Supporting Graduate Student Writers

Introduction

“…While U.S. WAC has traditionally focused on undergraduate student writers and writing across the disciplines, alarm in recent years about attrition and extended time to degree in graduate programs has led to questions about the role writing might play in students' choosing to leave their programs or to delay completion, particularly at the doctoral level. This increased attention to writing has resulted, in turn, in calls for more support for graduate student writers and more research on their specific needs (see Rogers et al, 2016, for example). The Consortium on Graduate Communication (CGC) (https:// www.gradconsortium.org) was founded in 2014 by WAC, writing center, and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages TESOL scholars-prac-titioners to provide for systematic conversations around best practices for working with English first-and second-language graduate students on written, oral, and multimodal communication.…”

“…The CGC holds an annual summer symposium and offers a website that provides curricular resources, scholarly work and research reports, and models for graduate communication courses, retreats, writing groups, and tutorial practices. In addition, and in line with the organization's research and resource goals, a growing body of scholarship on writers at the graduate level has been developed, with publications focused on the cross-curricular writing support needs of domestic and international second-language (L2) English graduate students across the disciplines (see, for example, Simpson et al, 2016 andLawrence &Zawacki, 2019). As a final point on WAC in the present, we note WAC's increasing engagement with the field of English L2 writing (see, for example, Zawacki & Cox, 2014) as well as its turn to and support for international cross-disciplinary writing research and program building.…”

Gaps in Content-Based English Enhancement in Science and Engineering

“…Even bigger challenges relate to securing continuous funding, addressing EAC programme vulnerabilities (Townsend, 2012), identifying where EAC will be housed (Smith, 1988), and ultimately determining how it can be sustained. These considerations resonate in different forms at various educational levels, from schools (Mullin & Childers, 2020), through undergraduate studies (Nielsen, 2019), to doctoral programmes (Rogers et al, 2016). To justify and support the continuation of EAC, there is a pressing need for EAC initiatives to find an operational model that engages faculty in a trusted relationship with language teachers that can lead to a win-all situation for Introduction themselves, their students, and EAC more broadly (Routman, 2014).…”

Chapter 5. Making Connections Between Theory and Practice: Pre-Service Educator Disciplinary Literacy Courses as Secondary WAC Initiation

“…Acknowledging that many late-stage doctoral students and early-career faculty-a group we refer to collectively as "emerging scholars"-naturally struggle to navigate changes in their writerly habits and identities as they transition into high stakes writing situations, recent volumes offer programmatic strategies for supporting these writers (e.g., Badenhorst & Guerin, 2016;Geller & Eodice, 2013;Lawrence & Zawacki, 2019;Simpson, Caplan et al, 2016). Nevertheless, despite the established need and burgeoning scholarship, research findings do not inform writing support efforts as much as they should Simpson, 2016). Although researchers across disciplines provide struggling writers with strategies and habits to increase productivity (Silvia, 2007;Sword, 2017;Tulley, 2018), writers' needs are rarely addressed from a developmental perspective.…”

“…Overall, 58% (52/89) of verbal data segments coded Mentoring were Negative (36/63 or 57% of doctoral student segments; and 16/26 or approximately 62% of faculty segments). The prevalence of negative experiences associated with mentoring concerns is significant given the important role that mentoring is known to play in supporting advanced writers' development and academic socialization (Casanave, 2016;Costello, 2015;Cox & Brunjes, 2013;Kim, 2016;Maher & Say, 2016;Morita, 2004;Simpson, 2016;Simpson, Ruecker et al, 2016;Stillman-Webb, 2016 We used evaluation coding (Saldaña, 2016) to document the many different experiences reported in relation to Negative Mentoring and Negative Structure. Often used to assess programs or organizations, evaluation coding involves locating "patterned observations or participant responses of attributes and details that assess quality."…”