Rachael French
In Motion Staff Writer
Knowing that birds of a feather are usually less intimidating than a whole flock of faculty, Daytona State College’s Writing Fellows was designed for students to help each other with writing.
Originally a 2-12 pilot program, the idea behind the Writing Fellows is to offer students who excel at writing a paid work-study position to help tutor students in specific courses. The basic premise is that it would be easier to help students succeed with their written course work if other students tutored them.
Writing Fellows coordinator and director Chris Gebhardt described the intense need to bring a program like the Writing Fellows, normally only offered at 4-year colleges or universities, to DSC.
“The goal of the Writing Fellows program is to provide a writing source in the classroom, which is very important to college students.”
He also explained that the Writing Fellow acts like a liaison between the student and professor, between the student and the faculty, and as an extra person who can help explain the writing process to a lost student.
The Writing Fellows helps fulfill the need of additional supplemental instruction and tutoring services by offering a peer-to-peer tutoring system. What exactly is it about this new system that brings it so much acclaim? What makes it different than the other tutoring programs available to DSC students?
Two Writing Fellows who frequently work at the Creative Writing Center, Charlie Strickhouser and Angie Welling, emphasized how crucial the program is to Daytona State College, as well as any college that provides a similar program to its students.
“It’s like providing a bridge between students and faculty because, a lot of the time, students relate more to their peers,” Strickhouser said. “This leads to students experiencing more success because they actually understand how they are asked to write.”
In addition to working at the Creative Writing Center, Writing Fellows are anchored to a specific course or two for a semester, and the Fellow helps as much as he can. Last semester, Welling was anchored to Dr. Shana Deyo’s Business Writing course, while Strickhouser was anchored to Kathleen Lazarus’ College Composition class and Literature and Composition.
Welling said “The best thing about the Writing Fellows is when someone I am tutoring has the ‘aha’ moment, the light bulb moment and they finally get it, it’s a kind of emotional reward, gratification, and there’s no better feeling in the world than helping someone.”
Aside from being an amazing experience for the Fellows and students they tutor, how would a professor benefit from allowing a Writing Fellow to be a part of their course?
Dr. Michelle Lee, an English teacher at the Daytona campus, was one of the original faculty members who piloted the Writing Fellows in 2012.
“The new program benefits everyone involved,” Lee said. “It benefits the students because they feel more comfortable; it benefits the Fellows because they are offered paid work-study positions; it benefits the professors because it helps them learn more about peer-to peer interactions and different learning styles.”
Lee herself learned that the Writing Fellows provide an opportunity for students interesting in teaching to test their skills and see if the job would be “write for them.” She recalled one student who was pretty sure he wanted to be a teacher and the Writing Fellows cemented that as his career path.
While some may think it a daunting task to become a Writing Fellow, or may have no clue where to start, Gebhardt offered some insight, and it’s actually easier than most people would assume.
All a student has to do is be referred to the Writing Fellows by a current staff member or be a part of Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Discipline, also known as WAC/WID, then complete an 11- hour class before meeting the students or professor they are anchored to for the semester.
Because the Writing Fellows program offers 15 paid work-study positions available over all campuses each semester at both Daytona State and UCF, partnering up with WAC/WID to become the Writing Fellows Program. It has become a so much an intrinsic part of Daytona State’s writing education, it’s not obvious the program started with only three Fellows, showing how far the program has come in one unbelievably short year and how far it has yet to go.