Rachel Zucker and Kathy Evertz

We were excited to learn more about the experiences of our former writing consultants and to contribute to the PWTARP. In the winter of 2011, we sent surveys to 54 former writing consultants. We received responses from 41 consultants, a response rate of 76%.

We were particularly interested in learning what they learned about writing, about themselves as writers, and about the writing of others. What were the most significant skills, values, and/or abilities that they developed in their work as consultants? How did their experiences as writing consultants shape their approach to work and graduate school after Carleton?

I learned how to ‘consult’ rather than ‘instruct.’ The experience of not telling someone what they should do, but instead walking them through the process of deciding what to do and granting them agency over their own problem has been incredibly valuable both personally and professionally.

While many writing consultants reported that their experience allowed them to grow as deliberate, conscious writers, most focused on other rewards they gained from their work. Alumni said the job enhanced their collaborative skills, taught them how to negotiate relationships in a variety of settings, and taught them to ask generative questions.

Many noted that they gained a better appreciation for clarity. One wrote that working at the Writing Center “drummed into my head that WRITING IS COMMUNICATION. If you want people to understand what you are writing, you must make it clear for them.” One alum sees the Center as a microcosm of the College, noting that the Writing Center “has everything that’s best about Carleton: a thirst for knowledge, optimism, a refusal to take itself too seriously, value for important things (honesty, truth, equality for all students), a belief that every single student should be cherished and that every single student has unique ideas….”

For more, please visit https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/asc/writeplace/applications/alumni/

–Rachel Zucker, Psychology Major, Carleton College Class of 2011, Data Analyst
–Kathy Evertz, Director, Academic Support Center, Carleton College

Aryanne Schommer at the SWCA Conference in Tuscaloosa, AL

It has been an interesting three years tutoring at the University Writing Center (UWC) at St. Thomas University (STU) in Miami. In my first “tutor biography” on our writing center’s website, I called tutoring symbiotic, stating that I would learn as much from the students I tutored as they learned from me.  Now, when I look back at what I wrote as a sophomore, I am still amazed at the opportunities that have come from my work at the UWC.

Last semester, I began researching the history of the Southeastern Writing Center Association (SWCA), and, in the process, began to learn more about the writing center world that I had become fascinated with.  When I met Dr. Paula Gillespie one afternoon at the FIU campus to discuss the SWCA and to learn more about the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project, I became inspired to transfer the project onto a visual medium.

The Writing Center Alumni poster (see below) showcases the potential future for all writing tutors. It is my goal that this poster showcases what I feel are my own future possibilities because of the work that I have done within the field. The Writing Center Alumni poster represents the important abstract and tangible connections that inspired me to originally conduct more research on the field. These connections are not only fostered by the tutees that enter through our doors, but have also been experienced by the tutor alumni that have greeted them on the other side.

The poster was an integral part of my lunch-hour plenary, “SWCA at 30: Past, Present and Future,” at the 2011 SWCA Conference in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and has been proposed by the SWCA executive board as a poster for members.  At the 2011 STU Undergraduate Research Symposium, I was awarded the Dean’s Excellence in Research Award for both the research and the professional outcomes that have arisen from the project and the poster.  Without my work at the UWC, such professional opportunities would have never been created.

Aryanne's poster about Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research

–Aryanne Schommer

PWTARP research poster from IWCA-NCPTW, Baltimore, November 2010

As part of the Scholar-to-Scholar poster sessions at the recent IWCA-NCPTW conference in Baltimore, the PWTARP team (Harvey, Paula, and Brad) proudly shared our findings with many colleagues from around the US and beyond.  Many thanks to Terry Maggio, from UW-Madison’s Writing Center, for designing this gorgeous poster and a big thanks to Jon Olson for sharing these wonderful photos.

Jill Gladstein

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Writing Associates (WA) Program at Swarthmore College and inspired by the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project, we decided in the fall of 2005 to survey former WAs about their experiences in the program and what they took from these experiences to their lives after college.   In the fall of 2009, we resent the survey to students who had graduated since the first survey.  In total we surveyed 554 alumni, and we were able to use 297 completed surveys for our analysis.

In the spring of 2009, two current WAs analyzed some of the data and produced an initial report that was sent to alums and some people on campus. These students were most interested in the questions:

1. How did your time as a WA influence your college experience?
2. What were the downsides to working as a WA?
3. How did your experiences as a WA transfer to your current profession?

