Pilot Program Aids Graduate Writers
Christopher LeCluyse
Graduate Writing Support Pilot Coordinator
2001-2002
Assistant Director, Undergraduate Writing
Center
Undergraduate Writing Center: the name says it all. Since the UWC consults with undergraduate writers, UT graduate students must look elsewhere for writing support. Last fall, however, the UWC joined forces with the Graduate School's Intellectual Entrepreneurship (IE) Program to begin addressing this need. We began a special pilot program allowing graduate students in Civil Engineering and Educational Psychology to meet with writing consultants in their fields.
Working with graduate writers one-to-one meets a demand both partners in the project have long recognized. The IE Program has from its inception offered graduate courses in writing, and the UWC has repeatedly had to turn away graduate students seeking our services. In spring 2001, former UWC Assistant Director Traci Freeman and I distributed an electronic survey to gauge student and faculty interest in extending writing consultation services to graduate students. Responses came from all over the university, submitted by faculty in numerous departments and graduate students at every stage of their degree programs. Based on these responses, we worked with Vice President and Dean of Graduate Studies Theresa Sullivan, Associate Dean and IE Director Rick Cherwitz, and IE Co-coordinator Thomas Darwin to identify those departments most interested in consultation services and invited several departments to join our pilot program. Graduate writing consultant Claudia Gunsch began working with writers in Civil Engineering in fall 2001. This semester Cynthia Finley consults with Civil Engineering graduate students, while Educational Psychology students work with Jill Rader and Alyssa Harad.
Although graduate consultants conduct individualized sessions like those in the UWC, the scope and discipline-specific conventions of graduate writing require adapting the writing consultation model. Many papers for graduate seminars are double the length of those for undergraduate courses. Likewise, the page counts of graduate theses and dissertations eclipse even the longest of undergraduate seminar papers, requiring multiple consultations on individual chapters or smaller portions. Graduate students also must write for professional purposes, producing conference papers and articles as well as grant applications and job letters. Working on such writing therefore provides professional development for writers and consultants alike.
To address these graduate-specific writing situations, consultants in the pilot program generally receive writing ahead of time and meet writers where they work: instead of them coming to us, we go to them. Many writers return for multiple consultations, allowing them to work on long projects in manageable sections. Because graduate writing consultants are doctoral candidates, moreover, they bring to the consultation a broad knowledge of the writing and audience specific to their disciplines.
In providing these services, the pilot program must confront notions of writing that UWC consultants also face on a regular basis. Because writing is often conceived as a skill that one either has or has not mastered, students and faculty often see seeking help with writing as a sign of deficiency. Likewise, since many writers focus on sentence-level matters such as grammar, punctuation, and spelling, they may equate writing consultation with editing. Consultants have entirely different goals and methods than proofreaders or editors, however: writing consultations focus on higher-order writing concerns and encourage self-sufficiency; proofreading services do not. Many graduate students discover that feedback from peers allows them to refine and develop their work. In academic disciplines, such peer review is essential to establishing credibility. As the IE Program's website explains, "substantive and continued writing support benefits all graduate students, however advanced they may be in their studies and regardless of their skills."
In the coming semesters, the pilot program will expand to include additional departments, with the ultimate goal of supporting graduate writers across the university. Eventually, graduate students at UT will receive the quality of individual writing support currently enjoyed by their undergraduate counterparts.