20.1 Growth in the Writing Center

R A X I S

a writing center journal

20.1 Growth in the Writing Center

VOL. 20, NO. 1 (2022): GROWTH IN THE WRITING CENTER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS COLUMNS

From the Editors: Growth in the Writing Center

Kiara Walker and Kaitlin Passafiume

FOCUS ARTICLES

Helping Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate Research: A Practical Guide for Writing Center Administrators

Megan Keaton, Ashley Schoppe, and Daisha Oliver

Center ing Graduate Writers’ Beliefs, Practices and Help Seeking Behaviors Victoria L. O’Connor, Red D. Douglas, and Sherry Wynn Perdue

Tutor Alums Doing Good: A Qualitative Study of Character Strengths of Writing Tutor Alumni Molly Parsons and Emma K. Brown

Self Initiated Writing Center Visits and Writing Development: A First Year Writing Assessment Salena Sampson Anderson

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Salena Sampson Anderson, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of English at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. She has previously served as the Judith L. Beumer Writing Center Director and currently serves as the Graduate TESOL Director. She has published research on language variation, writing assessment, and multilingual writers’ writing center use in journals such as English Studies, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, INTESOL, and WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship.

Emma K. Brown, B.S. is currently a graduate student pursuing a degree in Library and Information Science at Syracuse University. She graduated from Keene State College with a B.S. in English Literature. During her time at Keene State College, she worked as a Research & Writing Tutor for three years.

Red D. Douglas, M.A. (he/him/his) is a PhD student in Higher Education Leadership at Oakland University and serves as a Graduate Assistant for the Oakland University Writing Center. His writing center research is focused on support for student athletes, first generation college students, and graduate writers. He has presented at multiple regional and international conferences, including MiWCA, ECWCA, IWCA, and was named 2020 ECWCA Tutor Leadership Award Honoree.

Megan Keaton, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Director of the Writing Center at Pfeiffer University. She teaches first year writing and upper level composition and rhetoric courses. Her research interests include advocating for faculty tutor collaborations for disseminating research and exploring the metaphors that writing centers use to identify themselves.

Victoria L. O’Connor, M.A. (she/her/hers) is a PhD candidate in Psychology at Oakland University and served as the Graduate Research Assistant for Oakland University’s Writing Center. Her writing center research explores graduate writers’ issues, strategies, and well being in addition to the stress faced by both consultants and clients in the online and face to face writing appointments. She has been a co presenter at ECWCA 2019 and co presented with Dr. Wynn Perdue in her keynote speech at the 2021 Consortium on Graduate Communication’s Summer Institute.

Daisha Oliver, B.A. graduated from Pfeiffer University with a B.A. in Counseling and Human Services. She had been accepted to attend the Masters in Counseling program at Winthrop University before she passed away in July 2021. Her research interests included studying techniques to increase student writers’ confidence and building diversity in the writing center. Daisha is remembered fondly by her teachers and peers, as well as the students whom she helped to find their voices during her tutoring sessions in the writing center.

Molly Parsons, Ph.D. is the Assistant Director of the Center for Research & Writing at Keene State College. After teaching secondary English in Las Vegas, Molly earned her Ph.D. in English and Education at the University of Michigan. She’s a member (aka happy worker bee) of NEWCA’s Steering Committee. Her research interests almost always involve the ethics of writing center praxis and tutor development.

Sherry Wynn Perdue, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is Director of the Oakland University Writing Center and the President of the International Writing Centers Association. Her scholarship, which

emphasizes dissertation supervision and writing center research, has been honored with an IWCA Outstanding Article Award for her 2012 WCJ article “Theory, Lore, and More,” which she co authored with Dana Lynn Driscoll.

Ashley Schoppe, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of English at Pfeiffer University and the Managing Editor of The Burney Journal. She specializes in British Literature of the long eighteenth century, and her research focuses on intersections between fashion, clothing, and politics. She is currently working on a book manuscript that analyzes connections between reactions to the clothing of aristocratic eighteenth century women and literature of the era.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: GROWTH IN THE WRITING CENTER

Kiara Walker

University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com

Not surprisingly to those of us with our feet firmly planted in writing center work, the theories we produce, the policies we enact, and the very texts we advise, have a far reaching impact beyond the walls of our centers. As consultants or tutors, we might advise a doctoral candidate on their dissertation involving superconductors on a Monday, we may chat with a pre med writer about application standards on a Tuesday, and we may consult with a music major on carpet weavers’ oral histories on a Wednesday. As administrators, we fight for maximum representation within our consultant pools, we write policies that enjoin our universities to change outdated practices, and we strive to help the writers we serve feel safe in our spaces. We act as a microcosm of the wider educational cosmos, yet the work we do reaches into every nook and cranny of that larger institution. Indeed, our work reaches beyond.

The immense impact of writing center work may come as a surprise to those who are not involved directly in writing center scholarship and practice. These individuals might view us as a help center, or even a tutoring service. We are certainly these things, but our work is so much more. The articles included in the Fall 2022 edition of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal showcase the diverse accomplishments of writing center work, emphasizing the way in which many writers can consider our service as a compass of sorts, helping learners to be better versions of the inspiring scholars they already are. We are pleased to present you with the current issue, “Growth in the Writing Center.”

In “Helping Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate Research: A Practical Guide for Writing Center Administrators,” authors Megan Keaton, Ashley Schoppe, and Daisha Oliver emphasize the importance of undergraduate research. These writers reveal the writing center as the prime hub for young scholars’ investigations, discussing the mutual benefit of devoting time and resources to develop undergraduate writers’ research. They suggest some methods by which this goal can be achieved, and as thorough work usually does, they end by presenting some of the challenges centers might face while undertaking the important work of elevating young scholars’ projects.

In “Center ing Graduate Writers’ Beliefs, Practices, and Help Seeking Behaviors,” Victoria L. O’Connor, Red D. Douglas, and Sherry Wynn Perdue perform a

Kaitlin Passafiume

University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com

mixed method study to better understand the particular needs of graduate students. By surveying and interviewing students at Oakland University, the authors gain insight into these graduate students’ perspectives on advisors, resources, and beliefs associated with writing. In the process, the authors assess the graduate programming at their own writing center and also offer strategies and guidance for other writing centers offering graduate support.

Molly Parsons and Emma K. Brown take writing center alumni research in a new and generative direction in “Tutor Alums Doing Good: A Qualitative Study of the Character Strengths of Writing Tutor Alumni.” Through their alumni research project, the authors address how writing center training and experiences help tutors make a positive impact in post graduation contexts. The authors offer a heuristic centered on character strengths to analyze tutor alumni work “toward good” as well as to measure the influence of our field.

Salena Sampson Anderson closes the current edition with her thought provoking piece entitled, “Self Initiated Writing Center Visits and Writing Development: A First Year Writing Assessment.” The author offers an empirical study to illustrate improvements she observed between a group of first year writers’ first and second semesters of study. She examines how these achievements compare to a control group of writers who did not make use of writing center services, thus illustrating the undeniably positive effects that writing center influence can have, by way of quantitative data.

Finally, we here at Praxis want to thank our readers and our review board for their continued support. We are proud to share this collection, and we look forward to the conversations that these pieces will continue or start.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022)

HELPING UNDERGRADUATE TUTORS CONDUCT AND DISSEMINATE RESEARCH: A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR WRITING CENTER ADMINISTRATORS

Megan Keaton Pfeiffer University megan.keaton@pfeiffer.edu

Ashley Schoppe Pfeiffer University ashley.schoppe@pfeiffer.edu

Daisha Oliver Pfeiffer University

Abstract

In recent years, the field of writing center studies has begun to recognize the value of undergraduate research (McKinney; DelliCarpini and Crimmins; Fitzgerald and Ianetta). Additionally, scholars have begun arguing that the writing center itself is a prime research site. As tutors ask questions about the writing center and its work, the center becomes a place in which the tutors can look for answers (McKinney; DelliCarpini and Crimmins). In this article, we argue that writing center administrators should encourage and mentor undergraduate tutors to conduct and disseminate research. To this end, we offer specific practices for doing so. We begin by discussing the benefits of undergraduate research to tutors, to the institution, and to writing center studies as a field. Together, these benefits serve to make a case for administrators to devote time and resources to mentor their undergraduate tutors in research. Then, we list practical strategies for helping tutors conduct research and disseminate that research in the form of professional conference presentations and publications. Finally, we speak to potential challenges. We acknowledge that undergraduate research involves sacrifice, as too often writing centers are understaffed and underfunded. Yet we firmly believe that this work amply repays this investment, as our personal experiences attest.

The Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Position Statement on Undergraduate Research in Writing states that undergraduate research involves “the formation of one or more mentoring relationships, preliminary study and project planning, information gathering and analysis, and the feedback loop of peer review and revision associated with the dissemination of findings.” Too often, though, we see undergraduates stopping short of the final step of dissemination. As writing center administrators (WCA), we can mentor our undergraduate tutors to help them disseminate their research and contribute to scholarly conversations about writing center (WC) work.

Undergraduate research (UGR) has been increasing over the last 70 years, due in part to the Council on Undergraduate Research’s (CUR) practical work to support student scholarship (Karukstis 47). However, CUR generally focuses on STEM projects. This tendency replicates UGR broadly, as studies have shown that UGR is more often conducted and supported in STEM than in Arts and Humanities (Schneider et al.;

Lopatto; Haeger et al.). Indeed, CUR itself recognizes the dearth of Humanities undergraduate scholarship and has published work addressing this discrepancy (Malachowski; Kistner et al.). Kinzie and BrckaLorenz, too, analyzed data from the National Survey of Student Engagement from 2013 2019; when examining the responses of 1,248,854 senior students, they found a senior participation in research averaged 28.8% for Arts and Humanities majors, while participation of Biology, Agriculture and Natural Sciences majors averaged 48.12% (42). We recognize that WCs are not solely focused in Arts and Humanities, as most support writing in all majors and employ students from across disciplines. However, many WCAs are likely from a Humanities background, and much of our WC studies scholarship appears in Humanities based publications. With a dearth of scholarship in Humanities about UGR and a smaller statistical likelihood that WCAs took part in research as undergraduates, WCAs may have limited knowledge about how to facilitate this research.

Moreover, little of the scholarship about UGR in Humanities offers strategies for mentors. Scholarship explores the benefits of UGR (Young; Kistner et al.), lists potential barriers to UGR (Kinzie and BrckaLorenz; Haeger et al.; Sell et al.) or states numbers and perceptions of UGR at specific institutions (Schneider et al.; Cruz et al.). Other scholarship focuses on how to create a culture that supports UGR (Cruz et al.; Figlerowicz). If UGR is understudied in the Humanities writ large, it is even more so in WC studies.

WCs, however, are a ripe space for undergraduates to perform UGR. Malachowski emphasizes the effectiveness of UGR in which faculty and students labor together, instead of faculty and students completing independent projects. The Humanities have been at a disadvantage in this regard due to the independent nature of most scholarship; research does not typically occur in the laboratory, the setting for the majority of STEM research, which is conducive to group research (Malachowski 41). Yet WC based research is unique in Humanities UGR in that the WC

itself functions as a kind of laboratory, particularly conducive to shared research projects between WCAs and students. Working in the WC, too, provides students with the authority and confidence to participate in scholarship. Christopher Ervin argues that compared to their undergraduate peers, tutors are in a better place to determine their own research questions and methods (“The Peer Perspective”). Tutors become experts in providing rhetorical guidance as they are immersed in this work; moreover, they exist in a dual position of student and tutor, so they can view the university through a lens unique from that of other students and of faculty and administrators (Ervin, “The Peer Perspective”). As tutors ask questions about the WC and its work, the center becomes a place in which the tutors can look for answers (McKinney; DelliCarpini and Crimmins).

If the WC is a prime research site, how can WCAs fully utilize UGR for the benefit of students and composition studies? There are some guides that exist for WC research, such as Lauren Fitzgerald and Melissa Ianetta’s The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research and Jackie Grutsch McKinney’s Strategies for Writing Center Research, which offer practical advice to tutors conducting research. However, there is a lack of resources about how tutors can disseminate their research. Even McKinney’s guide only addresses research dissemination in one chapter, offering eight pages on writing for publication and presenting at conferences. Our article addresses practices for mentoring students through the process of conference presentations and publications. Moreover, while Fitzgerald, Ianetta, and McKinney provide wonderful resources for tutors in their books, there is a lack of scholarship about the ways WCAs can prepare tutors for conducting and disseminating research. This deficiency is critical because, as the CCCC Position Statement quoted above emphasizes, UGR requires mentoring relationships. If administrators want to mentor their undergraduate tutors, they need strategies. This piece is intended to begin to fulfill that need.

Ultimately, we argue that WCAs should encourage and mentor undergraduate tutors to conduct and disseminate research. To this end, we offer specific practices for doing so. This article arises from collaborations among a WC Director, an English faculty member, and an undergraduate tutor at Pfeiffer University. Megan (the Director) has been developing a culture of research in her center since 2018. Every year, the tutors each choose a topic to investigate, such as helping students with brainstorming, utilizing non directive tutoring strategies, or injecting humor into sessions. The tutors then locate and read scholarship

about their chosen topic. In addition to using what they learn to lead a training session for their peers, the tutors are encouraged to apply the scholarship to their experiences and to submit a tutor column to a WC studies journal. Ashley (the English faculty member) primarily focuses on teaching at the university, but she has a background in WC administration, having served as a tutor and administrator during her graduate studies. In the Spring 2019 semester, Daisha (the undergraduate tutor) worked on her first column under the mentorship of Ashley. Megan then coached Daisha on the submission process, and Daisha submitted the column that May. Daisha submitted another column the following year. Also, Ashley, Daisha, Megan, and another tutor collaborated on a CCCC presentation in April 2020, during which they offered strategies for WCAs who wish to foster tutor UGR. This presentation provided the foundation for this article. The three of us are, therefore, uniquely positioned to discuss the ways in which administrators can aid undergraduates in conducting and disseminating research.

In this article, we begin by discussing the benefits of UGR, which serve to make a case for administrators to devote time and resources to mentor their undergraduate tutors in research. Then, we list practical strategies for helping tutors conduct disseminate research in the form of professional conference presentations and publications. Finally, we address potential challenges. We acknowledge that UGR involves sacrifice, as too often WCs are understaffed and underfunded. Yet we firmly believe that this work amply repays this investment, as our personal experiences attest.

Benefits of Undergraduate Tutors Conducting and Disseminating Research Benefits to Tutors

Conducting and disseminating research presents undergraduate tutors with advantages and developmental opportunities. According to Grobman and Kinkead, research in the scholarly community allows tutors to develop critical thinking skills and experience different forms of collaboration, including mentorship (“Introduction,” xxii). When tutors recognize unanswered questions and develop ideas for avenues of research, it leads them to discover where their voices fit into the conversation of a discipline. It is important that tutors feel empowered to determine their own research agenda, to recognize where their passion and expertise will create new scholarship. As tutors progress further into the research process, they develop critical thinking skills through analyzing, evaluating, and

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate

answering research questions. At the beginning of their research journey, tutors may employ a narrative, experience based study, which can help to build confidence and to learn novice methods of dissemination. For instance, as we detailed above in the description of our own WC’s approach to UGR, tutors can begin by reading WC studies scholarship, applying the scholarship to their own tutoring experiences, and submitting a tutor column about those experiences to a journal. This kind of work can help tutors learn how to locate, interpret, and apply scholarship, as well as introduce them to the processes of submitting and revising academic work (Ervin, “The Peer Perspective”; Schneider et al.). Moreover, this exercise allows novices to become familiar with the conversations in the field, a necessary first step to becoming a tutor researcher (Hall 9). Once they have some experience in conducting and disseminating research, tutors can begin embarking on empirical RAD1 studies. Additionally, tutors learn research skills that can be applied to future projects, whether those projects occur in an academic setting such as graduate school or in their professional careers (Elder and Trapp). These research skills can include writing effective research questions, selecting appropriate research methods to answer those questions, and preparing IRB applications. Further, conducting research can lead to improving tutors’ professionalism. When tutors participate in conferences and publish their work, it not only serves as an invitation to professional conversations, but also shapes their professional identity (Fitzgerald 22 23; Fischer et al. 87). Benefits to the Institution

Along with benefits to the tutor, encouraging tutors to conduct and disseminate research is a boon to the institution. First, the mentoring that occurs during the research strengthens relationships between students and administrators, who often also serve as faculty (Grobman and Kinkead, “Introduction,” xxi; Elder and Trapp 8 9; Young 11). These relationships matter, first, because they increase retention rates (Grobman and Kinkead, “Introduction,” xxi; Schneider et al. 108; Fischer et al. 88). Students who feel connected to university faculty may be more likely to reach out when problems occur, meaning they have a support system. Such mentoring relationships have been shown to be especially valuable for students of color from underprivileged backgrounds (Shanahan et al. 7). Since the administrator is closer to the student, the student is less likely to become disengaged without someone noticing and reaching out. Moreover, the mentoring relationship allows students to begin seeing themselves as partners in meaning making, rather than as subordinates to the WCA (Elder and Trapp 8 9). When

students begin to feel like valued members of the field, they are more likely to continue their membership beyond their undergraduate years and pursue graduate studies (Groban and Kinkead, “Introduction,” xxi xxii; Ervin, “What Tutor Researchers” 41; Schneider et al. 107). Although not all students wish to pursue postgraduate studies, these mentoring relationships serve the crucial function of building the confidence of those who do.

Tutors who have been initiated into the academic community of conference presentation and publication are uniquely beneficial to the institution’s WC, too. Put simply, conducting research makes better tutors. The anxiety that accompanies conducting research, especially for the first time, can be productive, especially for WC tutors. Tutors are often skilled writers who may have forgotten the fear of learning to write in academic genres. Experiencing this apprehension of learning to research and write in new professional genres can prompt tutors to recall that feeling, which the student being tutored is likely experiencing; therefore, tutors engaging in academic research become humbler and more empathetic (Ianetta, “What is Undergraduate Research?”). In this way, UGR not only enhances the institution in ways mentioned above, but also strengthens the institution’s WC.

Benefits to Writing Center Studies

UGR is also of premium value for the fields of composition and WC studies. Scholars have made clear that tutor authored UGR poses special insight. Ervin emphasizes the “liminal space” that undergraduate tutors occupy because of their dual role as students and professionals (“The Peer Perspective”). As student writers themselves, undergraduate tutors are in a better position to recognize the issues that trouble their peers issues that thus call for inquiry and research than administrators. Fitzgerald emphasizes the need for the field to expand its recognition of the value of tutors beyond their ability to offer practical advice about the daily functioning of WCs to incorporate their perspectives into the production of scholarship (25). Indeed, Fitzgerald makes the case that undergraduate researchers are driven by an immediate sense of gaps in current scholarship or problems that must be fixed, which motivates their own research (Fitzgerald 24). As an example, Gallagher and Greaves undergraduate peer tutors describe their own project about revision as arising from the realization that the topic played a crucial role in student writing but had received little attention from scholars (7). Aside from dual identities as tutors/professionals and possessing distinctive insights about new avenues for research, Ervin stresses that in failing to appreciate the potential of UGR, WC studies

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

choose not to capitalize on the possibilities of valuable interdisciplinary insights that arise from prompting tutors from various majors to apply their expertise to the field (“The Peer Perspective”). Composition and WC studies have much to gain from a fuller recognition of UGR’s value.

Specific Practices

Our purpose here is to further the conversation concerning specific practices for facilitating tutor authored UGR. In our WC, professionalization through performing research, presenting at conferences, and publishing articles is an established part of working in the center. Our advice below is built from both WC scholarship and our own experiences. Concepts to Discuss at the Beginning of Research Mentorship is a crucial component for UGR, as tutors rely on the counsel of experienced administrators to introduce them to the field of academic scholarship. As the administrator and tutor begin working together, there are three important concepts to discuss: (1) what the mentoring relationship will look like; (2) undergraduate expertise; and (3) time commitments. A mentor relationship should not be assumed to occur naturally; rather, it must be intentionally developed as students will be used to occupying a subordinate instead of collaborative role with the administrator due to institutional hierarchy (Elder and Trapp 11). At the beginning of the mentoring relationship, then, some logistical guidelines should be discussed with the tutor. The first is the amount of communication and control that should exist in the relationship. A mentor should be involved enough to know the struggles and successes that a student experiences throughout their research. On the other hand, students need an amount of freedom in their process because this freedom can “foster their interdependence and sense of responsibility” (Mills 2). Therefore, administrators should discuss with their tutors on an individual basis how much communication and support are necessary. It is important to have this conversation in the beginning of the research process and to return occasionally to the topic to ensure each tutor is receiving the correct amount of support. In terms of control, the administrator should establish with the tutor what kind of collaboration is needed for the project and what role the administrator should assume. As Cheatle states, there are many different kinds of roles an administrator can undertake: “mentor, primary investigator, collaborator, facilitator, and so forth” (232). When the administrator and tutor are not collaborating on a research project, the administrator

can practice a tutor driven collaboration technique in which the administrator becomes a facilitator. In this kind of relationship, the tutor leads and makes final decisions and the administrator's role is limited to guiding, critiquing, and making suggestions (Grobman and Kinkead, “Introduction,” xiv). The administrator places the tutor at the center and encourages the tutor to “follow their own lines of questioning, adopt their own processes, make mistakes, and experience successes” (233).

Another key area of discussion is defining expertise. Tutors may require significant encouragement to view themselves as worthy of participating in the creation of research. Tutors may fear entering scholarly conversations because they perceive themselves to be novices, especially compared to published authors. Thus, it falls to the administrator to assure tutors that they do indeed possess the expertise necessary to author scholarship; this expertise comes from their experiences tutoring. Tutors are experts in the WC because they are immersed in the daily occurrences of the WC. Their experiences generate valuable and distinct research questions. DelliCarpini and Crimmins state, “Experience becomes the subject of reflective impulses that drive students to ask wider questions about the practices of the field, and so to engage in disciplinary research” (192). When tutors have encounters in the WC that spark a desire for further exploration, they can begin researching to gain knowledge about that particular issue. As the tutors learn more about that issue, they become experts. Therefore, their expertise is twofold: (1) they are experts in the daily operations of WCs and (2) they are experts in the issue they researched. Once the tutor’s work is disseminated, they “are not identified as students of particular teachers or particular pedagogies, but as authors in their own right” (Robillard 254). Administrators can help tutors recognize their expertise by highlighting their research and specific WC experiences. Administrators can also complicate the idea of expertise. Grobman argues that all scholars from students to long time professionals are always on “a continuum of scholarly authority” (W177); she argues that “scholarly authorship is not an all or nothing proposition but a matter of degree” (W179). Scholars established in the field are experts in the issues on which they have published. However, when a scholar wants to pursue a new topic, the scholar is once again a novice. Administrators can explain this continuum to tutors, emphasizing that they exist on the same continuum as the administrator and all scholars.

