Writing Center of York College
Below are the students who particpated in the 2013 MAWCA confernece. Each student worked throughout the semester to develop and research an original projected based on their own experiences within the Writing Center and as writing fellows. For each project, students created a poster describing their preliminary research and presented during a public presentation session. In addition to the poster, some students also presented their research as workshops or sessions through panel discussions, roundtable disussion, and powerpoint presentations.
Megan Schoettler
Working as a peer tutor in the Writing Center, Megan often heard self-deprecating from students. “I’m a bad writer.” “I’m horrible at grammar.” However, Megan wondered why students said such things about themselves. Did they really believe it? Or were they just creating an excuse for their mistakes? At the 2013 MAWCA conference, Megan led a roundtable discussion which explored different causes and responses to “I am a bad writer.” Having completed some original research prior to the event, Megan also reported upon the progress of her research and prompted participants to discuss their own experiences and theories. Discussion topics included how tutors may be encouraging these statements and what responses best fit the needs of writers.
Tracy Chopek
During her first semester as a writing fellow, Tracy was confronted with the quesiton of how to interact with the students in her fellowing class. Writing fellows have no true authority as they are not teachers, yet their status as a writing fellow clearly separates them from the rest of the class. Tracy found that while WRT 290 taught techniques and ideologies for how to tutor students, it did not cover how to present oneself to one's students in order to foster a fellow/student relationship. Through her research, Tracy hoped to understand what classroom behaviors exhibited by writing fellows most encouraged students to approach their writing fellows for help in the Writing Center or classroom.
Lauren Connolly & Allyson Rump
In their senior year at York College, Lauren Connolly and Allyson Rump were working as Writing Fellows for the YCP Writing Center. This involved tutoring students’ writing, yet they were often asked questions about the research process. While they were able to help those students with the basics about York's databases, they knew that the research librarians would have been able to give more detailed and useful guidance. Through their research, Lauren and Allyson hoped to form connections between the Writing Center and the Schmidt Library in order to improve student research habits.
2013 MAWCA Conference
Jill Irish, Aline LaChance, & Lacie McHugh
For MAWCA 2013, Jill, Aline, and Lacie conducted research about ways to get more freshman students to come to the Writing Center. Using their own fellowing classes, they implemented different methods such as receiving bonus points, making meetings a requirement, and giving testimonials about how great the Writing Center is to motivate students to come in to get tutored. Through these experiments, they discovered that, overall, the students were more likely to come in if it was a requirement or they would get something out of it, such as bonus points. They presented their findings at MAWCA with a poster session followed by a panel discussion.
