For Faculty

For the Writing Fellows Program to work well for you and your students you should:

• Be a faculty member teaching either a Communication-B course, a Writing-Intensive course, or a course with at least two writing assignments, without TAs; the minimum enrollment is 15; the maximum is 40. We assign one Fellow for every 10-12 students in a course, so, for example, a course with 35 students would have three Writing Fellows.
• Believe in the philosophy underlying the Writing Fellows Program—that is, that writing is best taught as a process that involves revision; that well-prepared undergraduates can serve as role models for their peers and can help their peers improve their writing; and that undergraduates benefit from being placed in positions of leadership.
• Design two writing assignments with which the fellow will help your students. With each of these assignments, a draft must be due to the writing fellow two weeks before the final due date.
• Introduce the fellow to your class, stress to your class—throughout the semester—the value of working with a writing fellow, and be supportive of the fellow’s work.
• Articulate clearly your expectations for each writing assignment. Fellows work best when they can help students with well-defined writing tasks; open-ended assignments make it more difficult for fellows to make suggestions for revision. Remember that the writing fellows will not necessarily be familiar with the specific subject matter of your course or majoring in your department.
• Require all students in the course to submit the draft and meet with the fellow for conferences.
• Meet with the fellow periodically during the semester—to get to know the fellow, to talk about your expectations for each assignment, to discuss the fellow’s responses to some drafts, and to solicit feedback from your fellow.
• Be committed to helping your writing fellow grow intellectually through this experience.
• Refrain from asking the fellow to grade students’ papers or teach portions of your course.

Questions? Comments? Please call or write Emily Hall, Director of the Writing Fellows Program (263-3754; ebhall@wisc.edu).

• Please attend the orientation meeting we will schedule during the week before classes start.
• When writing your course syllabus, please include an explanation of the Fellows program and your Fellows’ names, as well as the “Fellow due dates” and the “final due dates” for each of the two papers on which the Fellows will work. And please make sure that these two papers, taken together, are worth at least 40% of the course grade.
• Introduce the Writing Fellows Program to your students on the first day of class. Explain what the program is, how it works, and why it’s integral to your course.
• Meet with your Fellows during the first week of class, to settle upon procedures for collecting and returning papers and for students to sign up for conferences, a late paper policy, and a date during the first two weeks of the term for your Fellows to come introduce themselves to your class.
• When discussing paper assignments with your students, please reinforce the importance of the revision process and remind them that submitting drafts, attending a conference with their Fellow, and revising the draft are mandatory.
• Please write out all paper assignments, being sure to include the “Fellow due date” and the “final due date” on the assignment sheet.
• When scheduling draft cycles, please keep to the following schedule:
  • Meet with your Fellows to discuss the assignment.
  • Schedule the first draft to come due no sooner than two weeks before the final draft is due.
  • Allow the Fellows a week to comment upon and return drafts.
  • Allow the Fellows a second week to hold conferences (encourage Fellows to hold their conferences early in the week so students have enough time to revise papers before turning them in).
  • Please do not change due dates without consulting your Fellows.
• Require that students turn in first drafts along with their final drafts to you. Consider requiring that students provide a cover letter along with the final draft.
• After you’ve finished grading papers, please let your Fellows know what they did well and suggest areas for improvement.
• Near the end of the term, please distribute to your students the evaluation forms that the program administrators will provide, collect the completed forms, and return them to the assistant director in the envelope provided.
• Let us know if you plan to work with Fellows next semester, so that we can include your class on the preference form that the Fellows fill out shortly before the term ends.
• Thank your Fellows at the end of the term.

Emily Hall, Ph.D., the associate director, administers the Writing Fellows Program, oversees everyone involved, coordinates the selection of new Fellows, and teaches English 403, the special three-credit honors seminar for first-time Fellows. Emily received her Ph.D. in English literature at UW-Madison, where she has taught writing since 1993. She welcomes your questions, concerns, and ideas about the Fellows program.

• Email: ebhall@wisc.edu
• Phone: (608)263-3754
• Office: 6163 Helen C. White Hall

Emily Bouza, the assistant director, coordinates the ongoing education of experienced Fellows, helps recruit and select applicants to the program, consults with faculty participants, and coaches Fellows on how to help student writers improve.

• Email: ebouza@wisc.edu
• Office: 6139 Helen C. White Hall

Brenna Swift, the other assistant director of the Writing Fellows Program, teaches a section of English 403, mentors Writing Fellows, and assists Emily in the administration of the program.

• Email: blswift@wisc.edu
• Office: 6139 Helen C. White Hall

The Writing Fellows are talented, enthusiastic, and thoughtful undergraduate writers from majors all across the College of Letters and Science, including anthropology, Afro-American studies, art history, biochemistry, comparative literature, engineering, English, history, political science, sociology, and zoology. All Fellows have ample experience writing both in their majors and in other disciplines, and all receive thorough training in writing instruction and peer tutoring. They are among the brightest and most accomplished students on campus, not to mention some of the university’s most dynamic and devoted teachers. Together they form a tight-knit group of gifted teacher-scholars dedicated to sharing their excitement and expertise with their peers.