When WCAs occupy the role of mentor, it is important to recognize that tutors will confront similar pressure and responsibilities as that of the

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

administrators themselves, such as “recruitment of research subjects, IRB, scheduling of research activities, miscommunication, and more” (Ervin, “What Tutor Researchers” 68). Time is of especial consideration, because it can discourage a tutor from initiating a project and research (Ervin 62). While administrators and tutors both agree that time is a challenge, discrepancies exist between the views of each group, which negatively impact the productivity of the mentoring relationship (Ervin 39). Students may not realize that their administrators also experience time as a barrier to completing research (Ervin 67), and administrators may fail to appreciate the hurdles logistical issues such as IRB approval and locating test subjects represent for students (Ervin 68). Articles written by undergraduate or graduate students reveal a similar breach in communication with their mentors surrounding the length of the revision process typical for academic writing, resulting in frustration and discouragement (Elder and Trapp 5; Kong and Pearson 229). An openness on the part of administrators towards sharing their own challenges regarding time management and IRB approval can encourage student researchers to recognize that such struggles are natural and can be overcome.

Helping Tutors Conduct Research

Administrators have a significant impact on tutors’ attitude towards research. Elder and Trapp share about a professor and a student’s time working together in which the student emphasizes the impact of effective mentorship. The student recalls that the professor “helped me work through ideas, taking time out of her already busy schedule, and most importantly, she infused in me a developing sense of research methodology” (5). Tutors encounter barriers when conducting research, but assistance from an administrator operating as a trusted mentor can help to attenuate this stress.

In their Position Statement, CCCC explains that another hallmark of effective mentors is their attention to helping students understand genre, process, and methodology. Tutors may face challenges in the research process as they try to apply scholarship and as they select appropriate research methods. Providing undergraduates with guidance as they read academic texts prepares them for the complex ideas and unfamiliar jargon they will encounter. Administrators, too, can direct tutors to recognize the different genres of academic articles, such as the disparities between an IMRAD study and an article organized by an introduction, literature review, discussion, and implications. Administrators can teach tutors techniques for locating arguments in distinct genres and

understanding jargon. Administrators might also encourage students to keep track of the ideas they read by suggesting the creation of an annotated bibliography. After reading and analyzing extant scholarship, the tutor can begin using the scholarship for their specific research purposes. DelliCarpini and Crimmins advise, “Students need to read scholarly work with two purposes: first, to inform their own observations and experience; and second, with an eye toward responding to it with their own critique and their own studies” (207). Responding to scholarly work can be challenging for tutors determining where their voices fit into the academic conversation for the first time. One method of assisting tutors in discovering their place in extant scholarship is to reinforce their confidence in their own expertise, encouraging them to analyze their experiences and to identify the “unanswered questions arising from their experiences in the writing center” (DelliCarpini and Crimmins 196). Once the research questions have been written, administrators can inform the tutor of their methodological options; the administrator might utilize helpful guides such as those authored by McKinney and/or Fitzgerlad and Ianetta. When selecting methods, it is important to be upfront about the length of time required for empirical research, especially when an IRB approval process is involved. After the research data is collected, the administrator can help the tutor choose methods of analysis.

Helping Tutors Present at Conferences

The purpose of performing research is to share it with a larger audience, which in the academic context typically involves conference presentations. Administrators can prepare tutors for a successful conference presentation in a variety of ways. First, tutors must become familiar with the distinct genres involved, including the Call for Papers (CFP), proposal, and the actual conference presentation. A training session for tutors dedicated to CFPs and conference proposals is an effective way to convey this information. At our own WC, Megan routinely leads such presentations alongside other English faculty members. She distributes a handout detailing the conventions of the genres associated with conferences, and she provides tutors with examples of CFPs and the corresponding proposals to identify potential differences among diverse conferences and presentation types. After this introductory professional development meeting, Megan deepens the conversation about presentation types when individual tutors apply to specific conferences. For instance, when cowriting a proposal with two of her tutors for CCCC 2021, Megan explained the differences between a presentation panel and a workshop and the ways in which the proposal would be framed based on

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate Research

the kind of presentation they chose. This choice would involve anticipating what participants would gain from the experience and designing activities to encourage attendee discussion and participation.

Along with genre conventions, administrators can share a list of conferences, due dates for proposals, geographic locations of the conferences, and general information about the conferences such as typical attendance numbers, friendliness of attendees, and frequency of undergraduate presenters. In addition to national professional conferences like the IWCA Annual Conference, National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, and CCCC, administrators can introduce the tutors to undergraduate specific conferences, such as the National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Tutors might also consider conferences at nearby universities and/or regional WC associations.

Following a conference proposal’s acceptance, there are a range of ways the administrator can continue to provide mentorship as the tutors plan their presentation. It is often helpful for the administrator to remind the tutors that while the conference presentation genre is new, the basic format of offering and supporting an argument is similar to that of writing papers. The administrator should encourage the tutors to return to the proposal to review the original vision for the presentation. Reconsidering the proposal can also help tutors determine which ideas are most significant and how best to accomplish the goal of their presentation. Further, the administrator should offer a reminder that while some divergence from the proposal is acceptable, attendees will expect the general focus to remain the same. McKinney’s Strategies for Writing Center Research offers additional advice about presenting at conferences that administrators and tutors may find useful, such as adhering to the time limit, using visuals effectively, offering enough background information, reading the audience, and avoiding fidgeting and self deprecating jokes (146 150).

Facilitating opportunities for practice before an audience and discussing potential reactions and questions from attendees are key when preparing tutors for their presentation. For many tutors, writing a rough script and/or preparing a PowerPoint can be an effective place to start. The tutors should practice at least twice while being timed, as staying within time limits is an important aspect of conference participation, as is comfortable delivery of the presentation material. During the initial practices, the tutors can rely heavily on their script and PowerPoint. However, the tutors should eventually graduate to maintaining eye contact with the audience. While practicing, the tutors may initially lose

their train of thought or stumble over their words. Administrators should remind tutors that it is acceptable to pause, take a breath, and start again. If the tutor is attending a conference at which they are expected to read a paper, the first few practice sessions might consist of the tutor reading directly from the paper without looking up. Then, the tutor can begin practicing pausing to look at the audience, possibly even marking places on the paper indicating when to look up. If the presentation will take place virtually through video conference, the practice sessions can begin in person and graduate to using technology. When the tutor is comfortable with the flow of the presentation, the administrator and tutor can separate into different rooms to practice with the video conferencing technology; this routine allows the tutor to practice looking at the camera instead of the content on screen and, perhaps most importantly, to work out technological issues that may occur. Finally, if possible, the administrator should gather supportive faculty for a practice presentation with a live audience. Once at the conference, rehearsing the presentation in the assigned meeting room can alleviate fears as well.

Briefing tutors on the various questions and responses they may receive from the audience is another crucial aspect of mentorship regarding conference presentations within the administrator’s purview. For instance, at some conferences, the audience may be expected to criticize a presenter’s research methodology; at other conferences, attendees may be more likely to ask questions to help the presenter develop their ideas. The administrator can preempt some questions attendees might ask and help the tutor craft answers. Once the tutor is aware of potential questions, the administrator and tutor can discuss ways of responding. The administrator should emphasize to tutors that lacking the answer to a question is not a failure; conference presentations exist to share research and receive feedback, and an unexpected question can open up new avenues for expansion of the project.

Finally, the nerves that accompany presenting should be acknowledged by the administrator. McKinney addresses such unavoidable apprehension, writing, “Presentations can bring out anxieties you did not even know you had because they require public speaking and typically have pretty high stakes; if you flub, it could mean getting a lower grade, looking foolish, or not getting a job. Or, that’s how it feels” (144). Administrators should validate their tutors by frankly discussing emotions, acknowledging the reality of pre presentation jitters. An important first step is for the administrator to share his or her own coping mechanisms. In addition to being scared of “flubbing,” tutors may suffer from “imposter syndrome,” worrying

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate Research

that they do not possess the authority or knowledge to present, especially to established scholars in the field. In these instances, administrators should counsel tutors that while it is normal to experience stress, they are prepared because they have practiced; they are knowledgeable because they have done the necessary research for the presentation; and they are brave for their willingness to share new ideas in front of an audience.

Helping Tutors

Publish

Tutors, both in their classes and in WC training, are routinely lectured about genre, audience, and purpose. However, this conversation is abstract because the compositions tutors encounter in the WC are usually class assignments: the audience and purpose rarely depart from the expected “to persuade a scholarly audience of one’s peers.” Yet conversations about genre, audience, and purpose assume added significance when preparing tutors to pursue actual publication. Thus, publication can be valuable and refreshing for administrators and tutors, granting new relevance to familiar topics.

When preparing tutors for publication submission, administrators should empower tutors by introducing them to the culture of publishing. Similar to discussions about distinct conferences, tutors need to be taught to recognize different genres and their conventions. For instance, administrators can discuss the genre convention differences between a tutor column and a feature article, including word count limitations, tone expectations, and willingness to accept narrative evidence versus empirical evidence. Tutors must also be educated to recognize each journal’s distinct target audiences. When a tutor chooses the journal that best suits their submission, the administrator should prompt the tutor to consider the ways the argument complements that journal’s audience. During these conversations, the administrator should also reference the submission page for the journal to guide tutors as they review requirements for submission, including deadlines. Practically, it is useful to create a schedule of due dates for drafts, feedback, and revisions in partnership with the tutor; this schedule should remain flexible as the writing process develops, however. In the early stages of creating a draft for submission, administrators again discuss the issue of time with tutors, making them aware of the time a scholarly submission requires. Tutors must understand that academic publishing is a lengthy process, including drafting and revising, a wait time for response following submission, and additional revision after the publication’s response. In terms of estimating time between submission and response, a good strategy is

searching the intended journal’s website to see if an approximation of turnaround time is listed. Tutors also need to know that revision after response can require a significant amount of time. For instance, revise and resubmit can take multiple rounds before full acceptance. Tutors may be surprised at how much revision will occur to their original project, so this reality should be discussed upfront. Administrators may confide the time involved for their own publications as a way of assuring tutors that the lengthy process is normal.

Once the tutor begins the writing process, the administrator should assist the tutor to identify what is new, interesting, and valuable about their ideas. For tutors working on a topic that is already represented in the scholarship, administrators can direct tutors towards considering how the scholarship reflects, or diverges from, their own tutoring experience. When tutors consider their own time in the center, they are more likely to discover an original viewpoint. Many tutors, though, will have too many ideas to fit in a single publication. A key aspect of the administrator’s responsibility, then, is to lay out the different directions that the project could pursue. This guidance allows tutors to survey the routes their research might take and select one. In this way, tutors are more likely to develop a unified and focused argument. The administrator can help the tutor conform to the expected genre, thinking through which specific sections are required. For instance, Eric James Stephens, in his piece "A Successful Failure: What I Wish I'd Known about Research before Submitting to a Journal," briefly discusses defining terms, understanding the scholarship, justifying methods, and avoiding overgeneralized claims may be utilized here (27 29). As tutors draft, the administrator can remind the tutor to keep audience considerations front of mind, particularly in terms of knowledge that can be already assumed and what the audience is likely to value the most about the scholarship. As the tutor approaches a complete draft, the administrator will likely need to assist tutors to stay within the bounds of the word count. It can be beneficial to advise tutors to aim for a shorter word limit than is required; for instance, if the word limit is 1500, the tutor should plan for 1200. This strategy allows tutors space to insert additional details if needed. Tutors may also require assistance identifying which ideas are most important, as they revise to meet the word count. The administrator can provide feedback on drafts designed to aid the tutor in writing concisely. The word count issue may also arise if the student’s submission is rejected, and they are revising to submit in another location with a shorter or longer word count. Again, the administrator can aid the

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate

tutor in determining which are the most important aspects of the article so that they can concentrate on those ideas in the new draft.

Significantly, education about the culture of publication must include explanations of the possible responses to a submission: acceptance, resubmission with revisions, and rejection. In particular, when tutors receive a “revise and resubmit” or their piece is rejected outright, they require guidance about how to proceed. Administrators should stress that neither of these responses should be interpreted as failure. David Elder provides an example: “I...was asked to go through two revision cycles. I was disheartened by this news, but [Joonna]... told me that this was a great opportunity to do valuable research for the field, and was quite normal for the publishing process” (5). If possible, the administrator should inform the tutor of the typical acceptance rate of a particular journal so that the tutor knows what to expect.

Helping Students Process Failure

When encouraging undergraduate tutors to participate in academic research, especially publishing, one area that cannot be overlooked is preparing them to encounter failure. More specifically, it is important to discuss failure as an inevitable step of academic scholarship, and this conversation should occur as early as possible. Although it may feel counterintuitive, even discouraging, to greet tutors into the world of academic scholarship with news of impending rejections, there is ample evidence that omitting the reality of failure is more damaging. Eric James Stephens describes his first experience submitting to an academic journal, which may sound familiar: “I submitted [my article] with that air of confidence…Not too much later, I received an email from the editors…Rather than containing the glowing praise I expected, the email included a thoughtful message with an invitation to chat… regarding the ‘extensive note[s] in the comment section.’” Indeed, Stephens’s rejection represents a best case scenario, as the editor’s suggestion that they speak on the phone was clearly intended to soften the blow of the reviewers’ feedback and to encourage him to rethink the project. Not all rejections are proffered in such a thoughtful manner: Devoney Looser recounts a reader’s report for her book proposal “so nasty it made me question my will to write another sentence.” Even if the rejection is couched in motivational terms, it can be a devastating blow, especially for driven students who regard academic achievement as part of their identity. In the examples cited above, neither scholar was an undergraduate student: Stephens was completing his master’s degree, and Looser was already a Ph.D. If postgraduates experience failure on such a visceral level,

the stakes are arguably even higher for undergraduates, the responsibility of the mentor to address failure in an ethical manner that much greater.

Administrators mentoring tutors as they embark on academic research can set the tone for perceptions of failure. Administrators should share their personal encounters with failure, perhaps even sharing their own reader reports from rejections with students. This action requires vulnerability, but such a step humanizes administrators, and strengthens the relationship with tutors. Further, adopting an attitude of openness about experiences with failure and rejection can begin to improve the experience of failure in academia overall. Looser theorizes an imaginary document she terms her “shadow CV” that lists her rejections as well as her accomplishments, and she urges academics to be more forthcoming about the ratio between the failures and achievements of a career. Through administrators’ acknowledgment of their “shadow CVs,” tutors can begin to think of failure not as defeat, but rather as a rite of passage. This attitude works to ensure that tutors perceive failure as part of the writing process instead of a judgment on their writing and research capabilities. Allison Carr identifies failure as an “affect bearing concept” that impacts people on an emotional level, and she distinguishes between failing as an action and identifying oneself as a failure: “The infinitive form, to fail that is one thing. This is an action directed outward. To be a failure, on the other hand to take on the noun form, the ‘thingness’ which names one’s identity this is something else entirely.” It behooves administrators, then, to direct tutors towards viewing setbacks and rejections in the infinitive form, as an action that has occurred, instead of as a noun descriptor applying to them. Administrators can guide tutors through the next steps after receiving negative feedback: review the readers’ reports with them, direct their attention to aspects of the criticism they can use to improve their projects, and help the tutors determine if they should submit their work to another journal after minimal edits and revisions, or if they should pause to rethink the argument or methodology. Administrators should check in with the tutors often about their progress so that they know their work has value. Looser opines, “Increasingly, I see rejection as a necessary part of every stage of an academic career. I remind myself that the fact that I’m still facing rejection is evidence that I’m still in the game at a level where I should be playing.” Working to instill a similar mindset towards failure in burgeoning undergraduate researchers should be the goal of mentors.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Addressing Challenges

Although the benefits to encouraging UGR for tutors and the institution are undeniable, one should not underestimate its challenges. For administrators, there are ethical considerations about asking tutors to assume the burden of a research project that is not part of a course assignment, especially considering their hectic schedules. College has always been demanding, but it has become even more so as tutors seek to balance the rising costs of tuition by increasing their hours of employment. Further, depending on the university’s student population, tutors may have family obligations. Administrators should be attentive to tutors’ workloads, asking not only about the demands of their classes and time in the center, but also about other responsibilities. While fostering UGR involves coaxing tutors to recognize the value of their input to academic scholarship, administrators must be careful not to overwhelm. For Ashley, the English faculty member mentoring two WC tutors as they completed research projects, it soon became apparent that the students were not in an equal place to focus on research independent of their class work. One of the students, Daisha, was eager to pursue her academic article, appearing at all scheduled meetings ready to discuss how her ideas had evolved and promptly returning drafts. The second student, however, was a graduating senior managing her work study position at the WC, multiple senior projects, and job applications. Ashley realized that for this student, the pressure to complete an academic column was a source of anxiety instead of a positive experience, and they mutually agreed to pause the project.

In addition to ensuring that academic scholarship does not become burdensome for busy tutors, administrators must also address practical concerns involved with supervising UGR projects, particularly if they are overseeing multiple tutors. One strategy for keeping track of where each tutor is in the research process is to negotiate due dates with the students for individual steps of their projects and to record those dates. A week prior to each due date, the administrator can send emails gently reminding students about what they agreed to accomplish. Administrators should be flexible with these deadlines, determining new due dates for students whose projects proceed more quickly or slowly than planned.

Another practical concern for administrators is compensating tutors for the time they devote to researching and writing. Indeed, a lack of funding has been cited as a reason that UGR in Humanities fields lags behind that in STEM (Kistner et al.). Although it is hoped that the established benefits of UGR will lead to more robust funding in the future, for WCs with limited

budgets today we offer the following suggestions. Tutors should be encouraged to work on their projects during their scheduled WC hours whenever possible, but inevitably some of this work will occur outside of their time in the center. If the institution’s WC budget allows for financial compensation, administrators can support UGR by funding the time tutors devote to preparing conference presentations and writing academic articles. However, if the budget does not allow for such compensation, highlighting the benefits that tutors stand to gain from participating in these projects such as professional growth, deeper understanding of the research process, and the potential for networking are even more important.

Another potential challenge is securing funding for travel to conferences. Administrators should not assume that tutors have the ability to pay for travel costs and conference registration.2 Therefore, the administrator needs to help tutors investigate funding options. Even if there is not a dedicated fund for student conference travel, administrators can argue for funding from the provost’s office, admissions, student advancement, or other departments that may support students’ professionalization. Administrators should stress that enabling tutors to present at a conference will both help the tutors grow as professionals and will bring positive attention to the university; in other words, tutors presenting at conferences is a potential avenue for university advertising. If there are no funding options available through the university or in the WC budget, it is possible that the conference offers grants for undergraduate students. Another option is for tutors to present digitally via a video conference platform. In this option, the administrator could be physically present at the conference while the tutors present digitally. Ultimately, the challenges for administrators who wish to foster undergraduate research are formidable, but not insurmountable, and the satisfaction of witnessing a tutor successfully present at a conference or submit their research for publication far outweighs the struggles encountered along the way.

Conclusion

As we hope this article has made evident, we recognize the challenges inherent in facilitating UGR; however, it is our belief that such an investment is worthwhile for administrators and tutors. Academia has long been a space of privilege, and encouraging UGR could begin the important work of diversifying the so called ivory tower. Groban and Kinkead point to issues of accessibility of research and publication in terms of gender, race, and socioeconomic class (xxii xxv). If we light the fire to pursue research and publication in

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

undergraduate tutors particularly those from minority or underprivileged backgrounds it could in turn provide them with the confidence to pursue postgraduate studies. In this way, then, the academy and the field will become more representative of the world, and in turn make the academy a more equitable place.

Notes

1. Empirical RAD research is “planned inquiry with systematic data collection, analysis, and reporting” (McKinney xvii). This research “is replicable, meaning that others can conduct the same study in a different writing center; it is aggregable, meaning that the original work is specified and clear enough that it can be built upon by others; and it is data supported, meaning that the claims it makes are supported with systematic data” (Driscoll and Powell). RAD research denotes that qualitative and/or quantitative research has been conducted, that other WC scholars can replicate research methods, coding schemes, and other parts of the study, and that the conclusions are based on the research study (Driscoll and Powell). The Community Toolbox, an online resource associated with the University of Kansas that aims to help “people build healthier communities and bring about the changes they envision”, provides resources for participatory planning.

2. Christopher Ervin and the CCCC Position Statement both address the importance of administrator mentors acknowledging and aiding tutors researchers in identifying resources to help with the financial requirements conducting and disseminating research (“What Tutor Researchers” 58).

Works Cited

Carr, Allison. “In Support of Failure.” Composition Forum, vol. 27, Spring 2013. https://compositionforum.com/issue/27/failure.php

Cheatle, Joseph, et al. “Creating a Research Culture in the Center: Narratives of Professional Development and the Multitiered Research Process.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 37, no. 2, 2019, pp. 227 250. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26922023

Conference on College Composition and Communication. “CCCC Position Statement on Undergraduate Research in Writing: Principles and Best Practices.” Conference on College Composition and Communication. March 2017. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/resources/positions/under graduate research

Cruz, Laura E., et al. “Undergraduate Research as a System: Mapping the Institutional Landscape of a High Impact Practice.” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, vol. 21, no. 1, April 2021, pp. 301 319. doi: 10.14434/josotl.v21i1.30648

DelliCarpini, Dominic, and Cynthia Crimmins. “The Writing Center as a Space for Undergraduate Research.” Undergraduate Research in English Studies Edited by Lauren Grobman and Joyce Kinkead, National Council of Teachers of English, 2010, pp. 191 211.

Driscoll, Dana Lynn, and Roger Powell. “Conducting and Composing RAD Research: A Guide for New Authors.” The Peer Review, issue 0, Fall 2015. https://thepeerreview iwca.org/issues/issue 0/conducting and composing rad research in the writing center a guide for new authors/ Elder, David, and Joonna Smitherman Trapp. “Mentor as Method: Faculty Mentor Roles and Undergraduate Scholarship.” Undergraduate Research in English Studies. Edited by Lauren Grobman and Joyce Kinkead, National Council of Teachers of English, 2010, 3 12. Ervin, Christopher. “The Peer Perspective and Undergraduate Writing Tutor Research.” Praxis, vol. 13, iss. 2, 2016, http://www.praxisuwc.com/ervin 132. Ervin, Christopher. “What Tutor Researchers and Their Mentors Tell Us About Undergraduate Research in the Writing Center: An Exploratory Study.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 35, no. 3, 2016, pp. 39 75. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43965690

Figlerowicz, Marta. “Making Long Shots: A Path toward Undergraduate Professional Publication.” Undergrad Research in English Studies. Edited by Laurie Grobman and Joyce Kinkead. National Council of Teachers of English, 2010, pp. 108 120.

Fitzgerald, Lauren. “Undergraduate Writing Tutors as Researchers: Redrawing Boundaries.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 33, no. 2, 2014, pp. 17 35. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43443370.

Fitzgerald, Lauren, and Melissa Ianetta. The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Frisher, Abbey E. “A Taxonomy for Developing Undergraduate Research Experiences as High Impact Practices.” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, vol. 21, no. 1, April 2021, pp. 84 106. doi: 10.14434/josotl.v21i1.30564

Grobman, Laurie. “The Student Scholar: (Re)Negotiating Authorship and Authority.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 61, no. 1, September 2009, pp. W175 W196. ProQuest, https://pfeiffer.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate Research

proquest.com/scholarly journals/student scholar re negotiating authorship/docview/220696215/se 2.

