Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 19, No. 3 (2022)

Peri-pandemic Graduate Writing Mentorship Program

Xuan Jiang
Florida International University
xjiang@fiu.edu

Adrian R. Salgado
The Ohio State University
salgado.34@buckeyemail.osu.edu

Courtney Glass
Florida International University
cglass004@fiu.edu

Abstract

Writing support is provided to graduate students in many universities worldwide. This support includes writing classes and advisors’ mentorship, as well as writing center tutoring and organized writing groups, all of which are well documented in the literature. However, the current literature does not represent the diverse population of graduate writers, including international and multilingual students, first-generation college and graduate students, and their more significant writing support needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current study aims to share the missing voices as a contribution to the literature. In this IRB-approved mixed-methods study, we, the three authors, collected fourteen surveys and ten interviews from two cohorts of writing groups in Summer 2021. Via data analysis, we were able to thematize inter-language and affective factors not only within writing but across and for writing. We argued that those factors which have been largely neglected are vital to writing as a process. The temporal and spatial factors resulting from the pandemic also offer more considerations for other writing centers to implement or further refine their forms of support to cater to graduate writers.

Introduction

In anticipation of completing their programs within the required time, graduate students are tasked with producing original research in the form of dissertations, theses, publications, and other long-term writing projects. Graduate-level writing is often completed in solitude. As such, it requires a great deal of time, focus, and self-discipline beyond the responsibilities students already have in the classroom, in the lab, and in research and Teaching Assistant (TA) positions. The many commitments graduate students have inside and outside academia can make academic writing more challenging, and the many pressures of daily graduate school life may lead to anxiety and frustration (Brooks-Gillies et al. 7; Fredrick et al. 146). To further complicate things, the current COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges for graduate students, including the logistics of attending class, limited or loss of childcare, and intensifying feelings of loneliness and isolation. Graduate students needed additional writing support before the pandemic; our historic moment, however, has laid bare just how necessary it is to provide additional support for graduate students beyond the classroom and faculty mentorship.

One possible form of additional support is found in writing groups. These groups have been discussed, studied, and acknowledged as needed and a “safe space for cultivating a culture of collaboration and critique among graduate students as colleagues” (Kelly 28). Moreover, by having these writing groups hosted in writing spaces, the advantage of having a “space between” (Shapiro 125) graduate students’ inner and outer academic lives establishes a sense of support, where the peer aspect takes place in the form of writing consultants as facilitators of these writing groups (Bell and Hewerdine 53; Radke 10). Having said that, the concept of writing groups in the space of collaboration between graduate students and the writing center needs a more solid foundation for success (Gray 236). With the current COVID-19 pandemic underway and intermingling throughout these graduate students’ lives along with other affective factors (i.e., anxiety and vulnerability; Fredrick et al. 146; Micciche and Carr 482), there is a need for more structure and guidance for these students’ ultimate success and completion of their graduate programs.

This paper builds our conceptual foundation by reviewing the existing literature about graduate students’ writing needs and writing centers’ supportive programs, followed by the exigency of our current study, including its institutional context and graduate student population, and our writing center and its writing group program. This paper contributes to the writing center scholarship with its connection between practice, theory and research, its Replicable, Aggregable, Data-supported (RAD) approach, its particular COVID-19 context, and its participants featuring multilingualism and first-generation graduate students. It helps drive research studies on graduate writing beyond factors in writing, but those across and for writing. Besides scholarly contributions, the paper might also shed light on practical considerations about further “carefully and strategically designed programs” for graduate students (Gray 236).

Literature review

The high attrition rate of doctoral programs in the United States (i.e., 40%-60%) is well studied over the decades (Cassuto par. 1; Harris 600). Rebecca Schuman (par. 10) pinpointed “the inner hindrances, the ones that cause procrastination, and then shame, and then paralysis,” including over-researching and insisting on perfection before submitting any writing (Bell and Hewerdine 51). The case mirrors the situation of master’s students who need to complete theses or other capstone writing projects to complete their programs. Among those students, first-generation graduate students who do not have models in their families to follow may be “at greater risk of failure and attrition” (Bell and Hewerdine 50), and many “don’t know the institutional ropes” (e.g., institutional resources and academic protocols; Thesen 164). The following text will review the academic writing process for graduate students, what the features of academic writing are at the graduate level, challenges in graduate writing to multilingual writers, and how graduate writers tackle their academic writing with institutional support that mainly comes from writing centers.

