Krystlove Yeboah ’27 thought of herself as a decent writer coming into her first year at Cornell, even though English isn’t her first language. After all, she gained admission into the Ivy League and into a school that boasted alumni and faculty luminaries such as Toni Morrison and E.B. White.

But quickly her freshman writing seminars and government classes revealed that her high school writing skills needed an upgrade. So Yeboah became a frequent visitor to the Cornell Writing Center located in Uris Library.

“I knew I wanted to go into majors with heavy writing and research, and working on my papers with a tutor offered an outside perspective that helped me learn what questions to ask and how to approach a paper,” she said. “I learned strategies for how to make my writing clearer and more succinct. The tutors gave me the confidence to say now I’m a good writer.”

Such confidence, in fact, that Yeboah is taking the training course this spring to become a tutor herself in the fall.

“I want to be able to help people and demystify what it takes to be a good writer,” said Yeboah, a government major in the College of Arts & Sciences. “By asking writers questions about their work, they can notice the weaknesses and add to their papers to fully defend their viewpoints or theses.”

Yeboah is one of many Cornell students who take advantage of the Cornell Writing Centers, Graduate Writing Service and writing workshops, three of the offerings of the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, which also coordinates first-year writing (FWS) seminars, the writing in the majors program and provides writing support across campus through its outreach efforts.

While the writing centers remain in Rockefeller Hall, in the libraries and on North Campus, the Knight Institute’s main office recently moved into a newly-renovated space in Stimson Hall, also home to the Language Resource Center and the Office of Undergraduate Biology.

Read the full story on the College of Arts & Sciences website.