Grobman, Laurie, and Joyce Kinkead. “Introduction: Illuminating Undergraduate Research in English.” Undergrad Research in English Studies. Edited by Laurie Grobman and Joyce Kinkead. National Council of Teachers of English, 2010, pp. ix xxxii.

Hall, R. Mark. Around the Texts of Writing Center Work. Utah State University Press, 2017.

Ianetta, Melissa. “What Is Undergraduate Research?” WCJ Blog Community, April 17, 2016. http://www.writingcenterjournal.org/new blog//what is undergraduate research

Karukstis, Kerry K. “Analysis of the Undergraduate Research Movement: Origins, Developments, and Current Challenges.” Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, vol. 3, no. 2, Winter 2019, pp. 46 55. doi: 10.18833/spur/3/2/8

Kinkead, Joyce, and Laurie Grobman. “Expanding Opportunities for Undergraduate Research in English Studies.” Profession, 2011. pp. 218 230. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41714122

Kistner, Kelly, et al. “Academic and Professional Preparedness: Outcomes of Undergraduate Research in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.” Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, vol. 4, no. 4, Summer 2021, pp. 3 9. https://www.cur.org/download.aspx?id=4730

Kong, Ailing, and P. David Pearson. “Learning: A Process of Enculturation into the Community's Practices.” Research in the Teaching of English, vol. 39, no. 3, Feb. 2005., pp. 226 232. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40171665

Looser, Devoney. “Me and My Shadow CV.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 October 2015. https://www.chronicle.com/article/me and my shadow cv

Malachowski, Mitchell R. “Reflections on the Evolution of Undergraduate Research at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions Over the Past 25 Years.” Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, vol. 3, no. 2, Winter 2019, pp. 38 45. doi: 10.18833/spur/3/2/5

McKinney, Jackie Grutsch. Strategies for Writing Center Research. Parlor Press, 2016.

Mills, Gayla. “Engaging Tutor Independence.” Praxis, vol. 5, iss. 2, Spring 2008, http://www.praxisuwc.com/mills 52.

Robillard, Amy E. “‘Young Scholars’ Affecting Composition, A Challenge to Disciplinary Citation Practices.” College English, vol. 68, no. 3, Jan. 2006, pp. 253 270. doi: 10.2307/25472151

Schneider, Kimberly. “Tracking and Assessing Undergraduate Research Campus wide:

Demographics, Academic Success, and Post Graduation Plans.” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, vol. 21, no. 1, April 2021, pp. 107 119. doi: 10.14434/josotl.v21i1.30290

Sell, Andrea J., et al. “The Impact of Undergraduate Research on Academic Success.” Scholarship and Practice of Undergraduate Research, vol. 1, no. 3, Spring 2018, pp. 19 29. doi:10.18833/spur/1/3/8 Shanahan, Jenny Olin, et al. “Ten Salient Practices of Undergraduate Research Mentors: A Review of the Literature.” Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, vol. 23, no. 5, 2015, pp. 1 18. https://muse.engineering.illinois.edu/files/2017/08/1 0 Salient Practices for UG Research Mentors.pdf Stephens, Eric James. “A Successful Failure: What I Wish I'd Known about Research before Submitting to a Journal.” WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, no. 43, issue 7 8, March/April 2019, pp. 26 29. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v43/43.7 8.pdf Young, Christopher J. “The Course of a Life: The High Impact of Undergraduate Research and Mentoring.” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, vol. 21, no. 1, April 2021, pp. 9 12. doi: 10.14434/josotl.v21i1.32461

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate Research

CENTER ING GRADUATE WRITERS’ BELIEFS, PRACTICES AND HELP SEEKING BEHAVIORS

Victoria L. O’Connor Oakland University voconnor@oakland.edu

Red D. Douglas Oakland University rddouglas@oakland.edu

Abstract

With this mixed method study, we sought to gain a data supported understanding of graduate students’ writing beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors at Oakland University, a Midwestern public, doctoral granting university with higher research activity (R2), and an assessment of how our writing center programming is perceived to address those needs. Although respondents indicated they felt supported by their supervisors, they rarely met with these advisors, found few venues in their departments for writing specific support, and struggled to find time to write. In addition to this mismatch between their beliefs and the support available, we also found that graduate students who felt their needs went unmet by their respective departments and advisors were more likely to seek out assistance from the writing center and to attend writing center sponsored writing retreats, workshops, and consultations. Those who reported attending writing center graduate programming found that the resources, accountability, and writing support facilitated their success. Overall, this study sought to deepen our understanding of graduate students at our university so we might better serve them and to extend existing Writing Center Studies scholarship with empirical research that is replicable within or transferrable to other settings.

As recent collections have demonstrated (Brooks Gillies et al.; Lawrence et al.; Madden et al.), graduate students' writing support needs are distinct from those of their undergraduate counterparts. While there has been growth in both the body of research devoted to graduate writers and specialized writing center programming, gaps persist. This article represents one writing center’s efforts to echo a 2014 call by Doreen Starke Meyering for empirical investigations of graduate writers particularly during the dissertation stage conducted by and from the perspective of graduate writers themselves (Brooks Gillies et al.). More specifically, our research details the findings of a mixed method study of graduate students’ writing beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors at Oakland University (OU), a Midwestern, public, doctoral granting university with higher research activity (R2), in relationship to the services its writing center provides for them.

Since opening in 2006, the Oakland University Writing Center (OUWC) has experienced a significant increase (from 2% to 15% and rising) of graduate students seeking writing consultations. Of that cohort, an ever increasing percentage are international and/or multilingual graduate writers, many of whom struggle

Sherry Wynn Perdue Oakland University wynn@oakland.edu

with the syntax, diction, and the word order of American English, in addition to the challenges presented by academic research genres. Moreover, because most student services available to OU undergraduates are not available to its graduate students and because OU lacks support for research specific needs like designing, analyzing, and reporting statistics, the OUWC has expanded its services to better address graduate student needs. This expansion includes programs regarding research, writing, wellness, and supervision as identified by the extant literature, the Council of Graduate Schools’ (CGS) data and reports, client feedback, and informal consultant observations.

Ample anecdotal evidence (client comments, emails, and informal observations of writer growth) has suggested that OUWC programs (writing retreats, one on one consulting, workshops, and statistical consulting) help graduate students understand and write themselves into their disciplines and thereby help individual writers persist. While anecdotes and lore can draw our attention to potential challenges and interventions, members of academic communities rely upon more systematic forms of inquiry, both qualitative and quantitative, to address our questions, confirm our hypotheses, and affirm our claims to best practices (Babcock and Thonus; Driscoll and Wynn Perdue). With this mixed method study, therefore, we sought to directly explore the writing beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors of OU graduate students as well as to indirectly assess programming designed to address their support needs. Findings not only provide us with a better understanding of campus graduate writers, but also inform how we revise/design, implement, and market future services for our own writing center. It is our additional hope that our findings will add to the greater Writing Center Studies research community by providing empirical evidence about graduate students and writing center programming. This data can be used to guide programming decisions and/or can be explored within comparison studies.

Institutional Background and Literature Review

Institutional Context of Graduate Writing Support

At our institution, most decision making about doctoral policy and programming resides within its seven colleges rather than in its Graduate School. OU’s Graduate Council, a permanent standing committee of its University Senate, plays a largely advisory role, offering recommendations about existing and proposed degree programs. Because the Graduate School neither mandates nor provides centralized support, the university writing center (OUWC) has sought to fill this support gap since 2006 with increasingly scaffolded services that extend far beyond a focus on writing. Most of these innovations were identified as “promising practices” within the Council on Graduate Schools’ Ph.D. Completion and Attrition: Policies and Practices to Promote Student Success, which drew upon seven years of data on graduate support programming implemented by 250 departments across 21 diverse U.S. and Canadian institutions.

Over the last decade, OUWC services have grown from consultations on course papers and high stakes documents like dissertations and publications offered solely by the director to workshops on writing and non writing topics alike, guidance on statistical analysis and reporting results, writing retreats organized and staffed by graduate consultants, and a year long fellowship for doctoral supervisors. These programs are tailored to the needs of doctoral students and reflect the scholarship on doctoral student support cited herein, but they are open to masters and certificate students, and our study recruited participants at all stages and within all graduate programs.

Why Do (All) Graduate Students Need Targeted Writing Support?

The nature of doctoral education and the research university in which it is undertaken is dramatically different from the knowledge making and reproduction role Wilhelm von Humboldt introduced in the early nineteenth century at the University of Berlin and which shaped the development of doctoral education in the United States (Taylor). Since the early 1990s, North American doctoral education has experienced a series of socio cultural and economic changes with important implications for graduate students, their faculty supervisors, and the campus units that might support them. Stanley Taylor, the most widely cited scholar to examine these factors, has identified the following processes as ushering in the post Humboldtian doctorate with the need for more robust support: “massification; internalisation; diversification, commodification; McDonaldisation; regulation; proliferation; and capitalisation” as well as “casualisation; dislocation augmentation; and cross fertilization” (120). To put it more simply, the doctorate

is now pursued for any number of purposes by people from all social and economic strata (Zhou and Gao). Today's doctoral students may study full or part time, but enter with the expectation to leave within a prescribed time frame; they may study in a language that is not their first in a country that is not their own; they may undertake a project that transcends disciplinary and methodological boundaries; they may operate in cooperation with internal and external stakeholders; and/or they may have little prospect or intention of faculty employment (Halse and Malfoy; Kent; Lee, "How Are Doctoral”; Taylor). In sum, contemporary graduate study is no longer reserved for an elite few who fund their own study, undertake it for the purpose of reproducing knowledge, and serve as apprentices to equally elite disciplinary faculty (experts) who supervise them through to completion and academic employment (Taylor).

The changing nature of graduate education, the students who pursue it, and their reasons for doing so has important implications for graduate writers, their faculty, and the departments and institutions in which they operate. Perhaps the most notable is program attrition, particularly during the dissertation stage. While estimates vary and specific numbers are hard to access because graduate matriculation is not subject to the same federal scrutiny as undergraduate completion, as many as 50% of the students who enter PhD programs in the U.S. fail to complete their degrees (Council of Graduate Schools; DiPierro; Lovitts; Smallwood). While reasons cited for graduate students’ failure to persist vary, they include “financial concerns, lack of preparation and opportunity for research, personal, family or health concerns, and difficult relationships with doctoral advisors” (Maher et al. as qtd. in Harding DeKam et al. 5). A 10 year analysis of matriculation rates at the research site suggests that roughly 61% of graduate students who enter a Doctor of Philosophy program earn their degree, although rates for clinical doctorates are higher (Oakland University Office of Institutional Research). While some attrition is to be expected, a rate of 39% begs the question: To what degree does a lack of centralized support contribute to that figure?

Historically, graduate supervisors have been shown to play an important role if not the most important role (Amundsen and McAlpine; Lee, “How Are Doctoral”; Paré et al., “Knowledge and Identity”) in their students’ journeys to internalize their disciplines’ “norms and values” (Bitchener et al.). With that said, dissertation pedagogy is undertheorized and understudied (Paré et al., “Knowledge and Identity”; Starke Meyerring), particularly within the United States. The research that

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

does exist strongly suggests that facilitating “highly specialized writing of advanced science and scholarship requires a profound sensitivity to, first, the peculiarities of one’s discipline and, second, the best ways of introducing newcomers to those peculiarities'' (Paré, “Speaking of Writing” 60). Most supervisors’ only preparation for dissertation supervision was their own experience with writing a dissertation, and their knowledge of writing is most likely plagued by a lack of shared language that scholars like Charles Bazerman have discussed. As such, membership within a discourse community brings with it the problem of “automaticity,” meaning supervisors’ expertise operates like a form of tacit knowledge that they struggle to articulate (Paré 62). The result, as existing empirical studies of dissertation feedback have suggested (Caffarella and Barnett; Can and Walker; Kumar and Stracke; Paré, “Speaking of Writing”), may be ambiguous or caustic comments that masquerade as revision facilitating feedback but that lack the rhetorically specific markers to operate as a guide for necessary additions and change. In other cases, supervisors may forgo trying to explain such genre expectations and simply rewrite or overwrite sections of their graduate students’ existing texts, perhaps believing that their students will infer from the changes what they should do in subsequent sections (Wynn Perdue, Centering Dissertation Supervision).

The aforementioned conditions exacerbate what numerous scholars have deemed the “hidden curriculum” of graduate education (Acker; Calarco; Harding DeKam et al.). In such a context, supervisors’ efforts to introduce discipline aware and rhetorically informed discourse practices are hampered by their inability to turn “procedural or practical knowledge of disciplinary writing into declarative or teachable knowledge so that students can benefit from it” (Paré, “Speaking of Writing” 59 60). This writing support gap is particularly problematic because “writing is the dominant way in which knowledge is presented and assessed” (Brooks Gillies et al. 5). Graduate students must therefore compose themselves into their disciplines, constructing a scholarly identity through a process Barbara Kamler and Pat Thomson have described as textwork/identitywork (15). Moreover, and although graduate writing in some disciplines is too often conceived as a single author laboring alone (Mullen), this process of becoming a scholar is “not a solo pastime” (Kamler and Thomson 16 17) but rather complex labor that requires robust support from disciplinary natives like their supervisors as well as by outside experts who can help graduate students access threshold concepts (Kiley; Kiley and Wisker; Nowacek

and Hughes). Therefore, writing centers like our own have increasingly stepped forward to become members of graduate writers’ support team.

While it is true that supervisors struggle to articulate what they know and expect within publications and the dissertation, their knowledge gap often is overshadowed by the belief that students should enter graduate school having already mastered the writing skills they will need to participate in complex academic discourses (Brooks Gillies et al.; Gaillet; Thomas et al.). The persistence of this flattened view of disciplinary academic writing (Madden; Rose and McClaffery) not only may create a “disconnect between what graduate students are expected to know and the ways they approach and practice writing as they begin their graduate work” (Brooks Gillies et al. 5) but also may circumscribe the perceived role of the writing center to remediation. Moreover, its persistence and the all too frequent resultant gap in structured graduate writing support invites devastating consequences. It feeds the misperceptions that writing is “a remedial skill that is separate from rather than constitutive of disciplinary content knowledge” (Madden n.p.). It ignores the opaque nature of writing in favor of the myth that "writing is a transparent ‘vehicle or conduit for delivering one’s findings’ (Rose and McClafferty) and nothing more” (Brooks Gillies et al. 6). It neglects the reality of graduate study as “fraught with identity struggles and self doubt, much of which centers around the ability to write effectively to meet the expectations of faculty mentors and the field at large” (Brook Gillies et al. 6 7). And, perhaps most pervasive, it reinforces the misguided conclusion that the graduate writing problem is synonymous with individual writers who entered graduate school with a skills deficit rather than with the failure of graduate institutions to anticipate and address their needs (Gardner; Kamler and Thomson).

As the body of research devoted to graduate education and grows we are hopeful that graduate supervisors and writing center professionals will reject the false choice between departmentally isolated and extra departmental, decontextualized writing support. Graduate writers, particularly dissertators, need an infrastructure of support that acknowledges their writing challenges as less about individual writers’ skills deficits than about the novelty of the task, cognitive overload, information illiteracy, genre (un)awareness, professional identity formation, and supervision training gaps (Aitchison and Guerin; Kamler and Thomson; Peelo).

What Does the Reviewed Literature Reveal about Support for Graduate Writers and How Are Those Perspectives Reflected in Graduate Programming at Our Writing Center?

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

In this section, we briefly examine what the extant literature has to say about promising practices to “provid[e] writing assistance to all doctoral students,” particularly during the dissertation stage (Council of Graduate Schools 57 58) and explain how it guided our programming. While the reviewed literature addresses many innovations within and outside the center, we limit our discussion to those employed by our writing center in a direct outreach to graduate writers themselves: (a) writing retreats, (b) one on one consultations including those on research design and reporting results staffed by writing professionals and/or advanced graduate students, and (c) workshops. Although we are aware that many of our colleagues also host writing groups (Aitchison and Guerin; Phillips), our efforts to start them at the research site have not been embraced. We also are familiar with the robust literature on graduate supervision (e.g., Agu and Odimegwu; Amundsen and McAlpine; Bøgelund; González Ocampo and Castelló; Kamler and Thomson; Lee, “How Are Doctoral”) and innovative new models for supervising graduate writers (e.g., Aykylina; Blessinger and Stockley; Carter Veale et al.; Orellana et al.). Although Sherry wrote her dissertation on doctoral supervision and has hosted two iterations of a dissertation supervision fellowship for faculty at the research site, these programs are directed at or include faculty perceptions. Because our study prioritizes graduate writers’ self reported beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors as well as their perceptions of and experiences with writing center sponsored programming, we opted not to address programs for faculty in this study.

Writing Retreats

Numerous publications have explored the efficacy of writing retreats to redress the lack of structured writing support available to increase research productivity (Grant; Lee and Golde; Paltridge; Thomas et al.); to combat the isolation and insecurity associated with high stakes writing (Grant; Murray and Newton; Tremby Wragg et al.); and to provide accountability within a community of like tasked individuals (Lee and Golde; Paltridge; Tremblay Wragg et al.). Dissertation writing retreats, often referred to as dissertation boot camps (DBCs), generally fall into one of two models: Just Write or Writing Process (Lee and Golde). While Just Write DBCs primarily focus on productivity, Writing Process DBCs “work under the assumption that students’ writing productivity and motivation are significantly enhanced by consistent and on going conversations about writing” (Lee and Golde 2).

Despite some criticism that Just Write DBCs forgo writing pedagogy and therefore miss “the opportunity to promote graduate students’ on going development as writers” (Lee and Golde 3) or that gains made during the retreat may not be “sustainable when they return to campus” (Paltridge 200), both models and iterations of them are well represented on college campuses, often within multi day or regularly scheduled writing sessions. Although Sherry was aware of these criticisms before creating our own writing retreat entitled Sit Down and Write! (SDW!), we were encouraged to pursue a modified version of a Just Write DBC by Consortium of Graduate Communication colleagues, a decision that was reinforced by a more recent study of Thesez vous, a non profit group organized by and for graduate students that offers 20 hour writing retreats across three consecutive days in Quebec, which noted that participant feedback led retreat organizers “to minimise time allotted to conferences and workshops to focus on writing as a priority” (Tremblay Wragg et al. 6). Like Thesez vous, we attempt to mediate the limits of a retreat by “modell[ing] techniques . . . for participants to reproduce effective writing practices at home” and “implement[ing] a structure to support after or in between writing retreats so they can continue to benefit from the valuable opportunities to write in the company of others'' (Tremblay Wragg et al. 8). In our case, writing retreats are part of scaffolded support that includes Dissertation 101, a workshop series that extends the limited process focused discussion within each retreat by offering presentations on such topics as writing the part genres, particularly the literature review; organizing and analyzing data; and wellness habits. And most importantly, our graduate consultants offer targeted writing interventions to keep attendees on track within the retreat, which often leads to regularly scheduled writing consultations.

Whether organizers employ a Just Write or a Writing Process DBC, multiple studies have documented increased production, which attendees attribute to prolonged and uninterrupted writing time in a group setting with like tasked individuals (Dickson Swift et al.; Grant; Jackon; Kornhaber et al.; Stewart). Retreats also have been credited as helping writers to find self efficacy (Dickson Swift et al.) and to see themselves as academic writers (Murray and Newton; Papen and Theriault; Tremblay Wragg et al. 7 8). In sum, retreats offer graduate students accountability in a distraction free, dedicated space that allows them to escape the isolation associated with advanced graduate work, a place where they can “learn by doing,” something other university support services do not provide (Tramblay Wragg et al. 9).

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Writing Center Consultations and Workshops

Serving graduate writers has called upon writing centers to revisit “principles and practices that have been definitional in writing center theory and pedagogy, and to examine how this endeavor complicates our already complex conversations about writing center identities, pedagogies, formats, and spaces” (Lawrence and Zawacki 9). By doing so, as Paula Gillespie, Talinn Phillips, and Sarah Summers have demonstrated, we must confront limitations present in our past assumptions about who can provide graduate consultations and acknowledge the training required to do so as well as determine whether or not existing centers and spaces can simply add on these services or whether they should be provided within a space designed for graduate writers (Phillips “Writing Center Support”).

Irrespective of where graduate consultations are conducted, writing centers, as Shannon Madden and Jerry Stinnett have argued, need to “rejec[t] outsourced mentorship” (n.p.). All graduate writers need scaffolded writing support as they learn to compose new genres within their disciplines. Not only is it inappropriate for faculty and departments to ignore these needs within the curriculum or to encourage writers to seek outside consulting (Madden and Stinnett), it also is inappropriate for extra departmental units like writing centers to assume this role on their own. That is why the most successful graduate support programs to which writing centers contribute are “collaborative and cooperative” (Gillespie 2). Early efforts, such as the trialogue model Judith Powers employed at University of Wyoming to Gillespie’s work training disciplinary writing consultants at Marquette University to Sherry’s work facilitating a fellowship for faculty supervisors (Wynn Perdue, Centering Dissertation Supervision; “Epilogue”) share the understanding that the outside expertise of the writing professional must be complemented with the insider knowledge of the disciplinary scholar (Nowacek and Hughes). Successful programs also are “integrative” (Phillips, “Writing Center Support” 163), meaning that they acknowledge and address graduate students research needs. To that end, Phillips launched support for reporting statistical findings at Ohio University’s Graduate Writing and Research Center. Building upon and extending Phillips’ program, our writing center recruited graduate writing consultants with a strong statistical background and provided them with extensive training on common reporting errors as well as on the needs of graduate

writers generally. Since our university has few resources for graduate students to seek empirical guidance, our graduate consultants offer feedback not only on the reporting but also on basic research design. While almost all writing centers that serve graduate students also offer workshops, there is very little coverage of workshops within the professional literature; what does exist, including an article by Sherry (Switzer and Wynn) primarily focuses on program description. Despite this gap, workshops appear to be an important component of the integrated programming scholars like Phillips (“Writing Center Support”). In the case of our campus, workshops are another vehicle for brining like tasked people together to discuss their common goals and challenges as well as extend beyond the production focus of our writing retreats.

Writing center scholarship on graduate programming, albeit still emergent, increasingly shows not only the ways that writing centers are serving graduate writers but also the complexity of vision writing centers are showing for how they intervene and partner with others.

Methods

We employed a mixed method design “to expand and strengthen [our study’s] conclusions'' (Schoonenboom and Johnson 110) and to ensure greater validity. In other words, we determined that integrating both quantitative and qualitative data within the same study would better allow us to answer our research questions than relying on one or the other (Creswell and Plano Clark). A survey (see Appendix A) developed in conjunction with the Dean of the Graduate School, an expert in survey design, was the main source of our quantitative data. Distributed to all graduate students on our campus, it allowed us to gather data on our primary research questions about graduate students’ writing beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors as well as to determine whether respondents had used our services and, if so, how they perceived the writing center to address their needs. Many respondents did not indicate having used the writing center and our writing center data on graduate clients showed that a large contingent of our users multilingual and international writers were not represented because many had returned to their home countries and could not access their university email, which is powered by Google. (Access to Google is restricted in some countries (e.g., China), and because the survey was distributed to students via institutional email, these students did not receive invitations to participate in the study.) Given this drawback, we also drew upon existing

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

institutional data (quantitative) and writing center data (both quantitative and qualitative) to supplement our findings. The most important of these existing data were satisfaction surveys, where graduate writers provided narrative accounts of their experiences with writing center programming. We used this qualitative data to triangulate our findings about the primary research questions and to gain a better understanding of writing center users’ experiences with our services and to compare their beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors to those of respondents who have not used the writing center.

