The founder of St. Thomas’ Center for Writing, Joan Piorkowski, is ready for what lies ahead of her after the last week of class: retirement.

Piorkowski has been molding the minds of young Tommies for 37 years, after coming to St. Thomas in 1977. When she arrived, Piorkowski said the process of teaching students how to write was undergoing a transformation.

“I was hired for two reasons. One was to start the Academic Development Program, which is still in place,” Piorkowski said. “The then-provost had me start the Writing Center the next year. It started very small. It was me and one tutor over in OEC in a classroom.”

Because of a new wave of thinking about how to improve students’ writing, Piorkowski wanted to replicate the peer-to-peer model with students tutoring each other that had been working well in colleges across the country.

“The idea right away was to have students working because that’s a different model of learning,” Piorkowski said. “Student-to-student has a different relationship than instructor-to-student because it’s more like a bridge between the course and the student. Students can interact with other students in ways that instructors can’t.”

Piorkowski’s feeling was right, and the Center for Writing has been thriving since 1978. She maintained her title as director until 1996. With the emergence of writing as its own discipline, Piorkowski and the university decided it was time for someone else to take the reigns.

“When I decided to leave the Writing Center, I was working on the field of Holocaust studies, and my department was fully supportive,” Piorkowski said. “The reason I did that, as the discipline of writing has grown, it became clear that I would have to devote energy entirely to that as a separate field of study, and I wasn’t quite ready to do that … So that’s why we hired Dr. (Susan) Callaway and our other full-time writing staff.”

Susan Callaway has been the director of the Center for Writing since joining St. Thomas in 1996. The staff has grown from one tutor to 15 undergraduate peer consultants now.

“Piorkowski designed the Writing Center so that it was deeply committed to students providing meaningful and genuine support for the development of their peers’ academic literacy,” Callaway said. “Because of her guidance and leadership in those early years, our writing center continues to enable each student to focus on process—not product—not how to earn a better grade but how to work, learn, analyze, think critically and express their ideas clearly.”

Junior Laura Margarit said she hasn’t used the Center for Writing since she was a freshman but still remembers how helpful her consultant was.

“She would always ask about the paper, what I wanted to watch for, and then I would read it aloud to her,” Margarit said. “We would go through it together and add (and) subtract things as needed, and then she would give me her thoughts at the end. It was more than just an editing process. She helped me improve my overall writing and thinking skills.”

Looking back, Piorkowski said she is most proud of how far the Center for Writing has come and the state of the department as a whole. She also felt the most rewarding teaching experience was before her time at St. Thomas.

“I think the writing program at St. Thomas is one of the best—if not the best—in the state,” Piorkowski said. “When I started my career, I worked with so-called basic writers that was a field that was just emerging, and I taught that at Temple, and I really liked working with those students.”

Piorkowski is one of three professors in the department retiring at the end of the year. She said she is very thankful for her department’s support and does not have any concrete plans for the future.

“I think all of us have made a pact to say we don’t have any plans,” Piorkowski said. “I would like to teach abroad. I would like to travel of course, but right now I just have some reading I would like to do.”

Piorkowski said she loved the energy of students, especially the moment when the classroom turned into a true learning community when students discussed and worked together. She said she’ll miss her always interested and supportive department, and she is thankful to have a career where she never hated her job.

“I’m not leaving because I’m bored,” Piorkowski said. “I’m not leaving because I don’t like St. Thomas or the students … I’m leaving because it’s time. I just want to say thank you.”

Joey Anderson can be reached at ande9008@stthomas.edu.