[OWRC NOW HIRING]
The Odegaard Writing and Research Center (OWRC) is now hiring both undergraduate and graduate UW students for paid part-time and substitute tutoring positions for the 2011-2012 academic year. We seek those enrolled for 2011-2012, from all fields, who are interested in mentoring their UW peers one-to-one. OWRC tutors work alongside writers of all experience levels, from all disciplines, on all kinds of research and writing projects (academic, technical, professional, personal) with the intention of helping those writers understand what’s being asked of them, plan and draft their writing, and make revisions in keeping with the expectations of their readers. Tutors cannot and should not be “experts” in the tremendous variety of work writers bring to the OWRC; instead, they interact with writers as engaged readers and co-learners to help them develop better strategies and gain greater confidence and autonomy over time.
Tutors may work between 0.75 and 12 hours per week (depending on terms of employment) and may earn between $10.00 and $15.00 per hour (depending on academic status, with graduate tutors and returning tutors paid at higher rates). Employment begins in August 2011 for Early Fall Start.
For details on how to apply, visit the OWRC’s hiring page https://depts.washington.edu/owrc/Hiring2011.html
We will be accepting applications until 10:00am Friday June 10, 2011. Applicants are encouraged to submit materials early, as interviews are ongoing.
[Please read on for a more detailed narrative job description]
Mostly what we do is talk.
A good tutor knows how to ask the right questions to get writers talking – about their projects, about their ideas, about their classes, about what they’re trying to accomplish, about their own past experiences. In our perfect world, all the writers we work with become more confident, more independent, more comfortable with but also more sophisticated about their own writing and learning.
We joke that we’re trying to work ourselves out of a job.
We never know what the next one-to-one session will bring. A returning student drafting the methods section of his Master’s thesis in Nursing. A new freshman from small-town Washington working on her first English composition paper. A native speaker of Mandarin putting the finishing touches on a dissertation chapter on nanotechnology. A first-generation college student trying to reorganize his really unwieldy chem lab report. A senior finance major brainstorming ideas for his upcoming business competition speech. A mechanical engineer revising a how-to guide for her robotics team. Lots of it is new to us. It gets more comfortable with training, with experience. We learn to trust in the expertise of the writer. But trying to pretend like we have all the answers for all the wildly disparate writing projects people bring to us… that way lies madness.
So, we talk. It can be so simple, really. Most writers just need someone to read their work and be honest with them. And we listen. Really listen. A tutor who isn’t genuinely interested in all the crazy things people are working on around here doesn’t last long. We offer ideas – strategize and troubleshoot, discuss the work they’ve done and what they still might do, brainstorm ideas for what questions to ask faculty members, model a new skill, provide our responses as readers to what they’ve written so far, help make sense of other feedback they’ve gotten.
It means we have to be pretty flexible, always customizing our tutoring to the needs of the writer we’re working with at that moment, always figuring out new types of writing. It means we have to be relaxed and approachable, patient, so the writer feels like she can really say what’s on her mind. It means we have to have a kind of quiet confidence in our own thinking, research, and drafting practices so that we know what to share that might help the writer out. But we also have cultivate the ability to learn from all the writers we work with so that we can round out our own creative problem-solving skills.
OWRC staff members have all sorts of synonyms for “tutor”: mediator, therapist, translator, buffer zone, navigator, advocate, strategist, mentor, co-learner. We prize in each other a wide knowledge base, top-notch communication skills, critical thinking, creativity, teamwork, intellectual curiosity, and shared commitment to supporting the writers who seek us out.
We encourage you to apply! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Jennifer Halpin Director The Odegaard Writing & Research Center http://depts.washington.edu/owrc
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