Jennifer Holt, Acting Director

Writing Studio

Jennifer Holt, Acting Director

Vanderbilt University

Mission Statement

The mission of the Vanderbilt Writing Studio is to enhance undergraduate writing, to promote academic acculturation, and to foster creative intellectual inquiry by encouraging students to participate in regular dialogue about their writing processes and about their own scholarlyventures. Through individual consultation sessions, group workshops, and other programs, the Writing Studio supports all Vanderbilt students at any stage in their writing processes for any writing project.

In accordance with the Writing Studio’s mission and the mission of the University, we anticipate that utilization of Writing Studio services will generate the following outcomes:

1. Students will recognize writing as a process and the practice of writing as a mode of learning.

2. Students will identify revision as an essential part of their writing processes.

3. Students will develop critical thinking skills, take intellectual risks, and experiment with a variety of different writing methods and styles.

4. Students will continue to seek out Writing Studio services, and related campus resources, at all stages of their undergraduate careers.

History and Staffing

The Writing Studio opened as a fully-staffed student service in January 2006. Current administrative staff consists of a Director with a PhD in Philosophy and a Studio Manager with a BA in English.The consulting staff is composed of 11 graduate students (10 of whom are PhD candidates already possessing MA degrees) and 6 undergraduate students,primarily juniors and seniors, who were selected from a pool of applicants nominated by faculty from across the college.

Programs and Services

The Writing Studio offers confidential 50-minute long writing consultations for individual students, Monday through Thursday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and Friday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.Each semester, consultants design and present workshops that address both global and mechanical writing concerns including topics such as thesis statements in college writing, paraphrasing and appropriate source citation, the organization of research papers, technical and professional writing, passive voice, and the like. The Studio offers students access to a collection of more than 40 consultant-generated handouts addressing a variety of topics pertinent to writing across the curriculum, a writing reference library, networked computers, WiFi, access to VUPrint (the campus pay-for-print service), and group meeting space complete with A/V equipment to facilitate presentations. This semester, four of our graduate consultants are engaged in a special partnership with the Honors program in English, guiding writers’ groups for undergraduates working on their senior theses. All consultants conduct classroom visits, at the request of course professors, to inform students about Writing Studio services, to talk informally with students about their writing processes, and often, to lead students in a brief invention or revision exercise relevant to their current writing assignments. Occasionally, consultants have partnered with the Director of the Writing Studio and with course professors to develop and present full class-length workshops.

In addition to the aforementioned services, the Writing Studio hosts a number of programs intended to promote intellectual acculturation and to demonstrate Vanderbilt’s strong commitment to creative inquiry. In the series On Writing, the Director publicly interviews faculty and other campus authors to explore work habits, revision processes, the challenges of participation in collaborative projects, work in different genres, etc. Writers’ Circles are thematically focused workshop gatherings during which participants engage in guided written reflection and then share their writing with others in the group. This April, the Studio will pilot a First-Year Forum event in which faculty-nominated first-year students will present course papers in a conference-like atmosphere. During Writers’ Night events, we showcase the work of a faculty author and a handful of selected students and invite audience members to engage the featured authors in a Q&A format. Open Mic Night events offer all students the opportunity to present original poetry, prose, and song in a welcoming atmosphere.

Plans for Expansion of Programs and Services

Starting in late August 2007, Writing Studio hours of operation will include an additional 16 hours per week -- Monday through Thursday, 5:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. We anticipate that our work with Honors programs will grow through partnerships with various departments throughout the College. We plan, as well, to redesign our Web site in order to improve navigability and to add resources and an online appointment scheduling system for students. At the start of next academic year, we will unveil the first installment of a biannual campus newsletter that will function not only as a forum for discussion of our services but also as a forum for discussion of the teaching and practice of writing across campus. We plan to add critical writing workshops that encourage students to read carefully and critically various ‘texts’ belonging to popular culture. We also plan to add a series of Writing Roundtable dinners to facilitate student engagement in informal conversations with select faculty on special topics ranging from writing pet peeves to the composition of academic pieces for popular audiences.

For academic year 2008-2009, we hope that the Studio will be able to partner with the First-Year Writing Seminar program to allow a faculty member teaching one of these writing intensive courses to ‘embed’ a writing consultant in the course to work one-to-one with students. After reviewing writing center programming at peer institutions like Princeton, we are also exploring two other ideas for projects in conjunction with the First-Year Commons program: a writing partners program aimed at retention of students facing difficulty writing college-level papers, and a first-year scholarly researchinstitute which would bring select students to campus the summer before they matriculate in order to train them in advanced research techniques.

Consultant Training, Monitoring, and Professional Development

Consultants attend two full days of intensive workshop training before the start of the academic year and prepare for this training by reading the St Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors and the Vanderbilt Writing Studio Staff Manual. New as well as returning consultants attend the August training sessions. Additionally, throughout the year, all writing consultants attend weekly one-hour long staff meetings designed to explore in greater depth topics introduced during the August training and those arising from their day to day consulting experience. This year, our training sessions have greatly emphasized discussion of pedagogical issues within the context of issues raised by current writing center scholarship. Staff meetings regularly involve faculty presentations from various departments and programs including the Library, the English Language Center, and the Office of Honors Scholarships. Writing Studio staff members also design and present ‘special topics’ training workshops for these meetings. Staff members are encouraged to prepare conference papers for presentation at regional and national gatherings of writing center professionals. This year, 8 members of the Writing Studio staff will present at the Southeastern Writing Center Association conference.

Consultants track their sessions through database notes that are monitored by the Studio Manager and the Director. They also receive client feedback on individual consultations and workshops. Consultants are required, regularly, to observe each other’s sessions, to formulate a record of the observation experience, and to meet afterward for debriefing and discussion. Graduate consultants and undergraduate consultants are paired in mentoring relationships; one hour per week is set aside for these pairs to converse about consultation sessions or to collaborate on Writing Studio projects. Each semester, at mid-semester, consultants schedule individual conversations with the Director to discuss their progress and to review client feedback. At the end of each semester, consultants submit written reflections focusing on analysis of a specific aspect of their consulting practice.

Program Evaluation

Currently, we have in place electronic feedback forms for gathering client responses to individual consultation sessions and to workshops. In addition to their session notes, consultants are required to assess the successes and pitfalls of their workshops by completing a workshop reflection form. Already in response to evaluation of our workshop formats, we have made it a necessary component of each workshop that it afford students the opportunity to apply what they are learning or reviewing to an actual piece of writing-in-progress. Consultants who have partnered with faculty on full-class workshops have been required to debrief with those faculty members, and consultants often receive written feedback, typically in the form of unsolicited emails. The Writing Studio and Undergraduate Writing Program share a Writing Advisory Board – a group of 10 faculty members and one graduate student representative who discuss, at regular intervals throughout the academic year, plans for program enhancement and growth.

Although we have revised once already our session and workshop feedback forms for students, we will continue review and revision of these forms to better gather data on intended learning outcomes. Though consultants observe one another, the Director plans to schedule regular observation and debriefing time with each consultant. Starting this fall, the Writing Studio will extend its August training session to a full week in order to better prepare consultants. We also intend to develop satisfaction surveys for faculty to gather feedback about classroom visits, about student interaction with faculty regarding their Writing Studio experiences, and about faculty perception of improvements and deficiencies in student writing. We are investigating the possibilities for conducting focus groups with students at the start of each academic year. From these focus groups, we hope to gather data about students’ overall satisfaction with Writing Studio services. We hope to determine, specifically, the skills students identify as acquired from Writing Studio services, and to track student perceptions of the applicability, across curricular boundaries, of such skills.

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