The Centre initially focused on providing services to faculty and graduate students, in line with the mandate of NGAA. Clients made appointments for individual sessions with Writing Centre staff. There was also room for drop-in sessions during working hours. Graduate students were trained to equip them to serve as writing centre assistants, providing one-on-one tutoring and administrative support. Faculty members from the Department of English and other UG units work as resource persons who offer services ranging from tutoring individual clients to editing/proofreading and handling training sessions and workshops. The Centre has internet access, computers and other equipment for use by clients. Workspaces have been created for resource persons and writing tutors/assistants. Although few complaints have been made about services rendered by the Writing Centre, a follow up programme has been set up to find out clients’ level of satisfaction with our services and how to better meet their needs.

Over its decade-old existence, the UG-Carnegie Writing Centre has served the entire University of Ghana community, including undergraduate and post-graduate students, academic faculty and other staff, as well as to individuals, institutions such as the University for Development Studies, and corporate bodies in the country such as Tullow Oil and the Northern Electricity Company (NEDCO). The Centre has offered short courses on customized business and professional writing for university administrators, training in thesis writing for graduate students and writing-to-publish workshops for early career faculty and graduate students. To broaden its reach, plans are underway to organize long-vacation intensive programmes in professional writing, personal and creative writing, business and
technical writing. The Centre has also more recently offered its space for use by peer-to-peer support groups in the University. For the University community, the Writing Centre is a friendly and non-threatening place that can meet their writing needs. It complements other facilities such as the state-of-the-art facility, "the Research Commons" at the Balme Library (the main UG library), also provided with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

About the Author

In addition to founding and directing the University of Ghana-Carnegie Writing Centre, Dr. Helen Yitah is a Professor of literature and Dean of the School of Languages at the University of Ghana. She is also the Head of the Writing Support Unit at UG’s Centre for Teaching and Learning Innovation (CTLI). She holds BA and MPhil. degrees from the University of Ghana and a PhD from the University of South Carolina, Columbia. She has taught various courses on literature and writing at both universities. Her research is mainly on gender identity in oral and written African literature, American literature, children’s literature in Ghana, and women’s cultural production in colonial and contemporary Africa. Her recent books include Philosophical Foundations of the African Humanities through Postcolonial Perspectives (Brill/Rodopi, 2019), Radio- A Platform for Creative Writing: Ghanaian Literature and Broadcast Culture (Illinois State University Press, 2018) and After the Ceremonies: New and Selected Poems by Ama Ata Aidoo (University of Nebraska Press, 2017). Her scholarly articles have appeared in many local and international peer reviewed journals. Currently, she is researching on “Authoring Slavery in Ghana” (https://cc.au.dk/en/slaverystudies/authoring-slavery ), a collective project by scholars from Denmark and Ghana, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (2021-2024).