Fellows are chosen in a carefully designed and highly competitive application process. Applicants must submit a personal statement, transcript, two writing samples, and a letter of recommendation from a professor or teaching assistant. After an initial screening, we select roughly fifty candidates to interview; based on the interviews, we then choose between twenty-five and thirty new Fellows each year. All Fellows have demonstrated strong writing ability and interpersonal skills, intellectual curiosity about the writing process, and a commitment to helping their peers. In addition, they come from majors across the College of Letters and Science and thus have experience with a variety of types of writing (e.g. scientific lab reports, literary analyses, research papers, critical reviews, and more)

Once they’ve joined the program, Fellows receive extensive training. In their first semester, Fellows enroll in English/Interdisciplinary Course 403: Seminar on Tutoring Writing Across the Curriculum. This three-credit honors seminar, taught by Emily Hall, explores how writers write, conventions of academic writing, and how to help writers revise their work. Fellows read recent work from composition studies, practice commenting on student drafts, conduct original research on writers and writing, and reflect on their own experiences as writers and tutors. The seminar also provides support and a sense of community as new Fellows begin the task of responding critically and constructively to student writing. Fellows who have already completed the seminar participate in ongoing education and professional development sessions and mentor new Fellows; many of them present their research at academic conferences. All Fellows receive continuing guidance and support from the program’s administrative staff and other members of the English department throughout their tenure.

What Writing Fellows Do

Each Fellow helps ten to fifteen students to revise two papers. All of the students in your course (not just writers who appear to need extra help) are required to submit drafts to their Fellow. The Fellow reads each draft carefully, making thoughtful marginal comments and writing extensive endnotes before returning the drafts to the students for review. The Fellow then conferences with each student individually, taking questions and making suggestions, praising what works as well as pointing out what doesn’t work, in order to help the student devise a plan for revision. Because paper drafts are turned in to the Writing Fellows before the final papers are submitted for a grade, faculty can be assured that all papers will have been started early and revised at least once. Ideally, having students go through this process of drafting and revising their papers with a Fellow enables faculty to concentrate on discipline-specific issues of content and method when grading student papers.

Because Fellows are peer mentors, not graders, they serve as facilitators rather than judges for the writers in your class. Building on the special trust that peers can share, they are in a unique position to advise, encourage, and challenge students on the often-sensitive issue of their own writing. By discussing writing with their peers, Fellows seek to de-mystify the conventions of academic writing and to help students make informed decisions as they go about revising their work. Fellows also serve as role models for their peers by demonstrating their own commitment to collaboration, critical thinking, and writing.

Some Things that Fellows Don’t Do

Not exactly a student and not quite a teaching assistant, the tutor, and especially the writing tutor, can sometimes seem to occupy a somewhat ambiguous role. In the interest of keeping ambiguity to a minimum, it pays to bear in mind some roles that the Writing Fellows do not play.

• Fellows address writing issues, not issues pertaining to course content. Because Fellows are not specialists in your discipline and will not be enrolled as students in your course, they are not in a position to evaluate the course-specific content of papers. They focus their comments on writing concerns: e.g.,Does this draft fulfill the formal requirements of the assignment? How clear is the thesis? How logically is the essay organized? While Fellows will doubtless engage in spirited discussions about course content during their conferences with students, they will do so as interested laypersons, not as experts in your field. They will keep in mind the goals you have set for the assignment as well as what they have learned in their seminar on tutoring, but you alone are responsible for assessing a paper’s content.
• Fellows are not copyeditors. The Fellows’ goal is to help their peers to become better writers, not to “fix” their prose for them. They therefore do not copyedit their peers’ papers, since having sentence-level errors corrected doesn’t teach a student how to avoid or correct those errors. While the Fellows will certainly identify patterns of grammatical or mechanical irregularity and explain how to avoid them, and point out sentences whose meaning is unclear and help the writer to clarify them, they are not proofreaders. It is ultimately the writer’s responsibility to copyedit his or her own work.

What the Fellows Need from You

The Writing Fellows are bright and active learners, but they are not yet fully developed teachers, and as students they have very busy schedules of their own. They will need your guidance, support, and consideration, which you can provide by taking the following steps.

• Be sure that your students understand that the Writing Fellows are an integral part of your course. The more clearly your students understand what the Fellows do, how much you value their contribution to the course, and how crucial working with the Fellows is to their success in class, the more seriously they’ll treat their interaction with the Fellows. So please stress the importance of the Fellows in your syllabus, on the first day of class, and when talking about your paper assignments.
• Keep the lines of communication open and active. From time to time your Fellows will have questions, concerns, and need advice. so please check in with them, respond promptly to their emails, and be available to meet. And should you need to modify your calendar of assignments or to make other adjustments that will affect your Fellows’ schedules, please consult with them as early as possible.
• Establish clear policies and stick to them. For the cycle of drafts, conferences, and revisions to proceed efficiently, clear policies with respect to late drafts, extensions, and attendance at conferences need to be in place. Please establish these with your Fellows at the outset of the semester, make sure that your students know what the policies are, and hold to them throughout the term.