Data Sources: OIRA, WCOnline, and Client Questionnaires

As indicated above, we drew existing data from various sources. These sources included metrics provided by the university’s office of institutional research, system statistic reports from our online scheduling platform, WCOnline, and client questionnaires that were sent via Google Forms. Data from the Office of Institutional Research and Assessment (OIRA) revealed information about the demographics of the graduate student population at the university, and more specifically that part of the population which attends appointments. Data from the WCOnline system report included client demographics and information including majors/programs, courses, and professors. From the client questionnaires, we gathered information regarding clients’ experiences at the university and more specifically at the writing center. Google Forms stored and analyzed information on individual client’s perceptions and feedback of writing center services. These data were used to inform the writing center’s present and future programming as well as to provide a comparison to the survey data about writing center use.

Self Reported Survey

A self reported, IRB approved survey was developed by the researchers to gain insight about graduate students’ writing beliefs, habits, and help seeking behaviors as well as about how OUWC programming is perceived to address graduate writers’ needs (see Appendix A). The OU Graduate School not only was aware of our study, but the Dean provided feedback on our questions and distributed the survey. To incentivize participation in the study, graduate students were entered into a raffle to win one of five $20 gift cards upon completion of the survey. Those five individuals were randomly selected, notified by email, and received their prize upon closure of the survey.

The survey, conducted in Qualtrics™, consisted of 38 multiple choice, fill in the blank, Likert scale, and open ended questions across five sections. After answering basic demographic questions, respondents

were asked to provide information about their department and advisor, their individual writing practices, and their experience with OUWC programs (writing retreats, one on one consulting, workshops, and statistical consulting). By asking graduate students to report their academic information and perceptions about writing, we gathered data on their writing practices, including their beliefs and help seeking behaviors. Furthermore, we received data on how OUWC programming is perceived to address their needs, information that would help us make informed decisions while designing, implementing, and marketing future services.

Data Collection and Analysis

From December 8, 2020, until January 6, 2021, the self reported survey was taken voluntarily and anonymously by 125 graduate students. The survey was distributed through an email link sent by both the graduate school and the OUWC. All data were exported from Qualtrics™ and uploaded into SPSS for analysis. Twenty five individuals did not complete the survey and were removed. Thus, we analyzed data from 100 graduate students. Descriptive statistics, including frequencies, means, standard deviations, and percentiles, were calculated. This section examines the quantitative results, beginning with the demographic of OU’s graduate student population and concluding with what we learned about their writing beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors.

Findings

General Demographics

The graduate student population at our institution was 3,452 for the fall 2020 semester, accounting for 22.86% of the total student population (n=15,100). Of these graduate students, 55.91% (n=1,930) were female and 44.09% (n=1,522) were male. Of those, 57.47% (n=1,984) were enrolled full time and 42.53% (n=1,468) were enrolled part time. Of note, 11% of the population were designated international students and 68% identified as white. The graduate student population was comprised of 2,145 master’s students, 1,277 doctoral students, and 30 students designated “other” (e.g., students seeking graduate certificates). The research site offers a total of 135 graduate programs.

Appointments with graduate students have accounted for approximately 15% of total appointments at the OUWC. Of these appointments, about 42% students had three or more visits, and roughly 15% visited more than 10 times. Nearly half (48.1%) of graduate student appointments at the OUWC were conducted with English native students, whereas 16.25% were held with Arabic native speakers, and

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

15.59% took place with students whose first language is Chinese or Mandarin.

Survey Findings

The 100 graduate students who responded to the survey self reported their gender and age as described in Figures 1 and 2 (Appendix B). Using a binary logistic regression (X2(1)= 5.308, p<.05, R2= .072), gender was found to be a significant predictor of whether respondents asked for feedback from the writing center. Individuals that self reported as females were more likely to have a consultation than individuals self reported as males.

To better understand our graduate population, we surveyed students about their role as graduate students (see Figures 3 5 for more information). Within these demographic questions, we also queried participants’ relationship with the English language. Eighty four percent reported English as their native language (n=84), whereas 16% identified themselves as non native speakers of English (n=16). Regression analyses indicated no significant differences in subsequent questions related to whether or not respondents were native English speakers. After providing demographic data, participants were asked questions about their advisors and departments. Regression analyses indicated no significant differences related to the respondents’ schools/colleges.

Department and Advisor

In part two, the survey questioned individuals about their departments and advisors. About 60% of respondents reported that their department did not offer graduate classes on academic writing (59.6%; n=31). Additionally, 69.6% of students reported they did not meet at least once a month with their advisor for writing (n=64), 83.5% had not co authored papers with their advisor (n=76), and 62.7% did not share their writing with their advisor on a regular basis (n=52; see Figure 6). Approximately 51% indicated they learned about the writing expectations of their department by reading dissertations and theses that members of their committee have chaired (n=41). However, students rated their department positively overall, with 89.9% reporting that they felt their department valued their development as an academic writer (n=71), and 87.1% reporting that their advisor valued their development as an academic writer (n=61). Also, 98.6% of participants felt their advisor was a good writer (n=73), 87.2% learned a lot about academic writing from their advisor’s feedback (n=68), and 72% reported that their graduate director communicates with the students about resources for academic writing (n=54; see Figure 7). Furthermore, 89.7% of respondents understood their advisor’s feedback (n=70), 88.5% found the feedback

helpful in revising their academic writing (n=69), and 88.8% were comfortable discussing their advisor’s feedback with them (n=71; see Figure 7).

Writing Beliefs, Practices, and Help Seeking Behaviors

In part three of the survey, individuals were asked about their writing beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors. Unsurprisingly, 97.9% reported that writing well was an important component of their success as a researcher (n=93), 90% noted they thought carefully about what others said about their academic writing (n=81), and 83.5% reported that they acknowledged the need to be a good writer to be a good researcher (n=81). When asked if the dissertation represented the beginning of their career as a researcher, 61.1% agreed (n=44), 38.9% disagreed (n=16), and three did not answer. The preference to work alone on their academic writing was split almost equally with 51.7% preferring companionship (n=46) and 48.3% preferring solitude (n=43).

Notably, 54.3% of participants’ advisors recommended the Writing Center to them (n=44), yet 26.3% of respondents reported discomfort seeking help with their academic writing (n=25) and 22.2% reported they did not have time to seek support for their academic writing (n=20). Understandably, 62% of participants reported they struggled to find time to write (n=57), and 63.3% of participants admitted they did not set aside time to write at least twice a week (n=56). When asked if they had attempted to write an article in one sitting, 38.6% reported that they did (n=32), and 61.4% reported that they did not (n=51). Regardless, 95.7% acknowledged they would continue to write in their professional life (n=89), and 84.9% acknowledged that people in their field cared about writing quality (n=79).

Results of binary logistic regressions indicated that graduate students were more likely to ask for feedback from the writing center if their advisors were non native English speakers and writers (X2(1)= 6.433, p<.05, R2= .100; seven advisors were non native English speakers/writers); were too busy to help with academic writing (X2(1)= 5.144, p<.05, R2= .104); or expected their students to get all of their help from the writing center (X2(1)= 5.092, p<.05, R2= .105). Additionally, whether the department offered graduate classes on academic writing predicted whether graduate students had a consultation (X2(1)= 4.803, p<.05, R2= .124). Our Programming

In the subsequent sections, respondents were asked about their experiences with writing center consultations, workshops, and SDW!, OU’s recurring monthly dissertation retreat. While many students acknowledged being encouraged to attend a writing

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

center consultation or program, only 31% of respondents did so (n=31). Of these, 17% attended a workshop sponsored by the writing center (n=17), and 16% attended a SDW! session (n=16; see Figure 9). Of the 31 individuals who made a consultation appointment, nine individuals visited only once, leaving 22 who attended more than once. Interestingly, of those workshops attended, the most cited was avoiding unintentional plagiarism (n=7), and the most frequently requested workshop addressed statistical consulting (n=9). While the survey did not exhibit high levels of participation in SDW!, 75% of those who did attend selected “agree” or “strongly agree” that attending had changed how they scheduled their writing (n=12). Furthermore, 81.3% felt more productive after attending (n=13), and 93.8% reported that attending increased their personal writing accountability (n=15; see Figure 10). When asked about the changes they experienced post program attendance, 87.6% of participants “agreed” (n=7) or “strongly agreed” (n=7) that they experienced enhanced focus and concentration by cutting down on interruptions, and 81.3% of participants “agreed” (n=7) or “strongly agreed” (n=6) that they perceived an improvement in their work or study process (see Figure 10).

Several additional questions predicted whether the graduate student attended a workshop or SDW!. Those students whose advisors were too busy to help with writing (X2(1)= 4.715, p<.05, R2= .110) or whose advisors recommended the writing center (X2(1)= 6.313, p<.05, R2= .128) were more likely to attend a workshop. Interestingly, graduate students who felt that their department did not value their development as academic writers were more likely to attend a workshop (X2(1)= 9.328, p<.01, R2= .182) and SDW! (X2(1)= 10.070, p<.01, R2= .202). Those students whose departments neither offer graduate classes on academic writing (X2(1)= 4.950, p<.05, R2= .134) nor thesis/dissertation workshops (X2(1)= 6.518, p<.05, R2= .169) were more likely to attend a SDW! session. Unsurprisingly, graduate students who preferred not to work alone were more likely to attend a SDW! session (X2(1)= 4.428, p<.05, R2= .080).

Client Narrative Feedback

While analysis of the survey data provided us with useful findings about graduate students’ writing beliefs, practices, and help seeking behaviors (the primary research questions), graduate writers who use our campus writing center, particularly multilingual and international graduate students, were not well represented in the respondent pool. We therefore turned to existing writing center data to gain a more complete understanding of writing center users’

perceptions of our services (secondary research focus). More specifically, the two graduate researchers pulled narrative comments relevant to our survey query from 21 distinct surveys conducted with graduate students who attended SDW! and workshops between 2017 and 2021. Then, the team coded the responses for (1) a priori survey codes writing beliefs, practices, help seeking as well as (2) users’ perceptions of the writing center support services they had used. In the next section, we share selected narrative comments that offer readers a better understanding of the roles graduate student users have ascribed to the writing center.

Consultation Narratives

Since many SDW! and workshop attendees also had attended one on one writing center consultations as confirmed by the survey data we were able to gain insight into their experiences with and attitudes about the role of these sessions in helping them meet their writing goals. When asked if they would recommend the writing center’s consultations, participants had much to say about the value of the service and also about how these sessions affected their subsequent practice and overall completion, as demonstrated by the following comments:

They understand our workload. They offer patience and understanding of the writing process. They believe in students, specifically the Director does, Sherry Wynn Purdue. They know how to challenge us and get to know our writing style to see us follow through and improve. Without Sherry... I would have not finished my PhD.

Yes. I wish I would have used this service more throughout my time at OU. Red helped make me aware of writing patterns. Sherry helped me to put to practice better writing strategies. The international voices that were less represented in our survey data were plentiful in these narratives. These multilingual writers spoke not only of assistance on their theses and dissertations, but also about the help they received for articles and resumes, particularly in terms of audience:

Thank you for your careful and great help in revising my article. It allowed me, a foreigner, to find a way to revise my article.

Yes, I have recommended the writing center services especially to international students like me who are non native English speakers. Also I encourage my peers to get help from the writing center on resume building. Since I'm a non citizen,

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

the OUWC resume building consultation helped me tailor my resume for job applications in the USA.

Support for students who are not English speakers is instrumental right from the beginning of their graduate studies. There is a lot of potential, but due to fear of embarrassment they might not come forward to acknowledge they need help with their writing. Breaking down in small steps the whole dissertation process could be a life saver for students [like me].

We close this section with a comment from a writer who acknowledged the role of seeking additional perspective, an insight demonstrating the importance of gaining a second set of eyes and ears despite writing stage or experience:

Yes, definitely. I think it is a great resource not only to help people stuck at a point but also for people who have been writing long, just to offer more perspective on how to make the writing good and comprehensive.

Retreat Narratives

When participants were asked if they had recommended SDW! to people inside their program, we received the following answers that demonstrated their understanding of the importance of accountability and a community that interrupts the isolation of writing alone: I have had difficulty finding a good place to write where I can focus and keep myself going. I'm looking for accountability and like mindedness in the writing process.

I constantly promote SDW! to other colleagues in my department. Some people prefer to work on their writing alone, and I get that, but having that accountability is key for me.

Yes, it is a great way to dedicate time to writing and be held accountable.

I have been described as a strong writer by professors thus far in the process. I have struggled with maintaining focus as I write the dissertation . . .through these opportunities, I can organize and focus better to work towards finishing my dissertation.

These statements support our survey results on the magnitude of accountability and authority in dissertation success, but we must acknowledge that our survey results indicated 48% of our sample preferred to work alone. Thus, our SDW! meets needs for many graduate students, but not all.

Sometimes clients go as far to reinforce their survey responses by sending a personal message to the director by email. One such message encapsulates what we’ve heard from many writers over the years to varying

degrees:

Hey Sherry! I finally got my thesis done, defended, and fully ready to print! I think you mentioned being interested in reading it so I thought I would share it. (you don't have to of course!) But I also wanted to thank you for helping me. I'm really not sure I would have done it without those sit down and write days. So really, thank you! I owe you a ton!

It is worth noting that this writer not only attended our writing retreat, but also replicated it for graduate students in his department!

Narrative Feedback about How Our Services Met Departmental Gaps

In several of the previously distributed surveys from which we gathered narrative feedback, graduate student writers were invited to share anything about their experience they would like us to know. We found overwhelming narrative evidence that students’ perceived awareness of the writing support gap between themselves and their department was mitigated by OUWC graduate programming, further support for our quantitative findings.

I assumed, likely wrongly, that we would receive writing instruction in my phd program. We do get helpful feedback, but I would like more specific writing instruction to develop my scholarly voice.

I learned from my own experiences that a doctoral student must regularly meet and report writing progress to the dissertation chair so that he/she can receive feedback and advise promptly.

Writing to me is one of the most important parts of our research. The work that we do in the lab, no matter how good, doesn’t get out there until you’re able to communicate it efficiently. I’d love to learn to avoid making mistakes in writing as those can be very frustrating.

It is challenging to find the time to write but I do like the doctoral support meetings that take place once a month to help with keeping me on track.

I am grateful that the Writing Center is offering such great help to graduate students. I believe

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

these activities will help me get my dissertation done successfully.

I was fully prepared to complete a qualitative study independently. I could NOT have completed a quantitative study independently. A statistic[s] course should be added to the curriculum.

I am pleased by the resources available expressly for graduate students and aspiring faculty.

Graduate student narrative feedback helped paint a more holistic picture of graduate students' writing practices, beliefs, and help seeking behaviors. Key to a mixed methods approach is the assumption that there are multiple ways to legitimately approach inquiry and that using several approaches avoids the partiality of using merely one. Turning to qualitative data from existing writing center sources helped us fill gaps and triangulate our quantitative findings and added to our understanding of international and multilingual graduate students’ specific thoughts and feelings about graduate level writing.

Discussion and Conclusions

This project is an initial step toward better understanding the writing beliefs, practices, and behaviors of the graduate student population at OU. Despite a comparatively small sample size, we nevertheless received significant and important feedback. Our goal with this publication is to continue providing empirical evidence for these resources, including SDW!, Dissertation 101 workshops, and graduate writing consultations. We seek to move beyond the implementation of resources by researching the efficacy of our programs, including but not limited to our writing retreats, one on one consulting, workshops, and statistical consulting, and informing our future decisions. Our subsequent goal is that through this publication, other institutions may benefit from our description of these services, particularly the importance of providing graduate writing support and other educational opportunities. Students not only benefit from these services during their time at OU, but also they acknowledge the pivotal role the writing center played in their success in publications, theses, and dissertation completions.

Delving into our robust findings, we found that gender was a significant predictor. Respondents who identified as female were more likely to have a writing consultation than those identifying as male. However, this is likely significant as there are more females than males within our sample and within the graduate school population. Additional significant results included that

graduate students were more likely to come to the OU Writing Center if they felt their departments and advisors were under supportive. However, it is unclear if graduate student respondents were aware of what mentoring was supposed to entail. In comparing Figures 6 and 7, it can be concluded that students believe in their advisor’s feedback and believe that their advisors are supporting them, yet they do not meet on a regular basis, publish papers, or share their academic writing with their advisors. Thus, we suspect that graduate students may be aware of what apt advisor mentorship is, let alone of its importance to their careers. As such, we further suspect that graduate students initially stumble into, or subconsciously seek out, OUWC assistance because they are not aware of their advisor’s and their department’s limited resources. This is evidenced by the graduate students' admittance to not spending sufficient time on their academic writing or attending the free academic writing support sessions provided to them by the OUWC. Additional support was found in the client narrative feedback; those students who had used the OUWC found not only camaraderie and support, but also encouragement on how to effectively communicate with their departments and advisors. While we suspect that graduate students may not be well informed about the roles advisors could play and the resources they could be receiving, our research is limited in these intuitions. Fortunately, students who participated in this survey and in OUWC programming stated that they benefited enormously from our variety of services. Within the quantitative sections, we received immensely positive support in the form of “strongly agree” or “agree” when asked if SDW! or the Dissertation 101 workshops enhanced focus, increased accountability and improved productivity. Our client feedback paints a more enthusiastic and holistic picture of our services as students state they would not have been able to complete their degree without the assistance we provided. Thus, though our Qualtrics™ survey lacked in number of responses, we know through our additional surveys and emails the efficacies of our programming as well as its faults. While mentioned only briefly, the COVID 19 pandemic shifted classes and writing center appointments online, stunting the growth of our programs. Burnout among students and staff in virtual life was high, and we experienced record low turnout rates for appointments, workshops, SDW! and survey responses. However, the shift online allowed us to discover new clients who are only able to receive the support virtually. With these factors in mind, we will focus on accommodating differently abled populations as we revise existing programs and create new ones. We are hopeful emboldened by fall 2022 numbers that

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

our participation rates will grow and that our programs will evolve to meet the ongoing and emergent needs of our graduate writers.

Graduate education is ever changing and thus, writing center resources require our innovation and flexibility. Our writing center services continue to grow and evolve with our students and campus needs. We seek to enlighten not only the readers of this journal, but the graduate population and departments of the problematic writing support gap. Through collaboration on campus, we hope to bridge this gap and assist graduate students in their writing and disciplinary identity.

Limitations and Future Directions

It is important to consider the limitations of this study. First, generalizing the findings should be done with caution due to a small sample size that was disproportionately comprised of females. Second, while students admitted to the value of their academic writing to their dissertation and their career, and acknowledged their advisor’s support, strengths, and weaknesses, there was a mismatch in what they perceived as supportive and what they actually received in terms of material support. While we do believe that this is an interesting finding, it is also a limitation because it is based on both the researchers’ and students’ perceptions. Furthermore, it is worth noting that data was collected via self reported questionnaire therefore subjecting it to social desirability bias, meaning participants may have responded in a way that is perceived as socially acceptable rather than accurate. Additionally, while some prior research has examined such sociocultural differences in relationship to issues like academic help seeking behavior, most of it has focused on undergraduate students and the results are inconclusive (Martín Arbós); thus future research should seek to investigate the help seeking behaviors of graduate students of different cultures, especially for students who come from cultures that do not have the same resources, stigmatize help seeking or peer assistance, or perceive the reception of help as a weakness (Tung). In forthcoming research on this topic, we hope to deepen our understanding of graduate student support within and between departments, expound upon our initial findings, and garner a more thorough understanding of graduate students’ help seeking behaviors, writing beliefs, and practices.

Works Cited

Acker, Sandra. “The Hidden Curriculum of Dissertation Advising.” The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education, edited by Eric Margolis, Routledge, 2001.

Agu, Ngozi, and Christy O. Odimegwu. “Doctoral Dissertation Supervision: Identification and Evaluation of Models.” Education Research International, 2014, pp. 1 9. https://doi.org/10.1155/2014/790750

Aitchison, Claire, and Cally Guerin, eds. Writing Groups for Doctoral Students and Beyond: Innovations in Practice and Theory. Routledge, 2014.

Amundsen, Cheryl, and Lynn McAlpine. “'Learning Supervision': Trial by Fire.” Innovations in Education and Teaching International, vol. 46, no. 3, 2009, pp. 331 342. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290903068805

Babcock, Rebecca Day, and Terese Thonus. Researching the Writing Center: Towards an Evidence Based Practice. Peter Lang, 2012.

Bazerman, Charles. “Genre and Cognitive Development: Beyond Writing to Learn.” Genre in a Changing World, edited by Charles Bazerman, Adair Bonini, and Débora Figueiredo, The WAC Clearinghouse, 2009. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/genre/ Bazerman, Charles, and Paul Prior. “Participating in Emergent Socio Literate Worlds: Genre, Disciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity.” Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Literacy Research (2nd ed.), edited by Richard Beach, Judith Green, Michael Kamil, and Timothy Shanahan, Hampton Press, 2005, pp. 133 178.

Bitchener, John, et al. “The Focus of Supervisor Written Feedback to Thesis/Dissertation Students.” International Journal of English Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2010, pp. 79 97.

Blessinger, Patrick, and Denise Stockley. "Emerging Directions in Doctoral Education." Emerging Directions in Doctoral Education (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 6), edited by Patrick Blessinger and Denise Stockley, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2055 364120160000006008

Bøgelund, Pia. “How Supervisors Perceive PhD Supervision And How They Practice It.” International Journal of Doctoral Studies, vol. 10, 2016, pp. 39 55. http://ijds.org/Volume10/IJDSv10p039 055Bogelund0714.pdf

Brooks Gillies, Marilee, et al., eds. Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines: Identifying, Teaching, and Supporting. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado, 2020. https://doi.org/10.37514/ATD B.2020.0407

Caffarella, Rosemary S., and Bruce G. Barnett. “Teaching Doctoral Students to Become Scholarly Writers: The Importance of Giving and Receiving Critiques.” Studies in Higher Education, vol. 25, no. 1, 2000, pp. 39 52. https://doi.org/10.1080/030750700116000

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Calarco, Jessica. A Field Guide to Graduate School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum, Princeton University Press, 2020.

Can, Gulfidan, and Andrew Walker. “A Model for Doctoral Students’ Perceptions and Attitudes Toward Written Feedback for Academic Writing.” Research in Higher Education, vol. 52, 2011, pp. 508 536. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162 010 9204 1

Carter Veale, Wendy Y., et al. “The Dissertation House Model: Doctoral Student Experiences Coping and Writing in a Shared Knowledge Community.” CBE Life Sciences Education, vol 15, no. 3, fall 2016, pp. 1 12. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16 01 0081

Council of Graduate Schools. Ph.D Completion and Attrition: Policies and Practices to Promote Student Success, 2010.

Creswell, John W., and Vicki L. Plano Clark. Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research. SAGE Publications, 2007.

