Phyllis Benay, Writing Center Director

Background: In 1982, Brown University created and implemented the first Writing Fellows Program. The conception was very simple: hire an undergraduate writing tutor to work intensively with a specific course and instructor with the express purpose of helping students in that course produce better pieces of writing. According to all evaluations-faculty, students, and tutors-it worked. Brown then invested more time and money into the project until it became an intrinsic part of their campus culture. Now, 200-300 Writing Fellows are recruited, trained, and work with courses throughout the curriculum and dozens of programs are modeled after theirs, including our own.

KSC's Involvement: For the past few years, our Writing Center has experimented with the same concept with similar results: writing skills improve, faculty feel very supported in their efforts to improve the quality of the writing projects, and students are receiving the help they need to reach their objectives. In order for a course to be assigned a Fellow, several criteria must be met:

• A minimum of 2 writing projects must be assigned.
• All students, regardless of their writing ability, must bring a draft to the Center.
• Time must be allotted and carefully scheduled so that the draft process is effective.
• Faculty must keep in contact with the tutor so that students see this as a collaborative, useful effort rather than just an additional requirement.

Results: Despite some initial kinks in the design and delivery of the Program, the Writing Fellows approach has tremendous potential for changing the way faculty and students talk about writing. First of all, since the entire process-from creating the assignment to articulating expectations-is shared with the Writing Fellow, faculty are engaged in a unique, collaborative opportunity. Both the Fellow and the instructor have a shared responsibility to clarify the requirements of the assignment. Together-tutor and instructor-can reinforce, from different perspectives, the need for quality in academic writing. This kind of conversation trickles down to students who hear the same message from the Fellow as they do from their teacher. In addition, a Writing Fellows Program cultivates the notion that in order to produce better writing, all writers require feedback. The work of tutoring is not just about remediation, but about producing better writers. By incorporating one-on-one tutoring sessions into the curriculum, both skilled and unskilled writers have the chance to progress. And lastly, the program is a wonderful opportunity for experienced tutors to move to the next level; after several semesters of tutoring, they are ready for more sustained relationships with students. By helping students through a few writing assignments, tutors can see not only patterns of errors, but genuine progress and development. And as Linda Baker's piece on pg. 3 clearly shows, faculty have an easier time reading papers that are more coherent.

The Future: Obviously, KSC's Writing Fellows Program is limited and will probably continue this way in the immediate future. Right now, we can only offer two Writing Fellows each semester, and although that number is small, the focus will continue on quality rather than quantity. Since the Fellows are selected from the Writing Center tutor pool, it is wise to proceed cautiously. Not all faculty need or want to share the load with a student/tutor and not everyone can plan well enough in advance to insure that the system works effectively. However, there is more demand than we can fill, so the Writing Task Force is designing an application process. If you are interested in a Writing Fellow, please request an application by e-mailing pbenay@keene.edu. The Task Force will review these requests and make their decision for the next academic year by May..