They expected alums to comment on how their writing and tutoring skills improved, but they did not expect to hear alums mention such things as the ability to negotiate, to maintain diplomacy, and to develop a reflective practice as something they took from their time as Writing Associates.  The alumni survey gave both alums and current WAs an opportunity to reflect on the knowledge gained through this opportunity of peer tutoring.

During the spring of 2009, a faculty committee utilized some of the results from this study to support a proposal to redefine the WA position as a fellowship rather than employment because of the educational benefits for the WAs themselves.  Instead of providing anecdotal evidence, we were able to provide both quantitative and qualitative data to support our claim that peer tutoring is an educational experience for Writing Associates.

For more information about this research with Swarthmore alumni, please contact Jill Gladstein, Director of Writing, Swarthmore College, jgladst1@swarthmore.edu.

–Jill Gladstein

Here are some of the research questions that participants in our CCCC session came up with:

• What else did tutors learn from working in the writing center?
• What did they learn about other disciplines, or what more did they learn about their own?
• Does the length of time someone was a writing tutor influence how much they learned?
• In what ways were tutor alums’ career choices influence or altered by having been a peer writing tutor?
• How have their writing center experiences complicated or made more difficult their occupations?
• How did tutors translate tutoring skills to the workplace?
• How did tutors translate tutoring experience and skills to graduate school, and what differences do they see?
• What happens to students who don’t succeed as peer tutors?
• What’s the relationship between parenting and being a peer writing tutor?
• Do tutors benefit because writers are losing?
• How do writing center directors/administrators/educators get in tutors’ way?
• What’s an administrator’s role in a community of practice?
• Peer tutors can be a self-selected group.  Did peer tutors refine skills they already had before starting a tutor-education course and before starting work as a tutor?
• Did tutors see their work as scholarly?

And some future research questions Paula Gillespie would like to answer about listening skills:

• At what stage of your training or work as a tutor did you become aware that your listening skills had developed?
• How do you use your listening skills in your profession? Would you give an example?
• Do you use your listening skills in your family or life relationships? How?
• How did your listening skills affect the students you worked with? Can you give an example?

Do you have other research questions you’d like to answer about tutor learning? Please share them by adding a comment below. Thanks!

–Brad, Paula, and Harvey

Sue Dinitz (l) and Jean Kiedaisch, with Ron Maxwell

From the moment we heard about the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project, we felt the University of Vermont Writing Center would be an excellent site for contributing to this research.  Our Writing Center has been run by the same co-directors since the year after it opened (1982), and so we have a personal connection to the over three hundred tutors who have worked here.  We sent out the survey in the summer of 2007 and think we reached about 200 of our 300 former tutors (up through 2005).  Over 130 tutors eventually returned the survey.  At the 2008 International Writing Centers Association Conference, we reported on what tutors saw as the importance of peer tutoring in three areas:  their college experience, their development as writers, and their careers.  We further explored this aspect of the surveys in an article in The Writing Lab Newsletter (”Tutoring Writing as Career Development,” 34.3, November 2009, pp. 1-5), where we analyze what specific abilities and skills tutors felt they gained from tutoring, the range of career paths tutors followed, and how the abilities and skills developed through tutoring were instrumental to tutors’   success in a wide range of careers.
–Sue Dinitz and Jean Kiedaisch

In spring 2009, undergraduates who had taken the one-credit experiential Peer Tutoring in the Disciplines course at George Mason University within the past 10 years were contacted and asked to fill out a survey asking them about what communication and community skills—academic and interpersonal—they felt they had acquired through the experience and how they were applying these skills in their lives after college. All of the respondents gave glowing reviews, with several saying the experience played a role in their being awarded prestigious graduate fellowships and entry level jobs requiring strong communication skills.  The fall 2009 WAC Program newsletter features an article about the results.

The survey project was motivated by a national research project (The Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project) undertaken to determine the significance of the tutoring experience for tutors, even after they graduate from college, leave the writing center behind, and immerse themselves in their post-graduate careers. Our survey eventually diverged from the national version, because we were most interested in learning more about whether and how our peer tutor alumni have made use of their Writing Center experiences. We wanted to learn about their career paths and whether or not their tutoring experience influenced their career choices and/or enhanced their resumes.

Though we have a small pool of alumni from which to draw (63 peer tutors and writing fellows over the past 10 years), we are encouraged by the number of responses we have received thus far. We were helped in our efforts to locate our former peer tutors by the Alumni Office, who also helped us develop our survey and accompanying letter. We plan to continue our efforts to reach our alums, from whom we have received overwhelmingly positive responses about the value of the experience to both their college lives and lives after college.

–Terry Zawacki