"Perspectives on the Writing Center and Writing Across the Curriculum: A Dialogue Between the Sciences and Humanities"

Generalists or Specialists and the Gray Space

At the Wilkes Writing Center, two distinctions in consulting positions exist:  Peer Consultants and Writing Mentors.  Every employee of the Writing Center is a Peer Consultant—a tutor who is able to help any student who comes to the Writing Center seeking guidance on a paper.  Meanwhile, Writing Mentors—also referred to as Writing Fellows or Writing Associates at other institutions—serve in a more specific role than Peer Consultants, and although they too can help anyone who comes to the Writing Center, the Writing Mentor is paired up with specific courses and instructors in order to help students in that particular course in a one-on-one situation. 

A continuous conversation is revolving in composition spheres in regard to WAC programs and the Writing Centers that serve them as to whether or not those Writing Mentors employed to support specific courses should be generalists in their work or more specialized in their knowledge of the courses they serve.  Although Wilkes employs Writing Mentors for more specialized purposes, the generalist versus specialist debate is not exclusive to such positions as the Writing Mentor or Peer Consultant distinction.  Many studies, such as one conducted by Jean Kiedaisch and Sue Dinitz discussed in their paper “‘Look Back and Say ‘So What’:  The Limitations of the Generalist Tutor,” address the generalist-versus-specialist question by focusing directly on Writing Center consultations, either by having the Writing Center director and other instructors analyze video-taped consultation sessions or asking the consultant and student writer to fill out consultation evaluation surveys immediately following the session (64).  However, few studies exist which examine the point of view of the student outside the confines of the Writing Center, and even fewer studies look at students who are not utilizing the Writing Center in a search for possible reasons, especially in relation to generalists and specialists.  The responses to the surveys I have distributed circle around the notion that students desire specialists to look over their papers while much of the literature indicates that, as far as Writing Center employees are concerned, generalist tutors are often described as the best option (Severino and Trachsel, Kiedaisch and Dinitz).

In line with studies determining the best approach—generalist or specialist—some critics are beginning to examine the correlation and success between generalist Peer Consultants working with students in specific classes versus specialized Consultants working with students in those same courses.  Susan M. Hubbuch offers the idea in her article “A Tutor Needs to Know the Subject Matter to Help a Student with a Paper:  Agree, Disagree, Not Sure” that the consultant “should be literate in a way that the ideal liberal arts education defines literacy” (30).  In other words, writing within a broad general liberal arts education, such as the one afforded at Wilkes, is the best way to circumvent the generalist-versus-specialist debate in order to help all students that walk through the door of the Writing Center.  Hubbuch’s explanation and evidence leading to this conclusion rest upon the idea that “a tutor cannot afford to be parochial, entering a session with a student with an inflexible, monolithic concept of ‘good’ writing” (Hubbuch 25).  Because every discipline requires and expects something different from its students, we know that writing varies across and even within a discipline. 

The generalist-versus-specialist debate is further complicated by the concept of the so-called gray space which the peer consultant occupies.  Jill Gladstein, in “Conducting Research in the Gray Space,” and many others in the field of composition theory, examines this gray space, or middle ground that the Peer Consultant finds themselves in with relation to those they aim to help.  In other words, the consultant serves as the bridge between the expectations the professor has for the assignment and how the students in the course deal with the assignment (Gladstein).  In this way, the consultant works “with” the professor “rather than for” the professor (Gladstein).  By serving in this middle space, especially in regard to the sciences, the consultant is able to:

negotiate and influence the writing pedagogy within a particular course.  This placement develops a sense of mutual understanding and respect between the writing program and faculty across the curriculum by acknowledging a professor’s belief in the connection between disciplinary knowledge and writing. (Gladstein)

In this middle space, the Peer Consultant can bridge the gap between what an individual professor desires in a paper and the expectations of the genre the student is writing for.  Furthermore, the Peer Consultant can encourage understanding of writing for a broader audience than just the individual course the student is writing for by navigating the gray space across the discipline, not just within a single course.

Peer Consultants are not just limited to the academic gray space.  In fact, when we put the generalist-versus-specialist discussion, the gray space, and concepts of WAC into focus, we allow for a closer examination of the specifics of writing at the university level, and new ways for Peer Consultants to aid students with writing are revealed.  In discussing aspects of writing and the writing process, writing becomes more than just an act, as Carol Severino and Mary Trachsel discuss, “writing [becomes] a performance that goes beyond the mere act of writing words on a page, to encompass modes of thinking,” especially in regard to interdisciplinary work (Severino and Trachsel).  By helping students comprehend the similarities and differences found in writing in any given course across the curriculum, Severino and Trachsel posit that Peer Consultants can help students in a variety of courses involving writing since more similarities than differences appear to exist across the disciplines in the writing process (Severino and Trachsel).  When we consider how writing encompasses ways of thinking, examining the opinions and perspectives of the people reviewing and grading writing becomes necessary in order to understand how writing and the WAC initiative function at the practical level.