Re: wc's, faculty referral, student resposibility

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

Catherine, I find this gets addressed in an interesting way in our writing
center because we have undergraduate consultants as well as graduate
coonsultants.  New graduate consultants come on board in the fall.
Normally we take all of the third-year Eng. graduate students, who are
also in their first year of teaching composition.  New undergraduates come
on board in the spring, when they take the course I teach called "Writing
Center Internship."  One rather neat thing that happens in the fall, is
that the new graduate consultants are placed in the position of having to
learn about the writing center and about tutoring from experienced
undergraduates.  We also, of course, do specific things to train new
graduate consultants, but I suspect they learn a great deal from observing
and interacting with the undergraduates.  It presents them with a model of
undergraduates as competent professionals (at least ideally).  An
additional advantage of this system is that there is never a time in the
year when the majority of consultants are complete newbies.

Sara Kimball
UT Austin

On Sun, 3 Nov 1996 Catherine_Imbriglio@postoffice.brown.edu wrote:

> Even so, the list's recent discussions on "knowledge" and "authority" in
> conference dynamics seems especially apt for our Center.  One of the things
> I've been wrestling with is how to deal with the advantages and
> disadvantages that come from the hierarchical relationships that develop in
> our conferences simply because our Center's staff members are all graduate
> students (mostly doctoral candidates, plus me, a Ph.D. in English and
> American Lit).      Most of the literature on WC conferencing that I'm
> aware of doesn't seem to address specifically the kind of "built-in"
> structural disparities that result simply because of the experience and
> maturity level that graduate students bring to their conferences.   Is
> there anything out there that I'm missing?
> 
> Catherine
> 
> >
> >In the model which Christina Murphy called "the wave of the future"
> >(though I'm not clear on how it differs from the Brown model, which
> >has been debated for at least the last 12 years), tutors are assigned
> >to "cover" specific classes.  So tutors have the edge on the tutees
> >both in terms of status (they get a special title, pay, etc.) and in
> >terms of knowledge (tutors are assigned to work with classes
> >in their own disciplines, so they know at least as much about the
> >subject as the tutee).  The tutee would rarely get to "change roles"
> >with the tutor, because the tutor knows the subject alcready (though
> >I suppose the tutor could pretend not to know something, so as to test
> >the tutee's grasp of a concept).
> >
> >So if we accept what Christina Murphy said about the need for
> >role changing and acceptance of difference between consultant
> >and client, what's the advantage of the Brown model?
> >
> >Christina Murphy also said that writing center directors need to face
> >the fact that there is no "content" to writing outside of a
> >discipline; good writing is discipline-specific.  But again, it seems
> >students would best learn that when they have an opportunity to see
> >writing in different disciplines.  Otherwise, they fall prey to the
> >same misguided assumptions about writing that faculty do when they
> >boast that "Writing in history [philosophy, chemistry, business] is
> >not like writing in philosophy [history, chemistry, business] because
> >we have to [be precise, support our claims, avoid wordiness]."
> >
> >The experience of working with writers in different disciplines,
> >rather than being stuck in one discipline, is what attracts many of us
> >(students and faculty) to work in writing centers to begin with.
> >
> >Dr. Beth Rapp Young
> >U of Alabama in Huntsville
> >YoungBR@email.uah.edu
> >
> 
> 
> Catherine Imbriglio
> Coordinator of the Writing Center
> Box 1852 English
> Brown University
> Providence RI 02912
> 
> 
>