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Graduate Writing Fellows

The Graduate Writing Fellows Program was launched in spring of 2013 to support the teaching of undergraduate writing across all disciplines. Fellows are selected on a competitive basis and are required to satisfactorily complete a graduate level writing pedagogy class, WRIT 671. Their pay is commensurate with the teaching (or teaching assistantship) of one class.
Each Graduate Writing Fellow is attached to one or more courses per semester and is charged with two interrelated tasks:

  • Support faculty in the development of effective writing assignments
  • Support students during the brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading stages of the writing process

Graduate Writing Fellows will sometimes attend the classes to which they are attached, but they spend most of their time meeting with students in one-on-one or group consultation sessions, assisting these students in writing associated with the course. The Fellows are not to participate in grading and will never report on student performance to the professor. In other words, this service is NOT tied to student evaluation in any way. Instead, this service is stubbornly student-centered and delivers the benefits of co-curricular tutoring directly to students in the context of their major courses. Graduate Writing Fellows will become familiar with the goals and outcomes of the course, the writing assignments, the criteria for evaluation, and the basics of the subject matter. The major professor of the course will meet with the Graduate Writing Fellow to discuss course expectations and assignments and to provide course materials. At the end of the course, the professor will be asked to submit a post-fellowship report to the Department of Writing and Rhetoric.

A committee representing multiples disciplines evaluates applications, considering a candidate’s letter of interest, a writing sample, and a faculty letter of recommendation.

Along with this course-focused support for writing in the disciplines, the program will develop a cadre of graduate student ambassadors from various fields who will model effective writing to their graduate-level colleagues and to undergraduate majors in the fields.

Meet the 2015-2016 Graduate Writing Fellows