Here are responses to questions that faculty have occasionally expressed.

Do Writing Fellows really need a full week to comment on papers?

Yes! Fellows are trained to comment extensively and thoughtfully on drafts of student papers. Fellows often spend 1-2 hours reading and commenting on each paper. In addition, they are full-time students and some of them work additional jobs to support themselves. As a result, they need at least one full week to comment fully and effectively on each student’s draft.

Why didn’t my Writing Fellow edit my students’ papers?

Research on writing shows that revision is most effective when it is done first at the “global” level and then at the “local” level. Global concerns include such issues as: Is the paper fulfilling the terms of the assignment? Does the paper follow a logical progression of thought? Is the paper well-organized? Local concerns include style, spelling and punctuation, and grammar. Once a student has addressed global concerns in his or her revision, s/he can focus on local issues that are persistently problematic or that interfere with the student’s ability to communicate effectively. We recognize how important both global and local issues are to writing; however, given that they have only 30 minutes to meet with students, Fellows may not have time to address all of the concerns in a given paper. Please let Fellows know what your personal priorities are but please understand that we teach them to respond globally before locally.

Is it ok to change a paper due date mid-semester?

If at all possible, please do not change due dates for papers your students are working on with Writing Fellows. Fellows are all full-time students with many commitments. They carefully plan their schedules to allow time to comment fully on student papers. If you must change a date, please check with the Fellows to make sure their schedules will allow for it.

I have three Writing Fellows for my course; how should I manage the logistics of meetings with all of us?

To cut down on multiple emails and to make finding meeting times easier, you and your Fellows should decide on one Writing Fellow to be the “team leader.” The Leader will initiate meetings and coordinate schedules.

What should I do if a student submits a late paper?

It is important that you insist that all papers be turned in on time. Nevertheless, some students may miss deadlines. At the first meeting with your Fellow, establish a late paper policy (for example, marking a student down a small percentage for each day a paper is late). Your Fellow will make every effort to comment on a late paper, but his/her schedule may not allow it. Students should not be allowed to omit revision by submitting their papers late.

What should I do if a student turns in a final paper without the first version and the Fellow’s comments?

For the program to be effective, students must receive a Fellow’s comments, attend a conference, and revise the paper. Therefore, we ask that you accept only papers accompanied by the first draft and the Fellow’s comments. If for some reason a student neglects to turn in his or her first draft and comments, remind the student that these are required. If the student has lost them, ask the Fellow for a copy of his or her endnotes (which Fellows typically save); you won’t be able to look at the marginal comments, but at least you’ll get a sense of the Fellow’s main suggestions.

What should I do if a student says he or she does not need a Writing Fellow?

Since the program is mandatory for all students in a participating course, please do not excuse any students. Sometimes writers are initially skeptical about working with a Fellow, but ultimately find the experience beneficial and enjoyable. You may want to discuss a skeptical student’s paper with your Fellow when he or she is in the process of commenting on it. Also, feel free to contact the program administrators to discuss strategies for working with skeptical students.

What do I say to a student who complains that his or her Writing Fellow is not familiar with the course content?

We ask you to tell students that Fellows are educated lay readers. Since Fellows comment on form rather than content, they need not be experts in a field to help a student improve his or her writing. Please help students appreciate the kind of response a lay reader can give by sharing your own experiences of having colleagues outside your immediate field read your work.

Some faculty members choose to augment the Fellows’ work with their students by scheduling fifteen-minute conferences with each student to discuss content exclusively or by scheduling in-class peer workshops (before or during the Writing Fellows paper cycle) to focus on content-related issues in the papers.

What should I do if a student complains about a Writing Fellow?

Very rarely, a student complains about a Writing Fellow’s comments. Please do not allow the student to switch to another Fellow simply because the student was unhappy with the comments. Rather, meet with the Fellow and student, together or separately, to review the paper and discuss solutions for the second paper cycle. (If a student feels that a Fellow’s behavior has been inappropriate, please contact Emily Hall [ebhall@wisc.edu] immediately.)

On this page you will find some sample materials to help you plan your course. Click the links below to open a PDF of each sample.

Sample Syllabi Explanations

• Jewish Studies 442 Syllabus
• English 169 Syllabus
• History 600 Syllabus

Sample Assignments

• Women’s Studies 223 Assignment
• ILS 251: Contemporary Physical Sciences Assignment

Sample Cover Sheet

• Cover Sheet

Sample Writing Fellow Comment

• Writing Fellow Comment

You are eligible to apply to work with a Writing Fellow if you:

• are a faculty or academic staff member teaching a course with at least two writing assignments
• will have between 12 and 40 students enrolled in the course
• are willing to adjust your syllabus to allow time for revision and to require that all enrolled students work with the assigned Fellow(s)
• are willing to meet regularly with the assigned Fellow(s) to discuss assignments

If you would like to learn more about the program or to apply to work with a Fellow in a course you are teaching next semester, please fill out the form below. We will contact you to discuss your plans and explain the program in detail. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Emily Hall (ebhall@wisc.edu).

Request a Writing Fellow

The number of Writing Fellows is limited; the sooner you let us know of your interest, the better.