Re: WID resources and tutor research

[cph@wiley.csusb.edu (Carol Haviland)]

Karen--
Another link of this type I'm using is pairing tutors or tutors-in-class
with faculty members in our spring WAC seminar.  The students create access
to a new discourse community, and the faculty members learn how to work with
writing tutors.   Both find the relationship useful.

Carol
>Karin, Hi.  You asked about having tutors in a tutoring class research 
>writing in fields other than English and other issues of interest to 
>writing centers. I heartily endorse this approach.  Our writing center 
>has been in existence for two years now, and we had to start more or less 
>from scratch.  Last year (our second year) was the first year we were 
>open for students outside of writing and English lit. classes, and next 
>year, when we will be supported by a fee paid by undergraduates from all 
>university departments, we will be expected to do extensive work 
>supporting our university's WAC program.  We've needed all the knowledge 
>we could assemble, and everyone in the writing center's contribution has 
>been potentially valuable. For the past two years I've asked students in the 
>class I 
>give to train undergraduate consultants to do a research project.  The 
>ground rules are that the project interest the student intellectually 
>and contribute to our material and intellectual resources as a writing 
>center.  I've suggested that the default value is a typical research 
>paper, but have urged my consultants to do handouts, hypercard stacks, 
>and presentations, since these are more efficient ways of spreading 
>knowledge.  People have done useful projects, but almost more 
>importantly, these projects, I think, can give the undergrads a sense of 
>belonging to  the writing center. I've tried to present these projects as 
>ways of helping to build an institution, and i think that's what happens 
>for many of them. Sometimes I have to guide their enthusiasm a bit. 
>	Two of the students in the class this spring did a project 
>surveying instructors in courses outside the Eng. dept. on writing in 
>their fields.  I initially had to convince them that is was going to be 
>impossible to survey *every* teacher of undergraduates on our campus and 
>that they should concentrate on some of the classes that our records 
>indicated bought us a lot of business, and I  had to console them at various 
>points when some faculty members were less than enthusiastic about 
>responding to a lengthy survey at the end of the semester. I also 
>discovered after the survey went out that it was headed "Writing Center 
>Discipline Survey," which evokes kind of interesting images ;-).  But 
>they did make several valuable contacts, and the information they have 
>collected will prove useful next year.
>	I'd really like to keep this research project, which started out of 
>sheer necessity, an important part of my course.
>Sara Kimball
>UT Austin 
>
>
Carol Peterson Haviland
California State University, San Bernardino
(909) 880 5833