Student Support

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The Center for Writing and Learning is located in the Foundation Building library.

 

Our Ongoing Session Model

While The Center for Writing and Learning offers a number of open, one-time sessions each week, most sessions are ongoing: weekly one-hour sessions that allow Associates to take a long-term view of student development, and allow students and associates to build a constructive rapport. Ongoing sessions are in high demand—about 20% of Cooper’s students request them each year—so students are encouraged to sign up for them early. The Center usually operates with a waitlist.

Our Pedagogy

The Student Leads
All Cooper students have a rare talent for thought—sometimes for very specific forms of thought. Associates work to help students harness the power of their particular way of thinking, their experience, and their identity, enabling them to connect their own knowledge to classroom material. And, in general, Associates don’t give students answers—and instead help them come to answers themselves. 

A Focus on How 

Cooper’s faculties decide what students should learn—the curriculum and content that make up students’ schedules. The Center is focused on how students learn. Associates give students the tools and strategies that help them develop as readers, writers, thinkers, and speakers.

The Center Is Not a Remedial Space

When a student needs remediation, the Center provides it, but works simultaneously to develop a student’s ability to read, write, and think at a high level. Associates aren’t here to fix papers or improve grades—but when students regularly attend the Center, their written work, and their grades, get better. The Center for Writing and Learning believes in the potential of Cooper students to do excellent work; the goal is always to help them build upon their strengths rather than to focus on their weaknesses.

An Inclusive and Anti-Racist Ethos

The Center for Writing and Learning's staff is committed to making all students feel welcome and to actively challenging forms of discrimination that stand in the way of justice for everyone in the Cooper community.


 

More Forms of Student Support 

For more student resources, please see the Center for Writing and Learning's pages on StudentConnect.

The Major Awards Advisement Program

The Center’s Major Awards Advisement Program—a collaboration with the Center for Career Development—recruits and advises student candidates for major awards and ensures that candidates get the support they need during the application process.

More Opportunities to Learn

The Center hosts a number of programs designed to help students develop as scholars and creators, beyond the boundaries of their disciplines. Opportunities include a student lecture series, a literary magazine, and a creative writing group.

Location

The Center for Writing and Learning
Foundation Building | Library
7 East 7th Street
New York, NY 10003

Hours

Monday - Friday: 10 am to 6 pm

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.