Intro
The Honors Writing Fellows Program is a peer tutoring/writing across the curriculum initiative.
Our 25-30 Writing Fellows are undergraduate students in the Honors at Iowa Program who are assigned to courses across campus every semester. They provide written feedback to students in these courses on two writing assignments during the semester and also meet with each student individually.
All Writing Fellows are required to take Writing Theory and Practice (143:102), a three-semester-hour course taught every fall by our program directors, Carol Severino and Megan Knight. The application process for new fellows takes place in March each year.
The 2024-25 application process is now closed.
The Fellowing Process
Each Writing Fellow works with 10-12 students who send them drafts of two writing assignments during the semester, the first around midterm and the second towards the end of the semester. The Fellow provides written comments and suggestions and then meets individually with students to discuss the comments and how best to revise the paper to make it stronger. The goal of the Honors Writing Fellows Program is to emphasize the importance of feedback and revision to the writing process, so working with a Writing Fellow is part of the assignment requirements. A course with 36 students is typically assigned three Fellows. Because of logistical and scheduling difficulties, we generally do not assign Fellows to courses with more than 40 students.
After the commenting and conferencing cycle, the instructor reads both the first drafts and the revised essays and grades the latter. Fellows do not do any grading; they advise and provide feedback only. Fellows receive $700 in compensation in their first semester and $800 in each subsequent semester. When our budget allows, interested Writing Fellows can also receive additional training to become Undergraduate Tutors who are available for one-on-one appointments in the Writing Center.
Fellowed Courses
Faculty who participate in the Honors Writing Fellows program design two writing assignments for their students. The students submit a first draft of each to Fellows for feedback two weeks before the final versions are due to the instructor. Instructors must be willing to meet with their Fellows to discuss the assignment goals and relationship to the course. They also meet with the Fellows during the commenting process and after the first commenting-conferencing-grading cycle to evaluate and fine tune the procedure for the second paper cycle. All Fellows are advised and supported by commenting mentors who are Rhetoric faculty or Writing Center staff.
Program's History
The first Writing Fellows program was established in the 1980s at Brown University but they have since spread to many colleges, small and large. The goals of the Honors Writing Fellows Program are to improve student writing and writing processes, to promote collaborative learning, and to encourage instructors to use writing to learn in their courses. Because Iowa has no required writing courses beyond first-year Rhetoric, the Writing Fellows program extends writing instruction beyond the departments of Rhetoric and English and encourages instructors in departments across the College to consider writing instruction part of their professional responsibility.
Since the program began at the UI in 2003, faculty from the Departments of American Studies, Anthropology, Classics, Dance, English, Exercise Science, Geography, Geoscience, Health and Sport Studies, History, Leisure Studies, Literature, Science, & the Arts, Political Science, Religious Studies, Rhetoric, Russian, and Women's Studies have worked with Writing Fellows to help more than 2500 students improve their papers.
The program director is Carol Severino and our assistant director is Megan Knight. The program is supported by the Honors at Iowa Program and the Department of Rhetoric.