Who Are The Advanced Writing Fellows?

Reported by: Bree Maciel

The Advanced Writing Fellows are a new group of writing tutors in place to help LIBA 100 students with the writing requirements for the course. Composed of students who are familiar with the LIBA 100 course work, they meet students where they are at in the writing process.

The Fellows for this year include: Maya Irons, Jilian Cady, Kendall Stuart, Carla Cieza, Dorathy Dotson, and administrative fellow Hannah Jackson.

The Fellows conduct short one-on-one meetings with students via Zoom, which are usually around 25-30 minutes. Students can receive assistance with clarifying thesis statements, organizing thoughts, creating citations, general brainstorming, and editing. Overall, these sessions focus on helping the student sharpen their thoughts to create a better paper.

The Fellows run as sort of a “mini version” of the ARC.

“ The style of paper feedback is similar to the ARC but we are a lot more focused,” said Jackson. “All the writing fellows had to read the material and were instructed even more on specifically the close reading papers, which is what the students are struggling with.”

The Fellows also hold workshops within the LIBA 100 classes in order to facilitate peer reviewing. This year the LIBA 100 class looks significantly different from previous years. For example, last year the class was taught by two instructors, one who taught the reading material and one who taught the writing curriculum.

Why did they change the way the class worked?

“We were trying to make the course as good as possible and it was hard for the LIBA instructor to do the best job when there was a second instructor taking up class time,” said Brooks Lampe, the Writing Program Director. “We wanted to see if the class could be run effectively with just one instructor.”

“ I think it has made a positive impact because I see the LIBA instructors looking a lot more confident and invested in the course,” Lampe said. “The instructors are much more attached to the course and excited about teaching it.”

Each Fellow became a tutor for a different reason. Cady said it was “a way to combine things that I enjoy doing and maybe wouldn’t have a chance to do with my major,” noting that “it's exciting to see someone gain confidence in their writing and be a resource to the LIBA 100 students.”

Stuart said, “I applied because I really like to write and eventually I really want to become a teacher and it kind of seemed like a perfect opportunity.”

The best thing about the Fellows is that they are in place to be utilized by students of all levels of writing.

Irons said, “I think that even though you’re confident, it is really helpful to have another set of eyes and affirm you. I love to connect with both confident and less confident writers. I love discussing literature and to just discuss these things with other students is really exciting.”

Cady agreed. She said, “If you come in confident and with a good paper, even better, that’s great because then you can see how to bring your paper to the next level … It can’t hurt sitting down and having someone else look at your paper and maybe find some things that you may have missed.”

If you are interested in becoming a Writing Fellow for next year email Hannah Jackson hjackson@georgefox.edu OR Brooks Lampe blampe@georgefox.edu

According to Jackson, students don’t have to be English majors to apply. Interested parties should just have strong essay scores from LIBA 100, be a good student, a solid writer, be able to give feedback and analyze text, and have high emotional intelligence.