Endowed by alumnus Allan K. Smith, Class of 1911, the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric offers the Interdisciplinary Minor in Rhetoric, Writing, and Media Studies and writing courses taught by rhetoric and composition faculty, administers Trinity’s Writing Foundational Requirement, provides support services and special programs for students, faculty and the community as well as assesses and promotes writing at Trinity College. The Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric also houses the Writing Center where tutors help students perfect their writing skills. The Writing Center is staffed by peer tutors who participate in a 30-year-old Writing Associates Program.
The Writing Center
The writing center provides help with all kinds of writing, from the first critiques assigned in first-year seminars to senior theses and admissions essays for graduate and professional schools.
Rhetoric, Writing, and Media Studies Minor
The minor offer students the opportunity to develop expertise in writing for academic, professional, community, and personal purposes.
Allan K. Smith Center News
See what’s happening in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric
A.I. Writing and Effective Learning
Dr. Alex Helberg, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric, has made an informative guide as to what A.I. Writing Software can and can’t do.
Writing and Rhetoric Visiting Assistant Professor Alex Helberg attends The Connecticut Forum about the Impacts of A.I.
“It was one of the most level-headed and curative conversations I’ve heard about artificial intelligence since the dawn of ChatGPT and the current era of AI that we’re in,” said Helberg.
Professor Spotlight: Alexander Helberg is Bringing the Digital World and Social Media to Trinity Classrooms
Visiting Assistant Professor in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric Alexander Helberg advocates for an educational atmosphere that integrates more research on online media through students’ engagement with what they define as a digital world. Read the article in the Trinity Tripod
“Writing for a Digital World” Course Partners with Hartford Food System
Visiting Assistant Professor in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing in Rhetoric Alex Helberg teaches RHET 125 “Writing for a Digital World,” where students seek to understand the influence of digital technologies on writing and communication practices. Borrowing from rhetorical theory on concepts like genre, discourse communities, intertextuality, and rhetorical ecologies, Helberg teaches students how to write for public audiences through a Community Learning podcast project in partnership with Hartford Food System and Healthy Hartford Hub (HHH). Read the blog post on the CHER blog
Irene Papoulis’s book The Essays Only You Can Write, published October 2023
The Essays Only You Can Write is a textbook offering strategies for writing academic and personal essays. It also gives you advice about some of the psychological factors that can get in the way of doing your best writing. Read it if you want to write essays that grow out of your own particular thoughts and experiences!
Supporting Trinity’s International Students
To help ease the transition to living and studying on an American campus, a pilot program introduced in fall 2019 in Trinity’s Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric connects first-year international students with mentors who provide academic and social support.
“The skills that the Writing Center teaches are applicable to all areas of study, and always it’s important to be a good writer, no matter what you study or what your job is,” writes Maddie Hengerer ’26, who is interested in a possible career in journalism or law.
To explore just how intelligent the latest “artificial intelligence” chatbots really are, a Trinity faculty member challenged students in a new January Term course to craft essays using only synthetically generated text.
During the first-of-its-kind institute this month, faculty members from Trinity College, Quinnipiac University, and Clark University explored ways to incorporate primary sources into their coursework.
Visiting Assistant Professor in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing in Rhetoric Alex Helberg teaches RHET 125 “Writing for a Digital World,” where students seek to understand the influence of digital technologies on writing and communication practices. Borrowing from rhetorical theory on concepts like genre, discourse communities, intertextuality, and rhetorical ecologies, Helberg teaches students how to write for public audiences through a Community Learning podcast project in partnership with Hartford Food System and Healthy Hartford Hub (HHH).