Dickson-Swift, Virginia, et al. A non-residential alternative to off campus writers’ retreats for academics, Journal of Further and Higher Education, vol. 33, no. 3, 2009, pp. 229 239. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098770903026156

DiPierro, Marianne. “Excellence in Doctoral Education: Defining Best Practices.” College Student Journal, vol. 41, no. 2, 2007, pp. 368 375.

Driscoll, Dana, and Sherry Wynn Perdue. “Theory, Lore, and More: An analysis of RAD Research in The Writing Center Journal, 1980 2009.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 32, no. 2, 2012, pp. 11 39. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442391

Gaillet, Lynee L. “Designing a Graduate Seminar in Academic Writing.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (47th, Milwaukee, WI, March 27 30, 1996).

Gardner, Susan K. “Student and Faculty Attributions of Attrition in High and Low Completing Doctoral Programs in the United States.” Higher Education, vol. 58, no. 1, 2008, pp. 97 112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10734 008 9184 7

Gillespie, Paula. “Graduate Writing Consultants for Ph.D. Programs Part 1: Using What we Know: Networking and Planning.” Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 32, no. 2, 2007, pp. 1 6.

González Ocampo, Gabriela, and Montserrat Castelló. “How Doctoral Students Experience Supervision?” Studies in Continuing Education, vol. 41, no. 3, 2019, pp. 293 307.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2018.1520208

Grant, Barbara M. “Writing in the Company of Other Women: Exceeding the Boundaries.” Studies in Higher Education, vol. 31, no. 4, 2006, pp. 483 495. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070600800624

Halse, Christine, and Janne Malfroy. “Retheorizing Doctoral Supervision as Professional Work.” Studies in Higher Education, vol. 35, no. 1, 2010, pp. 79 92. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070902906798

Harding DeKam, Jenni L., et al. “The Hidden Curriculum of Doctoral Advising.” NACADA Journal, vol. 32, no. 2, fall 2012, pp. 5 16.

Kamler, Barbara, and Pat Thomson. Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for Supervision. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Kent, Julia. Graduate Schools Report Strong Growth in First Time Enrollment of Underrepresented Minorities. Council of Graduate Schools, 2016.

Kiley, Margaret. Identifying Threshold Concepts and Proposing Strategies to Support Doctoral Candidates. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, vol. 46, no. 3, 2009, pp. 293 304.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290903069001

Kiley, Margaret, and Gina Wisker. Threshold Concepts in Research Education and Evidence of Threshold Crossing. Higher Education Research & Development, vol. 28, no. 4, 2009, pp. 431 441.

https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360903067930

Kornhaber, Rachel, et al. “The Benefits and Challenges of Academic Writing Retreats: An Integrative Review.” Higher Education Research and Development, vol. 35, no. 6, 2016, pp. 1210 1227.

https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2016.1144572

Kumar, Vijay, and Elke Stracke. “An Analysis of Written Feedback on a PhD Thesis.” Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 12, no. 4, 2007, pp. 461 470. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562510701415433

Lawrence, Susan, and Terry Myers Zawacki, eds. Re/Writing the Center: Approaches to Supporting Graduate Students in the Writing Center. Utah State University Press, 2018.

Lee, Anne. “How Are Doctoral Students Supervised? Concepts of Doctoral Research Supervision.” Studies in Higher Education, vol 33, no. 3, 2008, pp. 267 281. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070802049202

Lee, Sohui, and Chris Golde. “Completing the Dissertation and Beyond: Writing Centers and Dissertation Boot Camps.” The Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 37, no. 7/8, 2013, pp. 1 5.

https://wlnjournal.org/archives/v37/37.7 8.pdf

Lovitts, Barbara E. “How to Grade a Dissertation.” Academe, vol. 91, no. 6, 2005, pp. 18 23.

McAlpine, Lynn, and Cheryl Amundsen. “To Be or Not to Be? The Challenges of Learning Academic Work.” Doctoral Education: Research Based Strategies for Doctoral Students, Supervisors and Administrators, edited by Lynn McAlpine and Cheryl Amundsen, Springer Science, 2011.

https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400705067

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Madden, Shannon. “Introduction: Access as Praxis for Graduate Writing.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 14, no. 1, 2016. http://www.praxisuwc.com/madden introduction

Madden, Shannon, et al., eds. Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers. Utah State University Press, 2020.

Madden, Shannon, and Jerry Stinnett Part III: “Empowering Graduate Student Writers and Rejecting Outsources Mentorship.” WCJ Blog. 7 July 2016. http://www.writingcenterjournal.org/new blog//empowering graduate student writers and rejecting outsourced mentorship

Mannon, Bethany O. What Do Graduate Students Want from the Writing Center? Tutoring Practices to Support Dissertation and Thesis Writers. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, 2016, pp. 59 64.

Martín Arbós, Sergi., et al. Help Seeking in an Academic Context: A Systematic Review. Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 4460, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13084460

Mullen, Carol A. “Best Writing Practices for Graduate Students: Reducing the Discomfort of the Blank Screen.” Kappa Delta Pi Record, vol. 43, no. 1, fall 2006, pp. 30 35. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1066715.pdf

Murray, Rowena, and Mary Newton. “Writing Retreat as Structured Interventions: Margin or Mainstream?” Higher Education Research and Development, vol. 28, no. 5, 2009, pp. 541 553. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360903154126

Nowacek, Rebecca S., and Bradley Hughes. Threshold Concepts in the Writing Center: Scaffolding the Development of Tutor Expertise edited by Linda Adler Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle, University Press of Colorado, 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ett15nmjt7.19

Orellana, Matha L., et al. Improving Doctoral Success by Matching PhD Students with Supervisors. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, vol. 11, 2016, pp. 87 103. http://ijds.org/Volume11/IJDSv11p087 103Orellana1629.pdf

Paltridge, Brian. “Writing Retreats as Writing Pedagogy.” Writing & Pedagogy, vol. 8, no. 1, 2016, pp. 199 213. https://doi.org/10.1558/wap.v8i1.27634

Papen, Uta, and Virginie Theriault. “Writing Retreats as a Milestone in the Development of PhD Students’ Sense of Self as Academic Writers.” Studies in Con. Ed., vol. 40, no. 2, 2018, pp. 166 180.

https://doi.org/10.1080/0158037X.2017.1396973

Paré, Anthony. “Speaking of Writing: Supervisory Feedback and the Dissertation,” Doctoral Education: Research based Strategies for Doctoral Students, Supervisors, and Administrators, edited by Lynn McAlpine and Cheryl Amundsen. Springer, 2011, pp. 59 74.

Paré, Anthony, et al. “The Dissertation as Multi Genre: Many Readers, Many Readings.” Genre in a Changing World, edited by Charles Bazerman, Adair Bonini, and Débora Figueiredo, The WAC Clearinghouse, 2009, pp. 183 197.

https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/genre/chapter 9.pdf

___. “Knowledge and Identity Work in the Supervision of Doctoral Student Writing: Shaping Rhetorical Subjects.” Writing in Knowledge Societies, edited by Doreen Starke Meyerring, Anthony Paré, Natasha Artemeva, Miriam Horne, and Larissa Yousoubova, 2011, pp. 215 236.

https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/winks/chapter 11.pdf

Peelo, Moira T. Understanding Supervision and the PhD Continuum, 2011. Phillips, Tallin. “Graduate Writing Groups: Shaping Writing and Writers from Student to Scholar.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 2012.

https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/62144 Phillips, Tallin. “Writing Center Support for Graduate Students: An Integrated Model.” In S. Simpson, N.A. Caplan, M. Cox, & T. Phillips (Eds.). Supporting Graduate Student Writers: Research, Curriculum, & Program Design, edited by Steve Simpson, Nigel A. Caplan, Michelle Cox, and Tallin Phillips. University of Michigan Press, 2016, pp. 159 170.

Powers, Judith K. “Helping the Graduate Thesis Writer through Faculty and Writing Center Collaboration.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (44th, San Diego, CA, March 31 April 3, 1993), April 1, 1993.

Powers, Judith. “Assisting the Graduate Thesis Writer through Faculty and Writing Center Collaboration.” Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 20, no. 2, 1995, pp. 13 16. Rose, Mike, and Karen A. McClafferty. “A Call for the Teaching of Writing in Graduate Education.” Educational Researcher, vol. 30, no. 2, 2001, pp. 27 33. Schoonenboom, Judith, and R. Burke Johnson. “How to Construct a Mixed Methods Research Design.” Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, vol. 69, Suppl 2, 2017, pp. 107 131. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11577 017 0454 1

Smallwood, Scott. “Doctor Dropout.” The Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 January 2004. https://www.chronicle.com/article/doctor dropout/?cid2=gen_login_refresh Starke Meyerring, Doreen. “Writing Groups as Critical Spaces for Engaging Normalized Institutional Cultures of Writing in Doctoral Education.” Writing Groups for Doctoral Education and Beyond: Innovations in Practice and

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Theory, edited by Claire Aitchison and Cally Guerin, Routledge, 2014, pp. 65 81.

Stewart, Cyndi. Academic Writing Retreats for Graduate Students: A Qualitative Case Study. 2018. Colorado State U. PhD Dissertation. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2056494434

Summers, Sarah. “The Rise of the Graduate focused Writing Center: Exigencies and Responses.” Re/Writing the Center: Approaches to Supporting Graduate Students in the Writing Center, edited by Susan Lawrence and Terry Meyers Zawacki, 2018, pp. 49 65.

Switzer, Anne, and Sherry Wynn Perdue. “Dissertation 101: A Research and Writing Intervention for Education Graduate Students.” Education Libraries, vol. 34, no. 1, 2011, pp. 4 13.

Taylor, Stanley E. “Changes in Doctoral Education: Implications for Supervisors in Developing Early Career Researchers.” International Journal for Researcher Development, vol. 3, no. 2, 2012, pp. 118 138. https://doi.org/10.1108/17597511311316973

Thomas, Melissa, et al. “The Graduate Writing Institute: Overcoming Risk, Embracing Strategies, and Appreciating Skills.” The Learning Assistance Review, vol. 19, no. 1, 2014, pp. 69 98. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1034029.pdf

Tremblay Wragg, Emile, et al. “Writing More, Better, Together: How Writing Retreats Support Graduate Students through Their Journey.” Journal of Further and Higher Education, vol. 45, no. 1, 2020, pp. 95 106. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2020.1736272

Tung, Wei Chen, “Acculturative Stress and Help Seeking Behaviors Among International Students,” Home Health Care Management & Practice, vol. 23, no. 5, 2011, pp. 383 385. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481756.2004.11909755

Wynn Perdue, Sherry. Centering Dissertation Supervision. 2018. Oakland U. PhD Dissertation.

Wynn Perdue, Sherry. “Epilogue: Center ing Dissertation Supervision: What Was, What Is, and What Can Be.” Re/Writing the Center: Approaches to Supporting Graduate Students in the Writing Center, edited by Susan Lawrence and Terry Meyers Zawacki, Utah State University Press, 2018, pp. 255 262.

Zhou, Enyu, and Janet Gao. Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 2010 2020. Council of Graduate Schools, 2021. https://cgsnet.org/wp content/uploads/2022/02/CGS_GED20_Report_fina l_v2 2.pdf

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Appendix A

Graduate Students’ Academic Writing Beliefs, Practices, Support, and Help Seeking Survey

Part I: Questions about You

1. What is your current level of graduate study?

A. Masters B. PhD C. Certificate

D. Non degree seeking

2. Are you a native speaker of English?

A. Yes B. No

3. What is your native language?

A. Arabic B. Chinese C. French D. Japanese E. Korean F. Polish G. Portuguese H. Russian I. Spanish J. Other

4. Was your prior degree program conducted in English?

A. Yes B. No

5. Was your prior degree program conducted in the U.S.?

A. Yes B. No

6. Do you consider yourself fluent in English? (Check all that apply)

A. Reading B. Speaking C. Writing D. None of the above

7. What is your gender?

A. Male B. Female C. I don’t identify as binary

D. Identity Not Listed

E. Prefer not to respond

8. What is your age group?

A. 18 24 years

B. 25 34 years C. 35 44 years D. 45 years or more

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

9. In what OU college/school are you studying?

A. College of Arts and Sciences

B. School of Engineering and Computer Science

C. School of Nursing

D. School of Health Sciences

E. School of Business Administration

F. School of Education and Human Services

10. How are you currently enrolled in your graduate program?

A. Full Time

B. Part Time

11. How long have you been in your graduate program at OU?

A. Less than 1 year

B. 1 to 2 years

C. 3 to 4 years

D. 5 to 6 years

E. 7 years or more

Part II: Questions about Your Department and Your Advisor

Please answer the following 'Yes', 'I don't know', 'No', or 'N/A' for Not applicable

1. Does your department offer graduate classes on academic writing?

2. Does your department offer thesis/dissertation workshops for graduate students?

3. Do you feel your department values your development as an academic writer?

4. Does your graduate director communicate with departmental graduate students about resources for your academic writing?

5. Do you meet at least once a month with your advisor about your academic writing?

6. Do you feel your advisor values your development as a good academic writer?

7. Is your advisor a native speaker and writer of English?

8. Would you characterize your advisor as a good writer?

9. Have you co authored academic papers with your advisor?

Part III: Writing Beliefs, Practice, and Help Seeking Behavior

Please answer the following 'Yes', 'I don't know', 'No', or 'N/A' for Not applicable

1. Writing well is an important component of my success as a researcher.

2. The dissertation represents the beginning of my career as a researcher.

3. I need to be a good writer to be a good researcher.

4. I will continue to write throughout my professional life

5. People in my field don’t care about writing quality.

6. I struggle to find time to write.

7. I set aside time to write at least two times per week.

8. I wait until after I have completed my research to “write it up.”

9. I attempt to write an article or chapter in one sitting.

10. I regularly reread what I have written and revise it.

11. I share my writing with my advisor on a regular basis.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

12. I share my writing with colleagues for input.

13. I think carefully about what others say about my academic writing.

14. I utilize others’ feedback to revise my academic writing.

15. I prefer to work on my academic writing alone.

16. I am uncomfortable seeking help with my academic writing.

17. I don’t have time to seek support for my academic writing.

18. I can identify norms for academic writing in my chosen discipline.

19. I find written guidelines (manuals, examples, advice) on academic writing to be helpful.

20. I notice similarities between my academic writing and articles in journals that I read.

21. Assessment rubrics are helpful to me in understanding the expectations of high quality academic writing.

22. I plan my academic writing according to the submission requirements of the journals where I submit my work.

23. I learn about the writing expectations of my discipline by reading publications in my field.

24. I learn about the writing expectations of my department by reading dissertations and theses that members of my committee have chaired.

25. Talking about my writing with a tutor is helpful to clarify my academic writing.

26. I learn a lot about academic writing from my advisor’s feedback.

27. I learn a lot about academic writing by reading academic publications in my field.

28. I learn a lot about academic writing from my advisor’s feedback.

29. I learn a lot about academic writing by reading academic publications in my field.

30. I learn a lot about academic writing by collaborating with my advisor on academic publications.

31. My advisor offers explanations for the changes they suggest for my academic work.

32. I understand the feedback my advisor gives me on my academic writing.

33. The writing feedback my advisor gives me helps me to revise my academic writing.

34. I am comfortable asking my advisor to clarify their feedback on my academic writing.

35. My advisor has recommended the Writing Center.

36. My advisor doesn’t want me to seek assistance from the Writing Center.

37. My advisor is too busy to help me with my academic writing.

38. My advisor is unwilling to help me with my academic writing.

39. My advisor expects me to get all my writing help from the Writing Center.

Part IV: Writing Center Role

Rate the Following as True or False

1. I have asked for feedback on my academic writing from Oakland University Writing Center (OUWC).

2. I have attended a workshop sponsored by the OUWC.

3. I have attended a writing consultation at the OUWC.

4. I have attended a Sit Down and Write! session sponsored by the OUWC.

Part V: Experience with Writing Center Workshop

1. Have you attended a workshop at the Oakland University Writing Center?

A. Yes B. No

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

2. Please select 'Yes' or 'No' to the following statements

A. I have attended only one workshop at the Writing Center.

B. I have attended several workshops at the Writing Center.

3. Please select the following workshops you would like to see offered/ have attended in the past/ would recommend:

A. Statistical Consulting

B. Self Care

C. Stakes Documents

D. Resources for Learning LaTeX

E. Fair Use and Plagiarism

F. Avoiding Unintentional Plaigiarism

G. Synthesizing Literature in High Stakes Documents

H. Documenting, Organizing and Storing Your Research Data

I. Navigating the IRB and Common Problems

J. Preparing for the Academic Job Search

K. Grant Writing

L. Literature Reviews

Part V: Experience with Writing Center- Consultation

1. Have you attended a consultation at the Oakland University Writing Center?

A. Yes B. No

2. Please rate the following as ‘True’ or ‘False’

A. I only have attended one consultation at the Writing Center.

B. I meet regularly with the same consultant(s) at the Writing Center. Please state which consultant.

C. I only bring my academic writing to the Writing Center for editing.

D. I have met with the Writing Center director, Dr. Sherry Wynn Perdue for my writing.

3. Please check the box(es) next to all that apply for you I have gone to the Writing Center for course assignments

A. I have gone to the Writing Center for dissertation assistance

B. I have gone to the Writing Center for publication consulting

C. I was referred to the Writing Center by

4. Would you recommend Oakland University Writing Center consultations to others? Why, or why not?

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Part V: Experience with Writing Center SDW!

1. Have you attended Sit Down & Write! (SDW!)?

A. Yes B. No

2. In what format have you attended Sit Down & Write (SDW!)?

A. Face to face only

B. Online only

C. Both face to face and online

3. Which one do you prefer and why?

A. Face to face B. Online C. Both D. No preference

4. How did you learn about SDW!? (Check all that apply)

A. Email from the Graduate School

B. Email from the Writing Center

C. Fellow graduate student D. Advisor recommendation E. Committee member recommendation

F. Program Director recommendation G. Do not remember H. Other

5. Do you attend individually or with a colleague/friend?

A. Individually B. With a colleague/friend

6. How often have you attended SDW!?

A. Once B. 2 3 times C. 4 7 times D. 8 or more times

7. Please rate the following on a scale of 1 5

A. Attending SDW! has changed how I schedule my writing B. Attending SDW! has changed the way I think about revision C. I have learned strategies for overcoming procrastination

D. I do most of my writing during SDW!

E. Attending SDW! makes me more accountable to get my writing done

F. I saw no change in my writing after SDW!

8. What did you do before Sit Down & Write!? Worked with my advisor on my writing

A. Worked with the Writing Center on my writing

B. Worked on my own on my writing

C. Was not productive in working on my own writing

9. Have you recommended SDW! to people inside your program? Why, or why not?

10. Did you find the other students in SDW! helpful to your process?

A. Yes B. No C. No difference

11. Did you utilize this at the beginning, middle, end or throughout thesis and dissertation writing?

A. Beginning B. Middle C. End D. Throughout

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

12. How do you benefit from Sit Down & Write!, on a scale of 1 5?

A. I need the physical space to work

B. Easy to dedicate time once it’s on my calendar

C. I am more productive after attending

D. It is the only time I can commit to writing

E. I see myself as more of a writer

F. I am encouraged by other graduate students working

G. I enjoy the free lunch and coffee

13. Please rate the following habits before and after SDW! on a scale of 1 5

A. Before SDW! I worked on my writing 1 2 times a month

B. Before SDW! I rarely dedicated days to my writing

C. Before SDW! I worked on my writing in short sessions of an hour or so here and there

D. After SDW! I am better at outlining my writing work session

E. After SDW! I I work on my writing 1 2 times a week

F. After SDW! My habits remain unchanged

14. Since SD&W, I have felt the following changes on a scale of 1 5 (1 Not at all, 3 Sometimes, 5 Always)

A. Alleviated writing anxiety

B. Enhanced focus by cutting down on interruptions

C. Boosted motivation and confidence to write

D. Bolstered the determination to achieve my goals

E. Refined my research process, both in qualitative and quantitative terms

F. Increased awareness of my writing decisions

G. Strengthened my determination to keep applying myself in the face of complex situations H. Improved my work or study process

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Appendix B: Figures

Figure 1. Survey Gender Demographics

Figure 2. Survey Age Demographics

Figure 3. Survey Graduate Degree Seeking Representation

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Figure 4 Survey Years in Degree Representation

Figure 5. Survey Schools Representation

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Figure 6 Percentages of Graduate Student Perceptions of their Advisor’s Involvement

Figure 7 Percentages of Graduate Student Perceptions of their Advisor’s Feedback

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Figure 8. Percentages of Writing Beliefs by Advisors & Graduate Students

54.3% 23.6%

62.0% 36.7%

Figure 9 Percentages of Graduate Student Attendees to OUWC Programming

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Figure 10 Acknowledgement and Positive Perceptions of SDW! Sessions

75.0% 81.3% 93.8% 87.6% 81.3%

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal

Vol 20, No 1 (2022)

TUTOR ALUMS DOING GOOD: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF THE CHARACTER STRENGTHS OF WRITING TUTOR ALUMNI

Molly Parsons Keene State College Molly.Parsons@keene.edu

Emma K. Brown Syracuse University ekbrown@syr.edu

Abstract

This article draws on data from 12 interviews with peer writing tutor alumni to demonstrate how their writing center training and experiences prepared them to work toward good (i.e., social justice or peace or rhetorical civility) in their post graduation contexts. Recent scholarship in both writing center studies and writing studies calls for a redoubling of social justice efforts in our field (see Duffy, 2019 and Greenfield, 2020). This article asks how the field will recognize or know success in such efforts. Data from this small study suggests that there is untapped potential in the research tradition focused on tutor alumni experiences (including, most notably, the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project), which is commonly used to demonstrate the benefits of tutoring to tutor alumni. This article reverses this lens, asking, instead, how tutor alumni might benefit the world, and whether we might consider their post graduation habits and actions, which they credit to their time as tutors, as a measure of the field’s larger, positive influence. Researchers will discuss a heuristic they developed for analyzing tutor alumni reflections that surfaces and distinguishes a range of character strengths (a concept out of positive psychology and the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics), including “civic mindedness” and “social intelligence,” which, after practicing and developing in the center, alumni reported that they continue to enact in their communities and contexts beyond the center.

Background

In two recent books, John Duffy’s Provocations of Virtue and Laura Greenfield’s Radical Writing Center Praxis, distinguished writing studies scholars agitate for our field to do more to advance justice, peace, and ethical ways of being and communicating in the world.

In Provocations, Duffy observes that US society has “arrived at a historical and cultural moment in which there is little place in our civic arguments for deliberative language that might explore ambiguities, express doubt, admit error, or accommodate ideas that contradict our own” (8). While the field of Writing Studies is by many measures stronger than ever, he says, “[W]e seem to have little influence on the conduct of US public argument” (Duffy 9). But, his book argues that writing studies could take the lead in reshaping “toxic” rhetorical and cultural habits.

Laura Greenfield, in Radical, also recognizes the potential of those of us in writing studies and particularly in writing centers to effect change. She calls for a paradigm shift, a redefinition of the purpose of the Center (“nothing less than … [an] entire deconstruction and reinvention of the field”),

identifying the Center’s raison d'etre as a pursuit of justice and peace.