Graduate Academic Writing

Academic writing is a complicated process for all students, as it involves many factors such as developing an argument, researching, and using reliable sources to create a concrete and appropriately styled text that is deliverable and understandable to multiple audiences. While all of this is true about academic writing in general, graduate academic writing entails more demands on students, such as producing original research (Harris 602). Not only are the demands of academic writing greater on graduate students, but Ellen Lavelle and Kathy Bushrow also note that academic writing at the graduate level requires more advanced skills to meet the expectations of academia (807).

There has been limited research into graduate-level writing and the various processes and approaches involved. To help fill this gap, Lavelle and Bushrow conceived a seven-factor analytic model and inventory measure, "Inventory of Processes in Graduate Writing,” to better understand the graduate-level writing process (812-813). The seven factors were determined by identifying the writing strategies and beliefs of graduate students found to be most representative of graduate student writing processes.  Of the seven factors they identified, “Intuitive…was found to be predictive of the quality of an academic writing outcome” that is not observed among undergraduates (Lavelle and Bushrow 816; for the whole list, see Appendix A). Furthermore, the Intuitive factor indicates that some writers have an understanding of writing that exists on “‘another’ level, or beyond the cognitive plane” (816). Lavelle and Bushrow hypothesize that Intuitives may have more familiarity with academic writing from their exposure to literature at the graduate level.

Another factor of Lavelle and Bushrow’s Inventory focuses on writing as a science with guidelines and rules (812); however, rules vary in different languages. Such rules would track back to an expanded contrastive rhetoric, first described by JoAnne Liebman, which is not only embodied in writers’ finished written products, but also in the contexts in which writing occurs as a process (141). Liebman describes contrastive rhetoric as the differences in writers’ “approach to audiences, their perception of the purpose of writing, the type of writing tasks with which they feel comfortable, the composing processes they have been encouraged to develop, and the role writing plays in their education” (142). As such, multilingual writers might need more support to situate themselves in English academic writing. Rosemary Wette and Clare Furneaux, in their study, reported the multilingual group’s “unfamiliarity with aspects of source-based, critical, and writer-responsible writing” (186), possibly because the group had not been encouraged or was unaware of such expected rhetoric. Moreover, the writer-responsibility is one of the possible challenges multilingual writers from Eastern Asia, where a large portion of international students come from according to The Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange 2020/21 (Institution of International Education), have in common; they do not know how to approach their new audiences while writing their first research article in English. The reason behind this is the cultural differences of reader responsibility versus writer responsibility (Jiang 97–98), or alternatively, high-context communication versus low-context communication (Hall and Hall 151-162).  Many multilingual students are from a culture of high-context communication (e.g. Arab countries and Latin America; Nishimura et al. 786), which relies on “indirect and digressive communication, use of few words, reliance on contextual cues…” (Nishimura et al. 790). Those multilingual students tend to apply their communication norms to the rhetoric organization of their English writing, whereas English-speaking culture features a low-context communication where “meanings are explicitly stated through language” (Nishimura et al. 785). Multilingual students writing across cultures need not only to translate their thoughts into English but also to make efforts to write in a straightforward, explicit, and writer-responsible way as a low-context communication.

According to the November 2021 report from The Power of International Education, international student enrollment went up 68 percent in Fall 2021 after a 46 percent decrease in 2020 (Martel 2; for the enrollment of 2011-2021, please see Appendix B for the figure in the report). As the number of international student enrollment continues to grow, so does the number of multilingual students matriculating at universities in the U.S.  It should be noted that many multilingual graduate students learn writing skills and the English language at the same time (Thesen 164). Multilingual writers in Margarita Huerta et al.’s study experienced statistically significant higher writing anxiety and lower self-efficacy in academic writing of their graduate studies, compared to native English counterparts (725). Similarly, multilingual students, as Amy Whitcomb has witnessed, showed low confidence in writing in their target language (i.e., English) — “they feel like they just can’t know enough vocabulary or syntax to sound smart” (11). The role of sound in English writing does not speak to one subset of multilingual writers — mostly international writers or any English language learners who have acquired the language visually (Nakamaru 112). The other subset, as auditory learners of English, has mainly been immersed in the language in English-speaking countries and can sense the sound and the flow of their writing (Nakamaru 112). The auditory learners perhaps possess more of the “Intuitive” factor described by Lavelle and Bushrow (816).

