Help is at hand
Like a lot of instructors, Tiffany Tyer has spent many hours this semester poring over papers, penciling in advice to students about how to improve their writing.
But Tyer isn’t an instructor. She’s one of the university’s first Undergraduate Writing Assistants (UWA).
The UWA program is a trial offering from the University Writing Center (UWC) that provides talented undergraduates special training in helping student writers and then puts them to work assisting W course instructors and their students.
Undergraduate Writing Assistant Javier Ortiz, left, a senior industrial engineering major, conducts an office-hours consultation with a student in the Spanish class in which he is working. He faces the challenge of helping his peers improve their writing skills in what is a foreign language for many of them.
Undergraduate Writing Assistant Javier Ortiz, left, a senior industrial engineering major, conducts an office-hours consultation with a student in the Spanish class in which he is working. He faces the challenge of helping his peers improve their writing skills in what is a foreign language for many of them.
This fall UWAs have been working in the classroom for the first time; sixteen undergraduates are currently assigned to classes in fifteen different departments. Tyer, a senior majoring in telecommunication media studies, is currently assisting Professor Wendy Boswell with two sections of a course in management, offering comments on student papers and holding office hours for those who want additional help with their written assignments. UWAs are also trained to run peer review sessions, help instructors design assignments or grading rubrics, advise students on using WebCT or Calibrated Peer Review, and present lectures on topics such as documentation. About the only thing they can’t do is assign grades; that task always is left to the course instructor.
Professor Boswell considers Tyer “a very key resource” for her students, and the fact that Tyer is an undergraduate is a plus.
“I think the students may see [consulting the UWA] as a less intimidating way to seek help to develop their writing,” Boswell observes.
In preparation for her current position, Tyer
