Writing Center Receives Award for Innovative Program

The Trinity College Writing Center recently received the 2025 Martinson Innovation Award from the Small Liberal Arts Colleges-Writing Program Administrators in recognition of the Center’s efforts to tutor incarcerated individuals.

James C. Truman, director of peer tutoring in writing and senior lecturer in the Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric, and Trinity students attended the 2026 SLAC-WPA Conference, “Doubts, Data, and Decision-Making,” at Amherst College January 9-10, 2026, to receive the award and talk about their work with incarcerated students through Trinity’s Prison Education Project (TPEP). Truman is a co-director of TPEP, along with Anna Terwiel, assistant professor of political science, and Joseph Lea, visiting lecturer in human rights.

In the spring of 2024, Trinity College’s Writing Center began a partnership with the TPEP to bring Writing Center tutors into the Hartford Correctional Center (HCC), the men’s city jail, to support incarcerated students taking college-credit classes. Since jail is for short-term incarceration (primarily pre-trial/sentencing, as opposed to prison, which is post-sentencing) TPEP offers two seven-week, half-credit classes each semester. TPEP has offered classes in college writing, anthropology, science fiction, history, and political science. On Tuesday nights, four to six Writing Center tutors set up a satellite Writing Center location in the classroom during the students’ scheduled study hall. The tutors offer appointments in 30-minute blocks and work with the students on any writing they may be working on for class. Since the partnership began, 10 tutors have held 289 appointments with 31 incarcerated students.

In spring 2025, TPEP expanded its peer tutoring initiative from HCC to York Correctional Institution, the state’s prison for women. At both facilities, Trinity students who are trained as Writing Associates regularly help incarcerated students with their writing, supplementing the work of longtime study hall facilitators Jackie Stack and Peg Meehan.

The Martinson Innovation Award recognizes an innovative and successful initiative in a writing program or writing center from a SLAC-WPA member college. The award was created to honor the accomplishments of Deborah Martinson, a member of SLAC-WPA who passed away in 2014. She was known among her colleagues both at Occidental College and in the larger community for her dedication to both writing program design and writing instruction that helps students overcome academic barriers.

Tennyson O’Donnell, director of Allan K. Smith Center for Writing and Rhetoric, senior director of the Center for Academic and Experiential Advising, and director of the First-Year Seminar Program said, “It was a delight to see our Trinity students and James recognized for their wonderful work with incarcerated students.”