Greenfield’s and Duffy’s arguments are analogous each recognizing a need for change and observing the discipline’s fitful attempts to create change, even within our own field. Greenfield writes: “Despite the growing number of these revolutionary arguments arguments that call on us to be critically conscious of our identities, to examine unjust systems, and to seek opportunities for transformative actions the dominant discourse and practices of the field remain largely unchanged.” She witnesses the field’s stagnancy in scholarship that reinforces the status quo (including structures of dominance), in conference presentations delivered by undergraduate tutors that paint ESL students as “Other,” and in the relegation of anti oppression efforts to “special interest” groups within our professional organizations (Greenfield 6).

Both scholars propose revisioning our systems the purposes we claim, the paradigms we embrace to achieve the radical, transformative potential of our field. And their texts begin that work. This article asks how writing centers might chart success if we take up calls like Greenfield’s or Duffy’s. They both point to evidence of our ineffectualness but how do we see even measure the progress we seek? This article offers both a possible method for assessing “change” and a tentatively optimistic appraisal of how our work might be making change already via tutor alumni.

Writing Center Alumni Research Tradition

If writing centers are to follow calls like Duffy’s and Greenfield’s, we must turn outward, focusing attention on how our work influences the world outside the center. In writing centers, there’s already a robust research tradition focused on what happens after the center, most significantly Bradley Hughes, Paula Gillespie, and Harvey Kail’s Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project (PWTARP). In the essay detailing findings from their research, the team underscores the effect that tutoring has on tutor alums: Undergraduate peer tutors are creating one the most important experiences in their educational careers, a complex, multi faceted experience whose

influence persists not just years but decades after graduation [...] [W]hen they interact closely with other student writers and with other peer tutors [...], they develop in profound ways both intellectually and academically. This developmental experience [...] helps to shape and sometimes transform them personally, educationally, and professionally. (13)

Hughes et al. argue that tutoring profoundly affects the tutor (not just the writer or the writing) and follow Kenneth Bruffee and William Cronon in theorizing tutoring as “a form of liberal education for the tutors themselves” (14). The alumni research tradition, both proceeding and following the PWTARP, has identified a multitude of benefits that tutoring offers the individual tutor, from career preparation to personal and intellectual development (see, among many, Dinitz and Keidaisch’s “Tutoring Writing as Career Development”; Whalen’s “Putting Your Writing Center Experience to Work”; Welsch’s “Shaping Careers in the Writing Center”; Bell’s “The Peer Tutor as Principle Benefactor in the Writing Center”; Harris’ “What Would You Like to Work on Today?”).

At first glance, scholarship focused on alumni experiences checks some boxes for outwardly focused research of the kind Greenfield and Duffy champion at the very least this kind of research considers how the center’s influence exceeds its institutional boundaries. And, as we were designing an interview based research project focused on the experience of our alums, we were eager to see if our alums’ experiences would align with those of alums from other institutions. Such findings would serve us in articulating our value to our campus community by allowing us to show how alums’ center experiences prepare them for engagement with the broader world.

We began to suspect, however, in the course of analyzing interview data from 12 former tutors, that the writing center alumni research tradition might have a bigger story to tell. We argue that when former tutors tell us stories of tutoring that they are (perhaps) not only talking about their personal and individual growth. Our alums are sharing a story of our field’s larger impact on the families, institutions, and communities of which our former tutors are a part. To some extent, alumni research has been telling us this all along, if not explicitly: many of the skills, abilities, and values developed through tutoring are undeniably social in nature.

Here’s how Aidan, a writing tutor and research fellow, explained how they continue to draw on their tutoring experience in their personal life three years after graduating:

I am the editor for my friends. Lots of my friends are in grad school. A lot of them are also writers and they're like creative writers. Everything gets sent to me. [...] I know how to be polite about what they need to review, and still supportive and how to fix things for them. I mean I do it for my little brothers; my next in age brother is going back to college right now, I'm doing this application. I'm helping him with his application edits. You don't know how much you write, until you see that everyone needs to write and not a lot of people have had the training, or really the sort of a knack for it.

Read through the conventional alumni research lens, Aidan’s reflection demonstrates that tutoring helped them to develop the ability to read and analyze other people’s writing and to provide “supportive” criticism, in addition to growing their self confidence as a writer and editor. But we believe that Aidan isn’t only telling us about their personal abilities and skills; they’re telling us how they enact these skills and abilities, with and for whom. Namely, the skills Aidan learned through tutoring are making a difference in the lives of their friends and brothers, and their skilled engagement with these folks is at the heart of his narrative. Perhaps Aidan’s supportive critiques will help their brother secure a spot at his dream college; perhaps Aidan’s friends will feel more confident and supported in their graduate work. We wouldn’t be so bold as to claim that these tutoring informed habits are world changing (in big, flashy sense), but we do think it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate the fact that former tutors, including Aidan, are doing good in the world by doing what tutors do.

As Greenfield describes it, a radical writing center “would understand its work not merely as limited to improving the writing skills of its students but in fact extended to effecting positive social change far beyond its walls” (72). Greenfield might read our analysis of Aidan’s reflection, with its focus on the development of writing and writers, even if outside of the center proper, as too limited to be truly radical, and she would be right. We believe our center can and should reach for a more ambitious impact, toward justice and peace. So, we offer our findings not as proof that the work is done, but rather as evidence that it may be started, and that we can continue to build toward that radical vision by expanding our view of the effects of tutoring beyond the artificial bounds of the individual, and by theorizing peer tutoring not only “as a form of liberal education for peer tutors themselves” (Hughes et al.) but also as a launchpoint for sustainable action and ethical engagement within the wider world.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Study Design

When we launched our IRB approved alumni research project in the Spring of 2019, it was inspired, in part, by the PWTARP, with the goal of understanding how the tutoring experience equips tutor alums for post graduation endeavors. To this end, we designed an interview based study that would allow us to gather narratives both about tutoring and about the post graduation experiences of our tutor alums. We solicited participation (via Facebook, email, and text messaging) from as many former tutors as possible, eventually assembling a group of participants who were between one and six years beyond graduation. We hoped that the interview format would allow participants, some at quite a distance from tutoring, the time and space to reflect on and to remember important aspects of their work in our center. The interviews were conducted by current tutors and tutors in training, giving them an opportunity to connect with alums and to learn about the ways tutoring experiences might inform their work and lives post graduation.

The interviews were designed to last between 20 40 minutes, with most averaging 30 minutes, during which interviewers collected demographic information (major, minors, extracurriculars, current profession, etc.) and asked questions to prompt reflection on the longer term import of tutoring experiences. Most of the questions in our script were variants on the same theme, prompting our alums to describe and reflect on “abilities, values, or skills” developed through tutoring and whether the tutoring experience informed their current work or endeavors.

Importantly, when this project began, our writing center was transitioning from a traditional writing focused support center to one which offered peer to peer support for the integrated processes of research and writing. Prior to 2017, our library operated a separate program of peer to peer support, hiring “Research Fellows” to offer reference type services at a library help desk. In 2017, the Director of the Center for Writing and the librarian tasked with training and supervising Research Fellows began the process of integrating our related services. Our research participants include those who worked as tutors before, during, and post integration (in 2019, we officially rebranded as the Center for Research & Writing). So, while our primary purpose was to understand how, if at all, the tutoring experience equipped our tutor alums for post graduation endeavors, we also wondered: Would tutors trained in library and information science (research) support

recognize special value in this aspect of their tutoring? As we’ll explore in upcoming sections, our data points, somewhat tantalizingly, to the possibility that information science training supported a different type of development than our traditional writing focused model.

Of the 12 participants, three worked exclusively as Research Fellows (i.e., providing reference support at a library help desk); six worked exclusively as writing tutors; and three worked simultaneously as Research Fellows and writing tutors or received cross training to become “Research & Writing Tutors” after our Center fully integrated our services. More recent graduates had the benefit of completing a credit bearing course focused on the integrated processes of research and writing; participants who graduated before 2017 primarily learned to tutor on the job. Ultimately, we don’t think their diversity of experiences or even their different tutoring foci undermines our findings what unites all of our participants is the common experience of one to one tutoring. In fact, many of our participants downplayed the importance of their formal training experiences, emphasizing, instead, the interpersonal aspects of the work (collaboration and conversation, between and among colleagues and between tutor and tutee) as most formative.

When designing our study, we hadn’t yet come around to the idea that our participants would be teaching us about their impact on their post graduation contexts. It was in the process of analysis that we began to sense the possibility of an alternative narrative. Prior to analysis, we had each of our video recorded interviews transcribed by a transcription service. Then, we spent time reading each transcript independently with the goal of answering our basic question (what do tutors take with them into their post graduation contexts) and developing lists of themes. Together, we compared, debated, and consolidated our themes, searching for a unifying theory or framework that would help us understand this particular set of data but also offer a lens for future analysis. We eventually landed on a framework, inspired by John Duffy’s Provocations of Virtue, that helps us see both the individual achievements and development of a tutor while also recognizing that the skills, abilities, and values are enacted and relational. No one is a “good listener” in a room on their own. Good listening is relational and active and, by necessity, involves others.

Greenfield (following Judith Butler) reminds us that radical work isn’t about a specific outcome, it’s about action. We agree. When our tutor alums tell us what they do in the world and how they engage with

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

others, we see it as possible evidence of the type of action/activism we, as a field, seem eager to encourage and, thus, as evidence that we are working toward ethical ends. But which ends, exactly? We eventually identified twelve ethical actions (or what we’ll call “character strengths”) that our tutor alums reported practicing beyond the center. Drawing on John Duffy’s work, including Provocations of Virtue, we built a heuristic that might help writing center researchers, like us, understand the ways they engage the world for good.

A Heuristic for Measuring Character Strengths

Some might be skeptical of the heuristic we propose, in part because it emerges out of an Aristotelian philosophical tradition that has been justly criticized as racist and sexist (Hursthouse ref. in Duffy 70). Despite this legacy, Duffy’s Provocations of Virtue proposes revisioning composition’s aims through the lens of virtue ethics, which he describes as “a theory for attending to those traits of character that ought to guide our most consequential decisions” (70), including who we befriend, what career we choose, and, importantly, how we engage others and the world through rhetoric.

Virtue ethics proposes that people can act ethically and morally by cultivating character traits, or virtues, like kindness, wisdom, and courage. Duffy calls on writing teachers to explicitly acknowledge the ethical and political nature of their writing pedagogy, inviting them to name for students the rhetorical virtues that are necessary to good read: ethical writing and to actively seek to develop these traits through instruction. Such traits include, for example, the virtues of honesty and accountability which writers use to establish ethos in their work and to write in ways that are responsible to their interlocutors and audience. Duffy’s work, of course, is focused on the writing classroom, and when he identifies virtues for consideration in that space, they are rhetorical virtues basically virtues of writing and communication. He is hopeful, as is Greenfield, that writing teachers will explicitly teach their students how to write for good.

Though he’s not the first, Duffy is convincing as he argues that the writing classroom is a suitable place to teach ethics. He says, “to teach writing is to teach the communicative practices, such as making claims, offering evidence, and considering counter arguments, among others, through which writers propose and navigate human relationships. And it is in the context of navigating these human relationships that we are necessarily engaged, students and teachers, with the

values, attitudes, and actions that fall within the domain of the ethical” (Duffy 10 11). Building on this argument, we call attention to the various and rich ways that tutors ‘propose and navigate human relationships’ in the center. As we see it, the writing center lifts the ethical interaction of writer and reader off the page, placing it in the immediate discursive moment of the one to one interaction. The tutor, as reader and collaborator and peer, must endeavor to be “good” in the crucible of conversation.

So, while Duffy takes a look at texts and textbooks, endeavoring to locate rhetorical (read: written) virtues, our project seeks to locate virtues within the reported experiences and reflections of tutor alums. In order to be systematic in this work, we turned to Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman’s Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification. This text, out of the field of positive psychology, sets out to identify and define positive character traits with the goal of measuring these traits in human subjects.

Peterson and Seligman’s classification system has roots in the same moral and religious philosophy Duffy draws on in his book (he cites them, too), identifying virtues as “the core characteristics valued by moral philosophers and religious thinkers: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence” which “emerge consistently from historical surveys” (6). The pair argue that these virtues are potentially universal and can be enacted or displayed through what they call “character strengths.”

“Character strengths” can be understood as the “distinguishable routes to displaying one or another of the virtues” (Peterson and Seligman). As an example, Peterson and Seligman explain that “the virtue of wisdom can be achieved through such strengths as creativity, curiosity, love of learning, open mindedness, and what we call perspective having a ‘big picture’ on life” (13). They identify 24 character strengths in all but are careful to say that they don’t view their list as exhaustive.

In our analysis, we coded for character strengths (as defined by Peterson and Seligman) and ultimately recognized twelve distinct strengths within our interviewees’ reflections, including social intelligence, civic mindedness, intellectual courage, open mindedness, and perseverance. Most of our trait definitions are based on Peterson and Seligman’s definitions, but we pulled, occasionally, from Duffy and a handful of other scholars. For this piece, we’ll focus on defining and exploring our findings around two character strengths: one which appeared regularly in our dataset and one that was most pronounced in

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

the reflections of three of our participants. The presence of both strengths in our data seems to offer evidence of the influence our field may already be having (via tutor alumni) on our world. They are strengths that are specifically related to how we do right by others: social intelligence and civic mindedness.

Social Intelligence

The first strength, social intelligence, falls under the virtue Humanity, which is defined by Peterson and Seligman as a category of “interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others.” Social intelligence, in particular, involves “being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and oneself; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick” (Peterson and Seligman 30). Our research suggests that tutoring, which almost by definition involves caring for and supporting others, is an activity that establishes or deepens this virtue. We coded “social intelligence” in all twelve of our interviews, and for many of our interviewees, it was the first or most significant “skill, practice, or knowledge” (our phrasing in the interview script) that they claimed to develop through tutoring.

Our data aligns neatly with Peterson and Seligman’s definition of social intelligence: Participants told us that tutoring helped them understand others and to be aware of people’s “motives and feelings”: “how they’re going about their writing and how they’re perceiving things and how they’re thinking about things,” and how to “listen critically” in order to understand other people’s wants and needs and “connect whatever is available and relevant [...] to the needs of that particular person.” They also learned how to adapt (“fit into,” as per Peterson and Seligman) “to different people [and] different personalities and kind of be a chameleon” and to connect to different people (“I’ve gotten pretty good at connecting with people”; “utilizing that kind of connection basis”).

Here we would note that there wasn’t a particular training activity that spurred the development of this trait: Rather, participants told us that they grew their social intelligence by working one to one with students and in a quasi professional environment with their peers. They told us that both the variety of people they worked with and the volume of interaction were crucial to their development. One said, “You’re exposed to a variety of personalities, and you’re exposed to a variety of different ways of thinking and different ways of doing your work and being productive.” Another said, “the amount of people you’re exposed to, it’s just so extraordinary.” Our analysis leaves us confident that

our tutor alums are developing social intelligence through their work at the Center, and it suggests that the more appointments and crucially the greater the diversity (“variety”) of the people who work in and use the Center, the more significant the tutors’ learning and development.

While Peterson and Seligman’s conception of social intelligence maps well onto our data, we also wondered whether, given the specific context in which tutors are developing social intelligence, that their social intelligence might have a particular writing center flavor. Consider one participant’s reflection about the significance of context in developing their strength: “Especially in the environment where every 15 minutes I'm talking to a new person, figuring out how to create a good connection in a shorter period of time so that they trust you in what you're saying, that you feel comfortable in having conversations and asking questions about things that they don't know” (our emphasis). Here, one participant hit on themes that were common across our data, emphasizing the importance of establishing comfort, connection, and trust, and then describing how they assess (“asking questions”), and, finally, address the needs of their interlocutor (“having conversations”). Many of our participants emphasized themes of connection and need in their reflections, suggesting that these are foundational components of a tutor alum’s social intelligence.

Having established that our participants developed social intelligence in the center, we turn to the larger question of this piece: Can the types of narratives generated by our research help us understand a tutor alum’s capacity to enact change in their post graduation context? What do tutor alums tell us about how the work they do in our center is carried out into the world? One tutor, Olivia, said that she draws on social intelligence “every day, even with my coworkers, I’m like, Okay, so I understand that you don’t see it the way I see it, so let’s look at it from a different lens.” Olivia credits her time tutoring with enabling her to communicate across difference in a professional context and to be flexible and responsive to those around her. We speculate that Olivia’s actions may contribute to a more inclusive, equitable, and productive workplace, and, in that small way, she may be making good change within that context.

Another alumna, Cyndi, told us how she facilitates better communication in her workplace, using skills and abilities that “transitioned” directly from her time as a tutor:

[T]he department I work in is molecular, cellular and biomedical sciences. And within that, we have currently like 35 faculty who have a vast array of

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

backgrounds. They're mostly training students who are looking to be pre professional health, research science, along those lines. So, keeping in mind, they're all from so different of backgrounds, but they have that one goal that they're sharing, but they don't necessarily know, I think, how to effectively communicate to each other, that it is actually the same thing they're trying to do. So I think I often find myself almost being a champion, or a cheerleader, for people to acknowledge that yeah, you are doing the same thing and you're agreeing with each other. And what you're doing, I think, is good. I'd say the cheerleader role is one that I continue to wear the most.

Cyndi works with people from many different backgrounds and is able to facilitate their communication, to serve as a sort of communication bridge builder, because she is especially adept at both recognizing common ground (“you’re doing the same thing and you’re agreeing with each other”) and also helping others to recognize it (through “cheerleading” and “championing”). We think the work that Cyndi describes may be an important kind of peace making one that likely contributes to the wellbeing, cohesion, and productivity of her colleagues.

We could go on, here, sharing evidence of the ways that tutoring informed social intelligence have allowed our tutor alums to shape and, likely, change their post graduation contexts. The tutor alums in our research have gone on to work in libraries, in food service, in schools, in government, in non profits, in academia and all have found ways to put their social intelligence to use because social intelligence, as our alums experience it, is not place or situation bound. According to one participant, time in the Center equipped her “to confront any type of challenge you have in your way, especially because you never know who you’re going to confront on a given day or what their personality is like. And you just have to be able to go with the flow and react in any given situation” (our emphasis). Taken together, this data helps us recognize something important about tutoring informed social intelligence: it is the strength of being able to move productively and ethically between contexts. If a tutor alum develops social intelligence, it’s something they’ll potentially carry everywhere and into every interaction.

Civic Mindedness

The next strength we will highlight in this piece is one we call “civic mindedness.” This is the strength of recognizing and acting on obligations to our fellow humans, and would fall, we think, under Peterson and Seligman’s value category of Justice, which they define

as “a motivation to seek justice, equality for others and for self.” Peterson and Seligman’s strength citizenship shares something with what we are calling civic mindedness but doesn't capture what might be called the radical quality (as per Greenfield) of the strength exhibited in our data.

Peterson and Seligman’s definition of citizenship foregrounds a sense of duty to a group (whether a family group, work group, church group, or ethnic group). As they point out, this strength can manifest in ways that promote the wellbeing of one group at the expense of another group. We think of Justice, as a virtue, differently, seeing its foundation not in our responsibilities to those like us but rather in our responsibilities to those who are not. Following Lisa Tessman, who theorizes a critical virtue ethics, we believe that the virtues we identify and potentially seek to develop in tutors should be those that promote the flourishing and liberation of all. Thus, the strength we name civic mindedness emerges from an awareness of the ways social and political systems inhibit the flourishing of others and the felt responsibility to work toward change.

Unlike social intelligence, which we identified in the reflections of all our participants, civic mindedness was most notably present in the interviews of three tutor alums, Matt, Olivia, and Aidan. At the time of their interviews, Matt was working in a public library, Olivia was working in a Parks and Recreation department as a part of an AmeriCorps VISTA service opportunity, and Aidan was working as a librarian while taking classes to earn his master’s in library science. Matt and Olivia worked exclusively as Research Fellows during their undergraduate careers; Aidan worked simultaneously as a Research Fellow and as a writing tutor.

Matt’s civic mindedness is perceptible in his dedication to providing people with the information they need to make informed decisions a natural focus for a librarian. Matt remembered his tutoring experience as a Research Fellow as one in which he helped “provide … information or means of access to other resources” to the students he supported. By providing access to information, Matt believed he empowered students to “make more informed decisions,” and by doing so, we would argue, he promoted the wellbeing of those around him. After college, Matt sought work at a public library because he wanted to “broaden the population” he served, knowing he “feel[s] most satisfied” in that context. He told his interviewer that the library “is where I feel that I give the most. I want to provide [access to information] for more people.” Here, we see Matt’s

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

determination to serve more than those with whom he might easily identify; he wasn’t satisfied, as a college student, to support other undergraduates. His civic mindedness compelled him to seek opportunities to support “more people.”

Matt also talked about the importance of access to information as well as “information literacy” as critical to democratic participation. He observed that people are “affected by what government and leadership figures are doing, there has to be a … sense of information literacy” to inform both the decisions of the leadership as well as those of the governed. We see civic mindedness, here, in Matt's awareness of the social and political apparatuses that shape people’s lives and in his desire to equip those around him to engage or resist those systems.

Like all our participants, Olivia observed that tutoring helped her grow her capacity to connect with people different from herself, and she credits her experience as a Research Fellow for “guiding” her towards applying for an AmeriCorps VISTA position where she might have the chance, again, to engage with people of many different backgrounds. She said, “In my current position … I work with a lot of youth, particularly impoverished youth. And so being able to connect with them … that builds more trust.” She told her interviewer that her role at the Parks and Recreation department was something she was “really proud of and happy to be a part of” a reflection of Olivia’s sense that she is engaged in a collective mission to do good in the world. While it’s unclear in Olivia’s reflection if her role as a tutor inspired her sense of responsibility to others, she tells us that her tutoring experiences helped her to develop the skills she needs to do the kind of work she values.

Aidan, on the other hand, makes crystalline the fact that tutoring taught them to recognize the value and joy of helping others. At the time of their interview, Aidan was transitioning from a career in a private corporation into one as a librarian where they would have a chance to help “someone live a better life.” They told their interviewer: What I realized that about a year and a half [ago] in having sort of a quarter life crisis was that what I really valued doing was helping people. I really enjoy those one on one interactions that I had in the tutoring [...] in which my job was not focused so much on making a bottom line for the private corporation, my job was helping someone live a better life or accomplish a better, you know, results in their work or art or whatever. And that made me realize that the best work that I ever did was in the library.

Aidan also shared an example of how they have helped library patrons in their current work, and unlike Matt and Olivia, who worked only as Research Fellows, Aidan’s reflections hint at how civic mindedness might manifest for a writing tutor in the post graduation wilds. They told the story of working with a family of immigrants who were not native speakers (or writers) of English, remembering: [T]hey were extremely kind, but they were trying to advocate for housing rights for themselves, and they just, they came up to a co worker of mine [...] and asked if someone could look at [an application document] for them. You know it's not necessarily a service a library does [...], but you know, sort of the main ethos is ‘we're here to help however we can.’ And I was able to step up and say, ‘I've actually been a writing tutor,’ and everyone's like, ‘Oh God, we don't know what the hell we're doing. So, go for it Aidan.’ And I was able to refine the letter for them [...] but that core was there, what they meant to say was really important. And, you know, they left feeling much more confident in their application they were about to send in. And I've done that a couple more times [...] but that first instance was like it was exactly what the sort of thing that I felt good about doing, and it was exactly the skills I learned from the Writing Center.

