Supporting Graduate Student Writers

Re/Writing the Center illuminates how core writing center pedagogies and institutional arrangements are complicated by the need to create intentional, targeted support for advanced graduate writers. Most writing center tutors are undergraduates, whose lack of familiarity with the genres, preparatory knowledge, and research processes integral to graduate-level writing can leave them underprepared to assist graduate students. Complicating the issue is that many of the graduate students who take advantage of writing center support are international students. The essays in this volume show how to navigate the divide between traditional writing center theory and practices, developed to support undergraduate writers, and the growing demand for writing centers to meet the needs of advanced graduate writers. Contributors address core assumptions of writing center pedagogy, such as the concept of peers and peer tutoring, the emphasis on one-to-one tutorials, the positioning of tutors as generalists rather than specialists, and even the notion of the writing center as the primary location or center of the tutoring process. Re/Writing the Center offers an imaginative perspective on the benefits writing centers can offer to graduate students and on the new possibilities for inquiry and practice graduate students can inspire in the writing center. Contributors: Laura Brady, Michelle Cox, Thomas Deans, Paula Gillespie​, Mary Glavan, Marilyn Gray​, James Holsinger​, Elena Kallestinova, Tika Lamsal​, Patrick S. Lawrence, Elizabeth Lenaghan, Michael A. Pemberton​, Sherry Wynn Perdue​, Doug Phillips, Juliann Reineke​, Adam Robinson​, Steve Simpson, Nathalie Singh-Corcoran​, Ashly Bender Smith, Sarah Summers​, Molly Tetreault​, Joan Turner, Bronwyn T. Williams, Joanna Wolfe

This book explores roles that L2 writing specialists, IEP directors and instructors, writing center administrators, and others within writing studies might play in potential cross-campus dialogues on graduate student writing support. It includes a diverse chorus of voices on graduate writing support--both seasoned, well-known researchers in second language writing and composition studies and fresh new voices and perspectives.

Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers is a timely resource for understanding and resolving some of the issues graduate students face, particularly as higher education begins to pay more critical attention to graduate student success. Offering diverse approaches for assisting this demographic, the book bridges the gap between theory and practice through structured examination of graduate students’ narratives about their development as writers, as well as researched approaches for enabling these students to cultivate their craft. The first half of the book showcases the voices of graduate student writers themselves, who describe their experiences with graduate school literacy through various social issues like mentorship, access, writing in communities, and belonging in academic programs. Their narratives illuminate how systemic issues significantly affect graduate students from historically oppressed groups. The second half accompanies these stories with proposed solutions informed by empirical findings that provide evidence for new practices and programming for graduate student writers. Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers values student experience as an integral part of designing approaches that promote epistemic justice. This text provides a fresh, comprehensive, and essential perspective on graduate writing and communication support that will be useful to administrators and faculty across a range of disciplines and institutional contexts. Contributors: Noro Andriamanalina, LaKela Atkinson, Daniel V. Bommarito, Elizabeth Brown, Rachael Cayley, Amanda E. Cuellar, Kirsten T. Edwards, Wonderful Faison, Amy Fenstermaker, Jennifer Friend, Beth Godbee, Hope Jackson, Karen Keaton Jackson, Haadi Jafarian, Alexandria Lockett, Shannon Madden, Kendra L. Mitchell, Michelle M. Paquette, Shelley Rodrigo, Julia Romberger, Lisa Russell-Pinson, Jennifer Salvo-Eaton, Richard Sévère, Cecilia D. Shelton, Pamela Strong Simmons, Jasmine Kar Tang, Anna K. Willow Treviño, Maurice Wilson, Anne Zanzucchi

In Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines, the editors and their colleagues argue that graduate education must include a wide range of writing support designed to identify writers' needs, teach writers through direct instruction, and support writers through programs such as writing centers, writing camps, and writing groups. The chapters in this collection demonstrate that attending to the needs of graduate writers requires multiple approaches and thoughtful attention to the distinctive contexts and resources of individual universities while remaining mindful of research on and across similar programs at other universities.

Using qualitative data collected from more than twenty universities across the US, Writing Support for International Graduate Students describes and theorizes agency- and advocacy-driven practices, programs, and policies that are most effective in helping international students learn graduate-level writing and communication skills. It uses compelling narratives and cases to illustrate a variety of program models and support practices that fostered the students’ process of academic transition and success. Employing an ecological framework, the book seeks to advance academic conversation about how writing scholars/instructors and program administrators, as well as other academic service professionals working with this student body, can formulate policies, develop programs, and implement practices that best help these students grow as writers and scholars in their disciplines.

This book is for graduate students--and others--who want to become more productive writers. It's especially written for those who want to:• increase their motivation, focus, and persistence to move a project to completion• overcome procrastination and perfectionistic tendencies• reduce (or write in spite of) their anxiety and fear of writing• manage their time, work, energy (and advisor) for greater productivityThe process or craft of sustained writing is not a matter that's taught to undergraduate or graduate students as part of their studies, leaving most at sea about how to start a practice that is central to a career in academe and vital in many other professional occupations.This book grew out of conversations Jan Allen has held with her graduate students for over 30 years and reflects the fruit of the writing workshops and boot camps she has conducted at three universities, her own and numerous colleagues' experiences with writing and advising, as well as the feedback she receives from her popular Productive Writer listserv.While Jan Allen recognizes that writing is not an innate talent for most of us, she demonstrates that it is a process based on skills which we can identify, learn, practice and refine. She focuses both on the process and habits of writing as well as on helping you uncover what kind of writer are you, and reflect on your challenges and successes. With a light touch and an engaging sense of humor, she proposes strategies to overcome procrastination and distractions, and build a writing practice to enable you to become a more productive and prolific writer.Jan Allen proposes that you read one of her succinct chapters - each devoted to a specific strategy or writing challenge - each day, or once a week. When you find one that increases your concentration, motivation or endurance, make it a habit. Try it for two weeks, charting the resulting increased productivity. It will become part of your repertoire of writing and productivity tools to which you can progressively add.

Despite continued growth in enrollments, graduate program attrition rates are of great concern to academic program coordinators. It is estimated that only 40 to 50 percent of students who begin Ph.D. programs complete their degrees. This book describes programs, initiatives, and interventions that lead to overall student retention and success.Written for graduate school administrators, student affairs professionals, and faculty, this book offers ways to better support today’s graduate student population, addresses the needs of today’s changing student demography and considers the challenges today’s graduate students face inside and outside of the classroom. The opening section highlights the shifting demographics and contextual factors shaping graduate education over the past 20 years, while the second describes institutional practices to develop the requisite academic and professional development necessary to succeed in master’s and doctoral programs. In conclusion, the editors curate a conversation about different ways institutions can support graduate students beyond the classroom.

The imperative to write and to publish is a relatively new development in the history of academia, yet it is now a significant factor in the culture of higher education. Working with Faculty Writers takes a broad view of faculty writing support, advocating its value for tenure-track professors, adjuncts, senior scholars, and graduate students. The authors in the volume imagine productive campus writing support for faculty and future faculty that allows for new insights about their own disciplinary writing and writing processes, as well as the development of fresh ideas about student writing. Contributors from a variety of institution types and perspectives consider who faculty writers are and who they may be in the future, reveal the range of locations and models of support for faculty writers, explore the ways these might be delivered and assessed, and consider the theoretical, philosophical, political, and pedagogical approaches to faculty writing support, as well as its relationship to student writing support. With the pressure on faculty to be productive researchers and writers greater than ever, this is a must-read volume for administrators, faculty, and others involved in developing and assessing models of faculty writing support.