The writing process is neither linear nor easy and, as Elliot Shapiro notes, is often something that advanced graduate students are expected to know how to do (125). However, writing involves processes of multifaceted literacy skills. When it comes to factors within writing, rhetorical awareness is critical in graduate students’ academic writing. Dorren Starke-Meyerring defines rhetorical awareness as the process in which Ph.D. students acculturate to the established genres and discourses of their specific disciplines (66); Colleen Harris notes that there is a point that when students reach the dissertation stage, they should feel comfortable “in their ability to practice their scholarship” (600). Though some scholars believe such awareness is intuitive (Lavelle and Bushrow 813), they all seem to agree that it can be taught or honed through experience. However, how to develop rhetorical awareness or scholarly competence is yet to be fully considered in many graduate programs.

In addition to gaining more rhetorical awareness of writing in their fields, graduate students, in general, are expected to “project an authoritative scholarly identity to audiences” in the writing they produce (Lawrence and Zawacki 12). Their very identities as scholars are constructed through their writing, publications, and dissertations. In academia, developing and asserting one’s identity as a scholar is vital to success in their graduate program and future career. In turn, graduate students become better able to develop a clearer understanding and grounding of their roles and growth as writers. All graduate students “continuously construct and (re)construct their identities as readers, writers, and scholars within their disciplinary communities as they participate in a range of academic literacy practices” (Kim and Wolke 214).

Writing Support

Many universities have implemented various writing support programs to help students assimilate to graduate-level academic writing. Such groups may help “demystify the practices and processes” of academic writing (Shapiro 124). Furthermore, graduate writing courses, or its modified form of workshops, can “create space, community, and rhetorical awareness/flexibility to brainstorm, create, and sustain a wide variety of critical writing projects” (Micciche and Carr 478). Some universities have formed writing support groups that are outside academic programs but still situated within the respective academic units. For instance, at an Australian university, Damian Maher et al. characterized the year-long writing group they participated in as “a community of discursive social practice” (263). Some benefits they noted include enhanced peer learning and a shift in participants’ “thinking and experience of writing from seeing writing as an essentially private and implicit process to writing becoming a matter of public and shared work” (Maher et al. 263). The writing group helped transform Maher et al.’s journey of academic writing from solitude to companionship. Similarly, at a Canadian university, Shelley Murphy et al. conducted a self-study after participating in a writing support group with colleagues in the school of education. They found that the benefits of a writing group extend beyond the initial purpose of aiding in the completion of the dissertation by also preparing participants for their roles as future educators and researchers (Murphy et al. 245). Murphy et al.’s study highlights the synergistic effect of the writing group on graduate writers’ academic and professional identities.

In addition to any departmental support they receive, other resources may be available to graduate students. For example, doctoral students at Harris’s university partnered with academic librarians to improve their research skills for their dissertations (599-620). However, Harris concludes that there may be challenges in providing individualized long-term research assistance for dissertations (613).

More frequently seen, writing centers are one of the main university resources in graduate writing. Writing centers are “a cultural ecotone,” embodied by their linguistic diversity, civic engagement, and developmental leadership, authorship, and scholarship (Kells 27). The writing center extends the academic space beyond classrooms and adds comfort via interactions with peer tutors (Kells 28). Furthermore, as Marilee Brooks-Gillies et al. (191) argue, writing centers are greatly needed as they provide judgment-free zones that still fulfill the institution’s writing needs. Talinn Phillips remarks that traditional tutoring in writing centers cannot always meet the unique needs of graduate students working on long-term projects (45). Bethany Mannon highlights that writing centers are the ideal location to host writing groups, and they should have a facilitator “committed to organizing meetings,” because one-on-one appointments involve “academic and emotional labor” (63). Writing groups and other specific programs, such as affinity groups and writing support networks, are merited by multiple scholars in the sense of decreasing attrition rates, fostering peer collaboration, cultivating peer review, and producing reciprocal benefits (e.g., Bell and Hewerdine 51; Kells 28). 

Attending to the multifaceted needs of graduate writers by providing general and specific writing support aforementioned, U.S. writing centers have supported graduate writers’ development of their “scholarly identities and disciplinary socialization” (Kranek and Regidor 64). When it comes to institutional support for writing, writing groups, first and foremost, help validate “the emotional aspects of students’ graduate experiences…about not knowing, doubting oneself, resisting the discipline, or failing to enculturate” (Fredrick et al. 162). For instance, in Marilyn Gray’s study, the dissertation boot camp participants shared their “increased confidence and motivation” (Gray 235). Furthermore, writing groups can help graduate students fully “integrate into all aspects of academic life: writing, research, teaching, and service” by fostering an identity that is largely informed by the discursive practices of their field (Shapiro 124–125). Writing groups may also help graduate students develop a concept of academic life built on the exchange of ideas and collaboration with others, such as what is seen in the peer-review process (Shapiro 137). Within writing, the doctoral students who had participated in a series of writing support programs perceived improvement in writing skills, writing progress, and themselves as writers (Gray 235). In summary, writing groups are not a “panacea for all that ails graduate education, but they can offer specific and targeted instruction to reduce the challenges graduate students face in their writing” (Busl et al. 259) and empower academic writers with more self-efficacy and less anxiety (Huerta et al. 727).