Aidan credits the ethos of libraries (“we’re here to help however we can”) for emboldening them to do the type of work they did as a writing tutor in a library setting. And, if their impressions are correct, they made a difference to a family who truly needed their help. Aidan felt they were doing something “good” in the world in this interaction, and we think so, too.

As we pointed out, civic mindedness was not widely evident in our data, emerging most prominently in the interviews of just three tutor alums. It’s worth noting, again, that all three of these tutors worked as Research Fellows, meaning that they received training in information literacy and worked at a library reference desk during their tutoring tenure. While we don’t have enough data to prove it, we wonder if these tutors, trained in information literacy, might be more confident than traditionally trained writing center tutors in taking activist stances. Libraries, after all, have a robust history of activism and advocacy and in doing, in fact, what Greenfield and Duffy both hope that writing centers will do more: confidently defining and asserting the values of the field. What would it mean to our tutors if, in the writing center, we made clear both our potential and our responsibility to work for justice and peace (per Greenfield) and/or to

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

remake our culture of toxic rhetoric (per Duffy)? Would more of our tutor alums be confident in telling us how their writing center work helped them recognize their responsibility to the world?

Conclusion

We are confident that our tutors (present and future) will continue to develop social intelligence through their experiences in our center. Additionally, we believe that social intelligence, as a practice, has the potential to help create peace in our world, and we think that a differently designed research project might allow us to show, even more precisely, how this happens. Our findings also compel us to consider how we might better cultivate a sense of responsibility to our community beyond the center (or civic mindedness) in our tutors. Limited evidence of this character strength within our interviewees’ reflections suggest that we’ve got room to grow in this area, whether through the introduction of service learning projects, on campus activism work, or careful reframing of our Center’s purpose and potential in our training activities or mission statement. We want our tutors to view themselves as agentive, capable, and dedicated change makers both on our campus and within their post graduation contexts.

As of the moment of writing this article, we haven’t brought these findings around character strengths to our tutors though we very much intend to. Greenfield is right when she says that it is scary to name our values. What might it mean to expand our understanding of the value of tutoring (for the tutor) to encompass its capacity to shape tutors as moral and ethical actors working for change, for peace, for justice? Would administrators buy such a framing? Would potential tutors? Where are our blind spots in identifying traits or virtues? How do we choose well what strengths to embrace and which to resist?

Molly finds courage, here, in Emma’s confidence about this project. When Molly asked Emma what she, a senior tutor at the time, would make of an ethical reframing of tutoring, she dismissed Molly’s worry. Emma said that explicitly naming her tutoring practices, habits, and mindsets like kindness, patience, and responsibility clarified the principles and philosophy underlying her practice. She said it helped her see why we do what we do and gave her confidence that what we do is good and right.

We would like to thank all the tutors, past and present, who contributed to this project. Thanks, too, to Katherine Tirabassi and Elizabeth Dolinger for opening space in their tutor training course, which allowed us to launch this research project, and for cheering us on ever since. To John Duffy: You spent an afternoon graciously indulging our questions about virtues and tutoring. Our project wouldn't have been possible without the insights you shared in that conversation and in your written work. Finally, many thanks to our generous Praxis reviewers we hope our revisions do justice to the care you took in responding to earlier versions of this piece.

Works Cited

Bell, Elizabeth. “The Peer Tutor as the Principal Benefactor in the Writing Center, Or It’s Not Just for English Teaching Any More.” Writing Lab Newsletter 9.9 (1985): 10 13. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v9/9 9.pdf Council of the American Library Association. Chicago, 2002. https://www.ala.org/ Accessed 13 Jan. 2022. Dinitz, Sue, and Jean Kiedaisch. "Tutoring writing as career development." The Writing Lab Newsletter 34.3 (2009): 1 5. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v34/34.3.pdf Duffy, John. Provocations of Virtue: Rhetoric, Ethics, and the Teaching of Writing. Utah State University Press, an Imprint of University Press of Colorado, 2019.

Greenfield, Laura. Radical Writing Center Praxis: A Paradigm for Ethical Political Engagement. Utah State University Press, 2019.

Grimm, Nancy Maloney. Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times. Boynton/Cook Heinemann, 2008. Grutsch McKinney, Jackie. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers. Utah State University Press, 2013.

Harris, Muriel. “‘What Would You Like to Work on Today?’ The Writing Center as a Site for Teacher Training.” Preparing College Teachers of Writing: Histories, Theories, Programs, Practices. Ed. Betty P. Pytlik and Sarah Liggett. New York: Oxford UP, 20002. 194 207.

Hughes, Bradley, et al. “What They Take with Them: Findings from the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 30, no. 2, 2010, pp. 12 46. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43442343. Accessed 13 Sep. 2022.

Peterson, Christopher and Martin E. P. Seligman. Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification Oxford University Press, 2004. EBSCOhost,

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nle bk&AN=129815&site=ehost live&scope=site.

Tessman, Lisa. 2001. “Critical Virtue Ethics.” In Feminists Doing Ethics, ed. Peggy DesAutels, and Joanne Waugh, 79 99. Landham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nle bk&AN=64039&site=ehost live&scope=site.

Welsch, Kathleen. "Shaping careers in the writing center." The Writing Lab Newsletter 32.8 (2008): 3 7. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v32/32.8.pdf

Whalen, Lisa. "Putting your writing center experience to work." The Writing Lab Newsletter 29.9 (2005): 9 10. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v29/29.9.pdf

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

SELF INITIATED WRITING CENTER VISITS AND WRITING DEVELOPMENT: A FIRST YEAR WRITING ASSESSMENT

Salena Sampson Anderson Valparaiso University salena.anderson@valpo.edu

Abstract

This article analyzes the relationship between writing center use and writing improvements from the first to second semester in first year university writing assessment data. The study correlates self initiated writing center use and improvement in several areas, including title, thesis, organizational statement, organization, use of evidence, and clarity. These improvements contrast with those for peers who did not visit the center or who only visited when required. Writing center visits may directly impact assessment results when students visit the center with papers later designated for assessment. However, many assessment samples were not part of a writing center session. Instead, there may be differences in the population of students who self initiate writing center appointments and those who do not. For instance, students with self initiated writing center visits were less likely to identify as writers, and their initial assessment results were slightly lower than their peers’. However, by the second semester, their assessment scores generally surpassed those of their more confident peers. These findings suggest that students who self initiate writing center visits are, as a group, better positioned to achieve increases in writing assessment scores across their first year because of productive writing center sessions and an open mindset for seeking writing support. However, this article also shows how quantitative data from writing program assessment may be leveraged against qualitative writing center data to highlight and address inequities, as observed in the case study of a multilingual writer whose assessment results did not feature the same positive changes as those of her peers.

Introduction

Many writing center directors and tutors cherish stories of writers' growth and increasing agency. Reflecting on longitudinal writing research, however, Nancy Sommers (2008) notes that "writing development is not always visible on the page" and that "writing development involves steps both forward and backward" (154). For these reasons and others, measuring writers' growth in the center and elsewhere can present challenges. While the relationship between writer growth and writing improvement is complex, in observing the “incremental” growth of writers and increased writing assessment scores for writing center clients, Luke Niiler leverages assessment data to inform conversations across campus about writing center pedagogy and its outcomes. He argues, “My colleagues outside the discipline don’t quite know what to make of the well worn adage, ‘it’s the writer, not the writing.’ So with my stats in tow, I can state a variation on that theme: we help writers make ‘better writing,’ and I can explain exactly what I mean” (15). Even as Niiler highlights the importance of writing assessment data in

conversations with colleagues across campus, Megan Jewell (2011) argues that writing centers should play a central role in writing program assessment more broadly because of their unique insight into student writing as well as their ability to facilitate collaboration between diverse faculty and administrators in supporting student writers. Jewell provocatively asks, “How might the transformative, dialogic spaces opened up by program assessment be useful not only in terms of their pedagogical benefits, but for their rhetorical value in terms of increasing writing center visibility and bolstering institutional legitimacy?” The present study builds upon Jewell’s concept of centering the writing center in conversations around university writing assessment, exploring how data and insights from the writing center may inform campus wide longitudinal writing assessment.

This paper presents an IRB approved study showing a correlation between self initiated writing center visits and increases in university writing assessment scores between first year students' first and second semesters. Score increases appear to relate both to positive impacts from writing center sessions and to personal characteristics associated with self initiated writing center use, such as attitudes toward oneself as a writer. While students who self initiated writing center sessions were less likely to identify confidently as writers and were more likely to have slightly lower first semester assessment scores than their peers, by their second semester this same group of writers was more likely to have surpassed their peers’ second semester writing assessment scores in most areas. As in all populations, however, there is variation. In some cases, this variation may be understood in terms of individual differences; or in this case, it may be related to institutional access and barriers. A case study involving a multilingual writer’s relatively modest gains between semesters presents an exception to the larger quantitative findings, and related writing center records suggest the need for more attention to supporting multilingual writers' goals. Thus, this study suggests the value of interweaving quantitative writing program assessment data with qualitative writing center assessment data to create a richer picture of student writing and to identify and respond to issues with equity and access in the campus writing community.

Literature Review

The present research draws from a body of writing center scholarship showing a relationship between writing center use and writing improvement, including studies by scholars like Luke Niiler, Madeline Picciotto, Scott Pleasant, and Deno Trakas. It simultaneously draws from a tradition of longitudinal writing assessment, such as the 2017 study by Daniel Oppenheimer and his colleagues, which reveals modest writer growth across a student’s undergraduate career. Considering these veins of research together, one might wonder what types of writing gains are possible over shorter periods when a student truly invests in their writing process and is assisted by the writing center. Answering this type of question within the context of a small university really necessitates the use of both university writing assessment results and writing center data a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. Thus, while the present study is informed by Richard Haswell’s call for more replicable, aggregable, data supported (RAD) research, this study also draws from Isabelle Thompson’s astute observation that qualitative and quantitative writing center research may be used hand in hand to enrich analysis.

Trends in Quantitative and Qualitative Writing (Center) Assessment

Quantitative and qualitative writing assessment research afford different opportunities and challenges. While Haswell’s influential 2005 publication “NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship” argues for more RAD research in the field of writing studies, other scholars argue for the benefits of qualitative approaches to writing assessment. Kathleen Cassity speaks to a lack of eagerness to engage in quantitative writing assessment, recognizing “how difficult it is to measure in quantitative terms a holistic aggregate of skills like those required for effective written composition” (63). Krystia Nora similarly argues for the value of qualitative assessment of writing programs, highlighting the difficulty of isolating the different factors that impact writer growth. However, others, such as Rebecca Day Babcock, Terese Thonus, and Neal Learner highlight the fact that qualitative and quantitative writing center research may be complementary. Similarly, Isabelle Thompson argues for the value of writing center assessment more generally, while advocating a combined use of both qualitative and quantitative measures in particular. Most recently, in 2021 Scott Pleasant and Deno P. Trakas provide a history of writing center scholars’ appraisal of quantitative and qualitative methods for assessment and

argue, like Thompson, that both quantitative and qualitative writing center assessments are useful and serve different purposes.1 In particular, Pleasant and Trakas highlight their own assessment practices, which involve the use of qualitative data for tutor training and quantitative data for reporting. Though the present study focuses largely on quantitative analysis, it also builds upon Pleasant and Trakas’ work by considering the unique insights afforded by both qualitative and quantitative data.

Writing Center Use, Writing Improvements, and Motivation

As quantitative studies have become more frequent in writing center research, several such studies have argued for the use of quantitative data in reporting, have shown correlations between writing center use and increased assessment scores, and have noted the complexity of distinguishing the impact of the writing center (as opposed to other factors). In 2003, Neil Learner argues for increased attention to quantitative writing center data, emphasizing the importance of this work for accountability both to our institutions and to ourselves. In 2005 in Writing Lab Newsletter, Niiler presents on a quantitative relationship between writing center use and improvements in student writing, arguing that “quantitative research is still new to this field,” and making the case for more statistical analysis of writing center impacts. Similarly, Madeleine Picciotto (2010) reports a correlation between writing center use and pass rates on a university wide assessment that determines exit from basic writing classes and placement into first year writing. However, she also notes the challenges in interpreting the results, namely that “students who chose to come to the center may have been particularly motivated, and it might have been their motivation not writing center assistance that led to improved exam performance.” Pleasant and Trakas, in the quantitative portion of their study, likewise report a correlation between writing center use and writing assessment scores, in this case determined by an assessment designed by the writing center, involving faculty from outside the center. As Picciotto, they similarly qualify their results: “It is difficult to imagine a study that could demonstrate definitively that writing center intervention is the sole cause of a student’s improvement, but what we have determined is that our students tend to improve their drafts after visiting the writing center.” The types of statistical work that disentangle the impact of the writing center on student writing from other factors, such as motivation, are indeed more complex.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Triangulating data from different sources may provide some perspective. Learner (2003) attempts such an analysis. Learner argues that at least for the data considered in his study the impact of the writing center may be isolated from the impact of other variables through the use of additional surveys or institutional data, such as SAT scores and survey results from the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory, an instrument that allows students to self report on factors that may impact their learning “readiness” (69). In the absence of such a survey, a factor like motivation can be difficult to disentangle from other factors that may impact writing center use or uptake of writing center feedback, however. For instance, Jaclyn Wells considers whether requiring writing center visits can be productive for students, recognizing a consistent belief within the center that students who are “motivated” to visit have the most productive sessions. Wells (100 101) goes on to note that of students who completed required sessions in her study, many reported favorable attitudes toward the center and supported required visits, even as some of these same students reported that they would not be able to use the center as regularly due to course load, family obligations, athletics, and other factors. In other words, a variety of factors can impact students’ ability to visit the writing center, and it may be difficult to differentiate fully between motivation and other factors that may have an impact on actual student ability to visit the center or to integrate feedback fully into their writing.

Longitudinal Writing Assessment and Its Limitations

Writing growth is notoriously difficult to study, not only, as Sommers notes, because it is sometimes invisible in a given written sample but also because it may be defined and understood in many ways. For instance, Ann Gere in introducing an edited volume entitled Developing Writers in Higher Education: A Longitudinal Study “aimed to avoid a single meaning of writing development, not only because existing research has articulated multiple meanings, but because of the inherent danger of seeing writing in monolithic terms” (2). She goes on to explain how such definitions can become yardsticks by which student writers and instructors are measured, whether or not the metrics accurately capture all aspects of writers’ growth.

Furthermore, such metrics often benefit certain populations of students while disadvantaging others. For instance, Staci Perryman Clark illuminates how “assessment creates or denies opportunity structures,” highlighting the ways that “[d]ecisions about writing

assessment are rooted in racial and linguistic identity,” and thus disproportionally impact writers of color and multilingual writers in negative ways (206). Indeed, in the present essay, we observe a case study of a multilingual writer whose assessment results and writing center records suggest campus writing experiences that differ from those of many of her monolingual peers, including less growth in areas identified by the student as priority areas for writing center feedback. Thus, we see that writing instruction and support may also limit access for some students, even as assessment may do the same. Effective assessment may also seek to redress some of these equity issues in the extent to which it is able to document larger patterns in student writing over time as well as ways in which individual writers are (less than fully) supported across their undergraduate experience.

Acknowledging these limitations, previous research attempts to explore factors that appear to be correlated with different aspects of writer growth, measured qualitatively through case studies and quantitively through rubrics. The extent to which changes in writing assessment scores are observed depends on many factors, ranging from assessment design to length of observation and differences in student populations. For instance, in one pre test and post test design involving timed writings before and after students’ first year writing experience, Lisa Rourke and Xuchen Zhou anticipated statistically significant differences in writing assessment scores assigned by blind reviewers. However, they report a lack of statistically significant findings and recommend instead that, “Longitudinal studies, such as those using portfolios, offer assessment opportunities that account for development over time” (279). They note even in the case of such longitudinal studies, there may still be limitations, however. Sommers (2008), reflecting on some of the limitations of quantitative longitudinal writing assessment, offers several case studies to help explore why some writers progress more than others during their undergraduate careers. Sommers shows that eagerness to enter larger scholarly conversations is a factor motivating writer growth. Comparatively, Oppenheimer, et al. (2017) provides a large scale quantitative analysis of longitudinal writing growth in undergraduates, showing an average improvement of 0.3 on a 4 point scale between matriculation and graduation with higher scores for women and humanities majors. Thus, while there are limitations with longitudinal writing assessment (and all writing assessment), both qualitative and quantitative studies have suggested some variables that may correlate with longitudinal gains in writing assessment scores in their specific settings.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Methods and Materials

The present study was completed at a small, private comprehensive university in the Midwest region in the United States. The research draws from two existing sources of university writing program data: first year writing assessment data and writing center records. The purpose of the design is to explore how existing sources of assessment data may be leveraged to provide a more complete picture of writing on our campus, in this case considering any changes between first and second semester writing in light of records of writing center use. This research proposal was approved by our institution’s Institutional Review Board and followed all institutional guidelines for ethical use of human subjects’ data.

First Year Writing Assessment

For the first year writing assessment, at the end the semester, the writing program gathers writing samples from all students enrolled in Core 110 and Core 115, the university’s first year writing courses. Students are prompted by email and again in class to submit their samples, and many instructors take time in class for students to upload their samples. From these submissions, the writing program has historically selected a random sample of papers for a blind reading, including submissions from all sections. From an initial sample of 90 students, one student’s sample was excluded as it did not include submissions for both Core 110 and 115, rendering a total sample of paired Core 110 and 115 submissions for 89 students. Identifying information about the instructor and student names was stripped from the sample, and the papers were numbered with a key that matches student names to paper numbers, which was retained by the writing program and not shared with raters.

The rating process involved both a group norming session and independent rating, similar to that in Oppenheimer, et al. (2017). Raters for this assessment included a team of Core and WIC faculty and other stakeholders in the university writing program, for example, the Core director and the first year writing librarian. For norming, this group of raters met with the University Writing Director; and we discussed the rubric and then rated three papers during this group session. After rating this smaller sample, we shared our scores and discussed any discrepancies in our ratings, establishing that our scores were typically within one point of one another. The full collection of writing samples for all 90 students was shared with raters as an anonymized folder of Core 110 essays and an anonymized folder of Core 115 essays. After the

norming session, raters read and scored essays independently. All score sheets were shared with the University Writing Director; and for any papers for which scores were neither matching nor adjacent, a third reader from the assessment team provided an additional reading and score.

The writing samples considered for this assessment were the third (and final) papers completed in both Core 110 and Core 115. Both papers were argumentative in nature, and both papers required the use of source texts, with the Core 110 samples featuring three to four page essays and the Core 115 samples featuring six to eight page essays with comparatively more required source use. The assessment data in this study derive from the 2018 2019 assessment, completed in the summer of 2019 as the impacts of COVID and funding changes have delayed more recent university wide writing assessments of this design.

Writing Center Context, Records, and Analysis

For this study, writing assessment results were correlated with writing center records. The university writing center offers around 1,600 to 1,800 appointments per year with substantial use from first year writers. The team of writing consultants consists of ten to twelve consultants, most of whom are undergraduate students; however, the center consistently employs one to three graduate consultants or faculty who also serve as consultants primarily for graduate students. Writing center records are created and stored in the mywconline system. This study focuses on writing center records of who used the writing center, when, and whether any of the visits were marked as student initiated by the writer client. These data are taken from client report forms and appointment forms, drawing in part from the work of Rita Malenczyk in her consideration of these essential sources of writing center data and narrative.

After all assessment results were compiled by the university writing program, the key matching student names and writing samples was used to search for each writer in the mywconline system. Information about whether each student had visited the writing center, whether they had ever completed a self initiated visit (as opposed to a required visit), and whether the consultant indicated working on the third paper in either Core 110 or 115 (i.e., the papers included in the writing assessment sample) was hand coded in a spreadsheet with the assessment results.

The files were disaggregated to create two separate spreadsheets, one of writing assessment scores from students who had completed self initiated writing center visits and one of students who had not completed any such visits. A nonparametric test, Wilcoxson Ranked

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Sign, was selected due to the paired data, relatively small sample sizes, and absence of an assumption of normally distributed data. These tests were used to compare Core 110 and Core 115 assessment scores for each rubric category for the two groups of students, those with self initiated writing center visits and those without.

Results and Discussion

Students with self initiated writing center visits showed more improvement than peers. Results revealed statistically significant improvements in title, thesis, organizational statement, organization, evidence, and clarity in second semester writing samples for students with one or more self initiated writing center visits (n=31) as seen in table 1 in the appendix. Comparatively, students who did not visit the writing center or who visited only when required (n=58) showed statistically significant improvement between the first and second semester of their first year only in their use of titles as seen in table 2.

A Closer Look at Student Populations

There may be differences in the student populations that proactively seek out self initiated writing center sessions, in table 1, and those who do not, in table 2. For instance, though the differences are not statistically significant, one may note that first semester assessment scores from students with self initiated visits are slightly lower than their peers’ scores in five of the categories assessed by the rubric, namely title, thesis, organizational statement, clarity, and tone. For four of the areas (organization, mechanics, evidence, and conventions), the two groups of students’ papers featured nearly identical scores from the first semester. In only one area, style, did the students with self initiated writing center appointments score more highly than their peers in the first semester. Each of these differences is subtle, typically a tenth of a point or less.

What is most interesting and exciting, however, is that by the second semester, students with self initiated writing center appointments (who as a group were slightly behind their peers) actually achieved higher writing scores in the university writing assessment in almost all areas, including the organizational statement, organization, clarity, style, tone, evidence, and conventions. In the remaining three areas, the two student groups’ scores were similar, with title being the only category in which second semester scores were not higher for students with self initiated visits. In the areas of improvement, gains were often two tenths of a point or more. In other words, if students who self initiated writing center appointments were ever behind their peers, by the end of the first year, their writing

assessments earned higher scores than those of their peers.

The subtle differences in writing assessment scores during the first semester appear related to students’ self conceptions as writers, especially when considering the distinctions between those who confidently identify as writers and those who express reservation, as seen in table 3. What is striking about the data in table 3 is the large proportion of students who do not identify as writers, at least when asked in a writing center profile question. However, there are some statistically significant differences between the two groups of students (χ2 = 8.517, p < .01), most notably the differences in proportions of students who self identify as writers without any reservation. Confident self identification as a writer is less common in students with self initiated writing center use. Also of note are the number of students who only sometimes or rarely identify as a writer, which is more common among this same group. As this is an open field in the writing center profile form, some students in this case simply typed “yes” to the question, “Do you consider yourself a writer?” In the sample of those who did not visit the writing center or who only visited when required, around 24 per cent of the students self identified as writers without any hedging. Comparatively, only 6.5 per cent of students with self initiated writing center use similarly identified as writers. However, over 35 per cent of students with self initiated writing center use qualified their identity as writers in responding to this question, indicating that they “kind of”, “partially”, or “occasionally” considered themselves as writers, or more negatively they answered they were “not a good one” or were “not really” a writer. In other words, a surprising majority of both students who visited the writing center voluntarily and those who did not declined to identify as writers. However, writing center non users and those with only required visits were more likely than peers to identify confidently as writers while students who self initiated writing center visits were more likely to express ambivalence or uncertainty about their identity as writers when compared to their peers. These findings suggest that at least for some students, confidence in one’s identity as a writer disinclines writing center use, perhaps resulting from stigma attached to writing center use by some students.

