To facilitate a more accessible Writing Center, it is my belief that inclusivity of identity and diversification of the disciplines is crucial to achieving this goal. Writing Centers are meant to be used as resources by students in every field of study, and by students of every social group; by extension, the employees in Writing Centers need to reflect university student bodies. In a proposal written for the Northeast Writing Center Association (NEWCA), I outline a prospective case study focusing on a LGBTQ student with a major in Women and Gender Studies who has been recruited as a tutor for the Writing Center at the University of Maine.

Diversifying Writing Centers Through the Disciplines and Focus Groups

Abstract:

This presentation explores how immersing tutors with diversified disciplines in the Writing Center creates accessible spaces through specialized discourse communities, while still training tutors in mental agility and multigenre literacies. This presentation supports deeper student engagement based on disciplines and identity through quantitative and qualitative studies (involving focus groups of LGBTQ students and Women and Gender Studies disciplines), peer-based research, tutee interviews, and tutor observations.

Proposal:

In recent years writing centers have developed new approaches to multicultural student demographics, fighting against “acculturating students” and objecting to a one-size fits all model in tutoring protocols (Murphy Sherwood, 2011). Approaches involving mental agility and multigenre literacy have evolved the writing center into a more welcome space for students and developed discourse communities surrounding tutoring practices, yet specialized knowledge is being deemphasized. My research explores interpersonal networking with LGBTQ services, interactions with a LGBTQ community student recruit who is also studying the discipline of Women and Gender Studies (typically a diverse discipline of a typical Writing Center English major tutor). I detail my works successes and failures, to showcase the benefits of diversifying tutoring environments and developing multicultural partnerships inside Writing Centers.

Through a series of interviews, observations, and workshops I explored these research questions:

1. How do we create meaningful interpersonal relationships between departments on college campuses and writing centers?
2. How do we recruit tutors of diverse disciplines into the writing center?
3. What are best practices for presenting diverse tutors to college undergraduate students?

Research shows “students teaching each other alleviates stress” (Brufee, 1984), and while having students tutor other students allows power dynamics to be redefined, by only training tutors with a universal toolkit that could be applied to any genre of writing, we are trying to play multiple ball games with only one set of rules (Russell, 1995). If tutors from diverse disciplines tutor in writing centers, their specialized knowledge can complement the general teachings of writing centers, develop a culturally open environment, and create “a resource-dense hub for an isolated, sometimes structureless community” (Johnson, 2018) that reaches beyond just the needs of English studies writers, but all of a university campus.