Struggling to write your thesis? The Research & Writing Center can help you—here's how.
The Research & Writing Center (RWC): BYU students’ favorite tool to becoming an expert writer. Since 2013, the RWC has helped thousands of students gain research and writing skills. In 2022, the RWC made it a goal to expand their resources to help more students—particularly grad students. With increased funding from the College of Humanities and the prestigious Presidential Innovation Grant, the RWC has created more opportunities to help grad students gain writing skills. Assistant Professor of English and writing center director Tyler Gardner reflects on how the center has flourished over the last year and improved grad students’ experiences.
When Gardner first started at the RWC, the center only had the funds to hire undergraduate students as tutors. While these students have the expertise to effectively tutor other undergrad students, Gardner points out that some graduate students work on “projects that are pretty complex and advanced. The graduates themselves recognized they would benefit from someone with a little bit more writing experience.”
As Gardner began looking for ways to improve graduate student resources, he partnered with Graduate Studies to create thesis and dissertation day camps. These camps gave grad students the opportunity to come in on Saturdays and spend the day writing and meeting with RWC consultants to craft and polish their work. Gardner says, “A lot of people applied to those. It was really popular; there are students that are clearly invested in getting writing done and needing writing support.” The camps started in fall 2022 and have continued every semester.
After seeing the success of the camps, Gardner met with Deans J. Scott Miller of the College of Humanities and Adam Woolley of Graduate Studies to discuss hiring graduate-specific writing consultants. After a successful trial run in winter 2023 sponsored by the College of Humanities, Gardner and Woolley applied for the Presidential Innovation Grant in spring 2023. The university provides this grant to test out new, innovative ideas that could improve the campus community. With that funding, the RWC hired four adjunct faculty members to assist graduate students. The center also instituted the Grad Pace Program, which allows grad students to meet with the same graduate writing consultant every other week, or every week if the student needs more assistance. The Pace Program gives students constant support from the same source as they work on various projects and papers. Additionally, the grant has increased the amount of writing center appointments with graduate students by 150%, expanding support for all students attending BYU.
Because of the grant’s timeline, Gardner and the deans are currently working on the next step for the Research and Writing Center. Gardner has seen how expanding the writing center’s resources has improved people’s educational experiences and hopes to keep the momentum going so future grad students continue to enjoy the center’s help.
Learn more about the Research and Writing Center and how it can help you.