As we consider these two groups of students and their differences in writing assessment scores over time, we must be careful to distinguish between increases in scores that may be directly attributable to the fruits of productive writing center sessions and increases in scores that relate more generally to differences in the student populations. To do so, we may remove the

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

writing samples for which there is writing center documentation indicating that the student worked on that paper at the center. Comparing tables 4 and 5, both of which exclude papers that had been part of a writing center session, we still observe some differences between the assessments for the students who ever self initiated a writing center visit and those who did not.

In particular, for all categories except style and academic tone, a greater proportion of writing samples from students with self initiated writing center visits showed score increases between the first and second semester even when samples for which students directly sought writing center feedback are excluded. This pattern suggests that writing center work alone is not the sole factor in the increases in writing assessment scores between these students’ first and second semester but that individual factors, perhaps related to the students’ attitudes toward themselves as writers or toward their writing, may also impact their writing development.

The Impact of the Writing Center

A statistically small sample of students, just twenty, visited the writing center for either or both essays included in the first year university writing assessment. This sample may be used to illustrate how writing center data and writing program data may be interwoven to create a richer picture of campus writing. In table 6, organized from the most negative changes in assessment scores to the most positive changes in assessment scores, we observe that most of the negative scores are for samples with required writing center visits. In particular, six of the eight samples with no change or with a negative change between the first and second semester writing assessments were samples written by students who completed required visits to the writing center. Interestingly, three of these required visits were in the students’ second semester. If we were to assume that writing center visits consistently result in students’ uptake of feedback and implementation of positive changes in their writing, we might anticipate that writing center visits in the second semester alone would help to drive higher writing assessment scores in the second semester. Of course, we do not know how these writing assessment samples would have scored in their earlier drafts, so we cannot rule out improvement associated with writing center visits in these cases. Still, the fact that the majority of these cases of lower second semester writing assessment scores come from students with required appointments does suggest a pattern. If we have suspected that there may occasionally be students merely completing requirements in the center without investment in the session, it is possible that some of these samples may derive from such sessions. On the

other hand, self initiated writing center visits for a writing assessment sample do not guarantee higher assessment scores than those from a student’s previous semester’s sample. Note, for instance, the paired sample with scores that fell slightly from 2.825 to 2.75, despite the writer’s completion of a self initiated visit during the second semester and no visit for their first semester writing sample. This difference is subtle and may just as well represent random chance. The only other student in this sample with a lower second semester assessment score and a self initiated writing center visit completed that session during their first semester. In other words, this pattern may be in part attributable to the positive impact of the first semester writing center session, if, for instance, this session helped the student to revise their first semester sample and thus achieve a higher assessment score in that semester but did not visit during the second semester.

A corollary to the relatively high frequency of required visits involved in samples with negative assessment results is the comparatively higher frequency of self initiated visits in samples showing the greatest positive change in assessment scores between semesters. For all samples in the study, the mean change between first and second semester writing assessment scores was a modest 0.11 on a 4 point scale. For students whose samples demonstrated above average increases in scores between their first and second semester writing assessment, six of ten paired samples involved a self initiated writing center visit for at least one of the samples. Students who visited the writing center for their first and second semester samples were also more common in this category: of the four students who visited the writing center for both their first and second semester writing samples, all four showed positive change in assessment scores between their first and second semester, and three of the four showed above average positive change, including one student who visited both semesters only for required sessions. These findings suggest that sustained writing center use has a positive impact on writing assessment scores, even for some writers in the presence of a visit requirement.

We must also be careful to note that decreased second semester assessment scores, relative to first semester assessment scores, for this small number of students after required sessions does not alone argue against the possible value of required sessions. In particular, many of the writers who self initiated sessions first experienced the center through a required session. In other words, differences in assessment results may not relate to the requirement at all but instead to different writer attitudes, with some writers self initiating sessions after an initial required visit even

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

as others show no further engagement with the center. Irene Clark (1985), Barbara Gordon (2008), and Rebecca Babcock and Terese Thonus (2012) all argue for the possible advantages of required writing center sessions, especially in the context of introducing students to the center. The findings in this study reinforce this role for required visits. Jacyln Wells (2016), Barbara Bell and Robert Stutts (1997) highlight some of the limitations associated with required visits, such as schedule crowding and periodic issues with writer engagement; yet again they conclude that the benefits are likely greater than the losses. A similar pattern seems to emerge in the present data.

However, the single and perhaps unsurprising pattern that provides unity to the overall picture in table 6 is that samples with higher initial scores were more likely to have comparatively lower second semester assessment scores while the inverse was also true. Lower initial assessment scores left ample room for improvement, with many of the greatest changes between first and second semester samples deriving from paired samples with a relatively low first semester score. In particular, across the full dataset for the study, a score of 2.38 was the mean for first semester samples while a score of 2.46 was the mean for second semester samples. Six of the seven paired scores that showed negative changes between first and second semester involved an initial score that was above average. Similarly, six of the ten paired samples with above average changes featured below average initial scores, including several in the middle to high one range. Part of this pattern may be explained as students with weaker initial writing samples benefited from writing center support, often from self initiated visits but also from some required visits. Thus, the specific samples which involved a writing center visit, considered in concert with the earlier findings, suggest the positive impact of writing center visits on assessment score changes between first and second semester, especially in the presence of self initiated visits.

A Case Study and Tutor Training

As in Sommers’ work, case studies can illuminate stories and exceptions within the quantitative patterns. For instance, one of the students who made regular self initiated writing center visits in this study was a young multilingual woman, for whom we will use the pseudonym Akuba. Akuba’s writing lagged in areas where her peers’ writing improved, while improving in other areas. Only title, tone, and disciplinary conventions improved from her first to second semester. Four areas (thesis, clarity, style, and

mechanics) remained the same; and the organizational statement, organization, and use of evidence earned lower assessment scores in her second semester. Interestingly, mywconline writing center appointment records from Akuba’s first year show requests for support with organization, thesis, use of sources, and formatting while post session client report forms suggest that consultants only partially addressed her concerns and on occasion instead addressed sentence level issues, even when other goals were indicated by the writer as their intended focus for the session. By her junior and senior year, Akuba requested support with word choice and sentence structure; but her writing self regulation and growth were compromised by these early visits. In the areas which Akuba astutely identified as focus areas where she would benefit from further writing dialogue, Akuba had not consistently received the support she needed and requested. In turn, her goals shifted in response to the goals identified by her writing center consultants. While assessment scores for Akuba’s tone and disciplinary conventions did indeed increase between her first and second semester, the other areas she self identified as goals for writing support demonstrated no comparable growth.

To engage with these findings, in Spring 2022, in collaboration with a TESOL faculty member and students, the writing center offered all writing center consultants and interns a workshop dedicated to goal setting during consultations with multilingual students. While this subject matter is addressed in the writing center internship course, being able to hear of specific findings from our own center helped to facilitate our discussion of how to listen effectively and support multilingual writers’ writing goals in the center and beyond. Thus, this case study, in providing an exception to the larger quantitative trends, helped to shape a local dialogue around best practices for supporting multilingual writers in our writing center. As Bobbi Olson argues, “All student writers deserve to be heard on their own terms as they try to negotiate and understand the expectations placed on them from without” (5). This assessment data gave us an opportunity to reflect on strategies for listening. Thus, even and perhaps especially as we identify areas for continued growth, writing centers must celebrate our ability to leverage qualitative and quantitative writing center and writing assessment data to identify trends in writers whom we are best supporting, to identify gaps, and to drive improvements in our practices. This use of assessment data truly is a strength in the center and allows us to build upon and extend our best practices.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Discussion and Conclusions

Overall, students who engaged in self initiated writing center visits showed more improvement in their scores between first and second semester in a blind university writing assessment compared to their peers. These findings suggest not only the value of the writing center but possibly also of other factors that inform writer growth and that may distinguish students who more frequently make self initiated appointments, such as students’ ambivalent self identification as writers. Ironically, the students who made more self initiated writing center appointments were also the same students who were more likely to express ambivalence about their identity as writers, but in turn they were also the students who showed the most writing growth between first and second semester. In many areas, these students’ writing in their first year showed improvements of 0.2 to 0.4 on a 4 point scale, with growth in these areas comparable to the average growth observed in Oppenheimer, et al. (2017) across four years.

While these findings are encouraging, assessment results are only as useful as the stories they allow us to share, the questions they invite us to ask, and the actions they encourage us to take. The present findings suggest possible benefits (and risks) for students, faculty, and writing centers. Students would benefit from being more aware of the impact of writing center sessions, and of investment in the writing process more generally. For more confident writers, the realization that their writing may not grow as much in the absence of this investment in process could be a motivation to visit the center. For less confident writers, seeing the impact of the center and a student’s own investment in their writing process might likewise encourage use or continued use, while helping to destigmatize the choice of using the center. From a faculty perspective, an important learning objective in a first year writing class might be that students develop a growth mindset with regard to their writing and writing process. In writing conferences, faculty might talk with students about whether and why they identify as writers. Through candid conversations in conferences, class, and reflective writing, we can help all writers to see that the way to grow is to invest in their process, including engaging with the writing center.

As the writing center seeks to analyze student experiences and writing outcomes, the present findings may also suggest a strategy that allows us to gain more insight from our assessment data. Given the differences in assessment outcomes for students who self initiate writing center visits compared to those who do not, it may be worthwhile breaking out these student populations in a center’s assessment data, including

post session surveys and writing assessments. Disaggregating the data and adding targeted questions in our surveys may help give a clearer picture of the distinct student needs in the two groups, and perhaps more importantly how to encourage students toward self initiation. Additional research is needed to explore further the exact impact of the writing center on student writing assessment results. For instance, qualitative studies comparing multiple drafts of the same assessment paper may be enriched by writing center records documenting not only the focus of the session but also whether the writer self initiated the session or visited in response to a requirement. Similarly, discourse analysis of required and self initiated sessions may reveal differences in conversational turns, writer engagement, and scaffolds for positive revisions.

Scaffolding writer self regulation may be of specific benefit as writing centers work to promote the kind of writer engagement that motivates a student to visit the center. For instance, in a study of writing center discourse, Isabelle Thompson and Jo Mackiewicz illustrate how tutors use a variety of question types to promote student engagement, and they consider how self regulation may be relevant in this process. As in the present study, they include writer initiation of sessions as an important component of this self regulation, arguing that “[b]y taking the initiative to come to the writing center, by collaborating with tutors to set agendas, and by asking questions,” the students in their study were “already exercising some self regulation.” They also call for additional scaffolding and feedback in the writing center to promote and support this self regulation (63, 64). Even as writing instructors may design in class activities that support writers’ efforts to craft specific questions and agenda items for upcoming writing center sessions, writing center tutors in consultations and workshops may likewise help to promote writer initiated questions during sessions. For instance, through the study of specific center transcripts, as in Thompson and Mackiewicz’s research, tutors may be trained to ask certain types of question sequences and to provide scaffolding and feedback that models and encourages writer questions, self regulation, and engagement. Writers’ ever developing skills in self regulation, fostered by the writing center and their classes, may in turn promote both self initiated writing center visits and the types of writing growth observed in writing program assessments.

Limitations and Future Research

In exploring these patterns of writer growth, this study seeks to illustrate how writing programs may

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

leverage existing first year writing and writing center assessment data to be mutually informative. As a result, this study provides analyses based on existing writing assessment data, and it is possible that revisions to the first year writing rubric or to the mywconline report form prompts might yield deeper insights into the relationship between writing center use and first year writing outcomes. Ideally, this type of analysis might be used to develop new lines of dialogue, which as Jewell suggests, might position the writing center as central to campus conversations on writing. From these conversations, guided by local questions and data, writing programs and writing centers may decide if and in what ways they might like to revise rubrics or writing center report prompts to gather data that best address their needs.

Given the labor intensive and expensive nature of this quantitative first year writing assessment, involving multiple writing colleagues serving as blind readers, and given budgetary changes and changes in faculty availability during the recent pandemic, only one year of data is available for analysis. It is possible that over time, even as there is variation from one campus to the next, that one may observe different assessment results. This possibility highlights the importance of similar assessment work connecting writing program assessment more deeply with writing center assessment, completed across a broader array of campus settings within single academic years but also longitudinally. Writing centers are well positioned to get to know student writers individually and over time. Integrating quantitative and qualitative writing center assessment data into the larger writing program assessment provides a richer portrait of student writing and writers. This process can also reveal inequities in writing instruction, assessment, or support as we compare case studies against quantitative findings. It is our responsibility to leverage all available writing assessment data to best understand the writers on our campus and to use assessment to create opportunity and access.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Colleen Morrissey for her diligent work in writing program data entry and Kelly Belanger for generously sharing writing program assessment data.

Notes

1. See Pleasant and Trakas (3) for a recent literature review of writing center scholarship

comparing quantitative and qualitative methods of assessment.

Works Cited

Babcock, Rebecca Day, and Thonus, Terese. Researching the Writing Center: Towards an Evidence Based Practice. Peter Lang, 2018.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/3208646 Bell, Barbara, and Robert Stutts. "The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions: The Effects of Mandatory Writing Center Visits on Student and Tutor Attitudes." Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 22, no. 1, 1997, pp. 5 8.

https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v22/22 1.pdf

Cassity, Kathleen J. "Measuring the Invisible: The Limits of Outcomes Based Assessment." Writing on the Edge, vol. 25, no. 1, 2014, pp. 62 71.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24871681#metadata_inf o_tab_contents

Clark, Irene Lurkis. "Leading the Horse: The Writing Center and Required Visits." The Writing Center Journal, vol. 5, no. 2/1, 1985, pp. 31 34. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43441808#metadata_inf o_tab_contents

Gere, Anne R. Developing Writers in Higher Education: A Longitudinal Study. University of Michigan Press, 2019. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/23990

Gordon, Barbara Lynn. "Requiring First Year Writing Classes to Visit the Writing Center: Bad Attitudes or Positive Results?" Teaching English in the Two Year College, vol. 36, no. 2, 2008, pp. 154.

https://www.proquest.com/docview/220964832?pq origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true

Haswell, Richard H. "NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship." Written Communication, vol. 22, no. 2, 2005, 198 223.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07410 88305275367

Jewell, M. S. "Sustaining Argument: Centralizing the Role of the Writing Center in Program Assessment." Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 8, no. 2, 2011. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/62569

Lerner, Neal. "Counting Beans and Making Beans Count." Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 22, no. 1, 1997, pp. 1 3. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v22/22 1.pdf

Lerner, Neal. "Writing Center Assessment: Searching for the ‘Proof’ of Our Effectiveness." M. Pemberton, & J. Kinkead, The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Writing Center Scholarship (2003): 58 73. https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/j.ctt46nxnq.7.pdf

Malenczyk, Rita. “‘I Thought I’d Put That in to Amuse You’: Tutor Reports as Organizational Narrative." The Writing Center Journal, vol. 33, no. 1, 2013, pp. 74 95. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442404#metadata_inf o_tab_contents

Niiler, Luke. "The Numbers Speak Again: A Continued Statistical Analysis of Writing Center Outcomes." Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 29, no. 5, 2005, pp. 13 15. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v29/29.5.pdf

Nora, Krystia. "Moving Forward in Writing Program Assessment Design: Why Postmodern Qualitative Assessment Makes Sense." CEA Forum, vol. 39, no. 2. College English Association. Web site: http://www. cea web. org, 2010. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1083538

Olson, Bobbi. "Rethinking our Work with Multilingual Writers: The Ethics and Responsibility of Language Teaching in the Writing Center." Praxis: A Writing Center Journal (2013). https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/62178

Oppenheimer, Daniel, et al. "Improvement of Writing Skills During College: A Multi year Cross sectional and Longitudinal Study of Undergraduate Writing Performance." Assessing Writing, vol. 32, 2017, pp. 12 27.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1 075293516300708

Perryman Clark, Staci M. "Who We Are (n't) Assessing: Racializing Language and Writing Assessment in Writing Program Administration." College English, vol. 79, no. 2, 2016, pp. 206 211. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44805919#metadata_inf o_tab_contents

Picciotto, Madeleine. "Writing Assessment and Writing Center Assessment: Collision, Collusion, Conversation." Praxis: A Writing Center Journal (2010). https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/62298

Pleasant, Scott E., and Deno P. Trakas. "Two Approaches to Writing Center Assessment." WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, vol. 45, no. 7 8, 2021, pp. 3 11. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v45/45.7 8.pdf

Rourke, Lisa, and Xuchen Zhou. "When Scores Do Not Increase: Notes on Quantitative Approaches to Writing Assessment." Journal of Writing Analytics, vol. 3, 2019, pp. 264 285. https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/jwa/vol3/rourke.pdf

Sommers, Nancy. "The Call of Research: A Longitudinal View of Writing Development." College Composition and Communication, vol. 60, no. 1, 2008, pp. 152 164.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20457050#metadata_inf o_tab_contents

Thompson, Isabelle. “Writing Center Assessment: Why and a Little How.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 26, no. 1, 2006, pp. 33 61.

https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/wcj/vol26/iss1/7/ Thompson, Isabelle, and Jo Mackiewicz. "Questioning in Writing Center Conferences." The Writing Center Journal, vol. 33, no. 2, 2014, pp. 37 70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43443371#metadata_inf o_tab_contents

Wells, Jaclyn. "Why We Resist ‘Leading the Horse’: Required Tutoring, RAD Research, and Our Writing Center Ideals." The Writing Center Journal, 2016, pp. 87 114.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/43824058#metadata_inf o_tab_contents

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Appendix A

Table 1: Changes from First to Second Semester: Students with Self Initiated Writing Center Visits

Feature First Semester Mean Score Second Semester Mean Score Z value p value

Title 2.20 2.68 3.0741 .001 Thesis 2.28 2.51 2.3538 .009 Organizational Statement 2.23 2.43 1.7525 .040

Organization 2.29 2.60 2.5023 .006 Use of Evidence 2.18 2.41 2.2343 .012 Clarity 2.56 2.86 2.4678 .006 Style 2.48 2.61 1.5025 .067 (ns) Mechanics 2.53 2.60 0.7 .241 (ns) Academic Tone 2.37 2.52 1.3588 .087 (ns) Disciplinary Conventions 2.44 2.48 0.5018 .31 (ns)

Table 2: Changes from First to Second Semester: Students with No Self Initiated Writing Center Visits

Feature First Semester Mean Score Second Semester Mean Score Z value p value

Title 2.34 2.73 3.2268 .0006 Thesis 2.37 2.50 1.4785 .069 (ns) Organizational Statement 2.29 2.17 1.0988 .136 (ns) Organization 2.26 2.38 1.14 .127 (ns) Use of Evidence 2.17 2.30 1.4315 .076 (ns) Clarity 2.73 2.75 0.121 .452 (ns) Style 2.40 2.41 0.0282 .488 (ns) Mechanics 2.50 2.56 0.5507 .291 (ns) Academic Tone 2.44 2.35 0.963 .169 (ns) Disciplinary Conventions 2.44 2.30 1.5817 .057 (ns)

Table 3: Self Identification as Writers in Writing Center Records

Writing Center Use Does Not Self Identify as a Writer

Sometimes or Rarely Self Identifies as a Writer

Identifies as a Writer without Qualification Total

Self Initiated Writing Center Users 18 (58.1%) 11 (35.5%) 2 (6.5%) 31

Sample of Non Users and Required Users of the Writing Centera

22 (66.7%) 3 (9.1%) 8 (24.2%) 33

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

a. For students who did not use the writing center, data is only available for those who made accounts, and it is possible that writing center non users who do not even make accounts may be again a somewhat different population from those who do. It is also possible in some cases that these are the same populations as students frequently make accounts in class during writing center orientation sessions, not necessarily when they are anticipating appointments.

Table 4: Students with Self Initiated Writing Center Visits for Papers Other than the Assessment Samples

Feature Increased Score from First to Second Semester Same Score in the First and Second Semester Decreased Score between the First and Second Semester

Title 13 (76.5%) 1 (5.9%) 3 (17.7%) Thesis 7 (41.2%) 6 (35.3%) 4 (23.5%) Organizational Statement 9 (52.9%) 3 (17.6%) 5 (29.4%)

Organization 9 (52.9%) 2 (11.8%) 6 (35.3%) Use of Evidence 9 (52.9%) 1 (5.9%) 7 (41.2%) Clarity 7 (41.2%) 7 (41.2%) 3 (17.6%) Style 5 (29.4%) 7 (41.2%) 5 (29.4%) Mechanics 8 (47.1%) 2 (11.8%) 7 (41.2%) Academic Tone 6 (35.3%) 4 (23.5%) 7 (41.2%) Disciplinary Conventions 7 (41.2%) 5 (29.4%) 5 (29.4%)

Feature Increased Score from First to Second Semester

Same Score in the First and Second Semester Decreased Score between the First and Second Semester

Title 28 (52.8%) 18 (34.0%) 7 (13.2%) Thesis 23 (43.4%) 18 (34.0%) 12 (22.6%) Organizational Statement 17 (32.1%) 12 (22.6%) 24 (45.3%)

Organization 23 (43.4%) 13 (24.5%) 17 (32.1%)

Use of Evidence 23 (43.4%) 18 (34.0%) 12 (22.6%) Clarity 19 (35.8%) 16 (30.2%) 18 (34.0%) Style 23 (43.4%) 11 (20.8%) 19 (35.8%) Mechanics 18 (34.0%) 16 (30.2%) 19 (35.8%) Academic Tone 22 (41.5%) 9 (17.0%) 22 (41.5%) Disciplinary Conventions 17 (32.1%) 15 (28.3%) 21 (39.6%)

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Table 5: Students Who Never Self Initiated Any Writing Center Visits and Who Did Not Complete a Required Visit for the Assessment Sample

Table 6: Writing Center Use for Writing Assessment Samples and Scores

Mean Difference in Scores: First to Second Semester

First Semester Mean Score Writing Center Visit for First Semester Sample

Second Semester Mean Score Writing Center Visit for Second Semester Sample

0.66 2.725 required 2.06

0.63 2.925 2.30 required

0.20 3 self initiated 2.80

0.18 2.375 2.20 required

0.15 2.45 2.30 required

0.15 3 required 2.85

Writing Center Visit for First and Second Semester Sample

0.08 2.825 2.75 self initiated 0.00 2.15 required 2.15 0.05 2.525 2.58 self initiated 0.05 1.95 required 2.00 0.15 3.175 required 3.33

0.18 2.75 2.93 self initiated & required

0.28 2.2 2.48 self initiated 0.40 1.9 required 2.30

0.40 1.8 self initiated 2.20

0.40 2.6 3.00 self initiated

0.48 2.375 required 2.85

0.60 2.45 self initiated 3.05 0.60 1.725 2.33 required 0.65 1.5 2.15 self initiated

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 20, No 1 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com