In 1982, Dr. Jeanette Harris established a writing center in the English Department at Texas Tech University. The mission of the writing center at that time was to serve students taking freshman composition courses, although all writers were welcome. Over the years, statistics showed that approximately 50% (plus or minus) of the clients each year were first year students, but the other 50% (plus or minus) were sophomores, juniors, and seniors as well as some graduate students and a few faculty members.

Because the writing center staff was serving students from across the disciplines, in 1995, the English Department writing center became the University Writing Center. To increase its accessibility to Tech students, the University Writing Center expanded its services to include the University Writing Center OWL (online writing center) in January 1996. Then, in September 1997, the University Writing Center established a satellite in the Advanced Technology Learning Center, located in the basement of the Texas Tech University Library. The satellite center was closed in the Spring of 2001.

Today, the mission of the University Writing Center is to assist writers, regardless of their status (faculty or students, undergraduate or graduate), their level of proficiency, or their college, during the various stages of their writing project; to create a supportive environment in which writers and their readers can work effectively one-to-one, both face-to-face as well as onscreen and online; and to train writing consultants to become knowledgeable, effective readers of and responders to texts from various disciplines.