Dr Tara Giddens is the Director of the Regional Writing Centre (RWC) ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ. She manages the centre, trains and assists tutors, and works with students and academic staff to develop their writing and research skills.
Tara has almost 10 years of teaching experience ¾ÅÉ«ÊÓƵ with various departments and subjects including literature, academic writing, and business communications. Her research background is Irish women’s writing and journalism from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Key Areas of Responsibility:
- Administration of the Regional Writing Centre, including its budget, staff, activities and hours of operation
- Design, development, delivery, assessment and evaluation of Peer Writing Tutor programme: peer tutor recruitment, training (including AW4006 Peer Tutoring in Academic Writing), induction, scheduling, supervision and professional development of RWC peer tutors
- Design, development, delivery, assessment and evaluation of Writing Across the Curriculum Workshops for students and academic staff, including workshops on writing for academic assessment, PhD Writers’ Week, writers’ groups, and workshops for teachers of writing
- Organisation of other UL activities around writing: First-Year and Mature Student Orientation and First 7 Weeks writing workshops, How I Write, Ireland interviews, UL’s National Secondary School Essay-writing competition and writing-related President’s Volunteer Award opportunities
- Organisation of the Regional Writing Centre’s website, including the provision of online resources for writers in academic contexts
- Supervision of the Regional Writing Centre’s Administrative Assistant: recruitment, administration, training and supervision
- Research and innovation in writing development regionally and internationally, providing academic leadership on best practice for the development of writing in higher education
- Dissemination of research in high-quality, high-impact publications, including journal articles in internationally recognised peer-reviewed journals and book chapters in emerging studies in the area of writing, writing pedagogy and writing centre administration
- Design and development of innovative activities externally, leading and contributing on collaborative projects, developing external links that to ensure the sustainability of the RWC.