The Current Study

Eligible Participants: Graduate Students with Concrete Writing Projects

At the current study’s Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI; see more information on U.S. Department of Education), there are over 56,000 students (approximately two thirds as Hispanic/Latinos) and over 9,800 graduate students, including approximately 1,350 international graduate students, from more than 120 countries enrolled during the 2020-2021 academic year (analysis & information management). Many students, including graduate students, are first-generation college students, are connected with immigrant families, and 90% live off campus. Many graduate students have complained about long commuting times and parking issues on campus; some have shared that their familial roles involve taking care of the young and/or the old. The institutional data indicates that the pandemic was a considerable hindrance for doctoral candidates moving forward with their dissertations. The pandemic worsened the obstacles graduate students at large would face—the isolation from peers and faculty after the coursework stage, lack of motivation, and little knowledge of available resources (whether still physically existing or transferred online or discontinued) along the ‘solo’ journey of academic writing. The loneliness also included the linguistic challenges faced by many of the university’s bilingual and multilingual graduate students. They needed to make an extra effort in mitigating the effect of their first language on their academic writing in English at this large urban research university.

The Writing Center: A Hub Offering Support beyond Writing

The graduate tutors at the HSI’s writing center are current graduate students and recent graduates of their programs. They offer one-on-one tutoring sessions in-person and virtually. The tutor-tutee mentorship, developed via sessions, is a multi-layered and complex dynamic that extends beyond writing (i.e., socially, academically, and professionally). In addition to tutoring, the writing center offers approximately 20 graduate workshops per year, a dissertation retreat week twice a year, and recently the Graduate Writing Mentorship Program (GWMP) in two to three cohorts a semester for graduate students over the institution’s 120 graduate degree programs.

Exigence of the GWMP

During a meeting with the associate dean of the University Graduate School (UGS) in Fall 2019, the first author proposed the idea of adding a graduate writing group as a weekly activity to their regular consultation service. A trial group was piloted in November 2019. The exit survey results from the GWMP participants, the feedback from facilitating graduate consultants, and the retention rates of GWMP were the three main factors for both the writing center and the UGS to consider moving forward with the program. The second author, who had worked in the writing center since 2018, facilitated the GWMP from January 2020 to July 2021; he left to begin his Ph.D. in English in Fall 2021. The third author, who has worked in the writing center since 2010, has facilitated the GWMP in 2021. The GWMP graduate consultant mentors were chosen based on their experience in long-term high-stake graduate-level writing projects as writers and writing consultants.

GWMP: Our Implementation Endeavors and Take-Aways

As an extension of the dissertation retreat week, our initial stage of the writing group program aimed at providing a physical space and maximizing time for writing. The program was born from a collaborative effort between the graduate school and university’s writing center in November 2019. The graduate school sent a call via email for all graduate students, inviting them to join this free program. The three-hour-long weekly GWMP was deemed conducive to writing with an assigned graduate consultant on site for participants’ questions. Students came and left at their discretion. This structure resembles the first of Sohui Lee and Chris Golde’s two models — “Just Write” (2), a less structured model which prioritizes granting writers autonomy. 

The second iteration of the GWMP, which began in Spring 2020, implemented an application-based cohort of 10 graduate students with no attendance requirement. The graduate school sent a call via email for all graduate students and selected participants via Qualtrics responses. Initially, the group met exclusively in person but was moved entirely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The third version, which began in Fall 2020 amid the height of the pandemic, consisted of two virtually-run application-based cohorts of 10 students selected from over 100 applicants. Attendance was mandatory to secure a spot in the program; two unexcused absences yielded an available spot for over 80 applicants on the waiting list. In the three-hour-long session, one-on-one breakout sessions were used for setting and achieving goals as a means to further participants long-term writing projects. Participants could engage with their writing center consultant mentors to determine their goals and improve their writing, resulting in the timely completion of their capstone projects. The current version of the GWMP resembles features of Lee and Golde’s second model — “Writing Process” (2). “Writing Process” emphasizes writing as a progressive process and encourages “consistent and ongoing conversations about writing” within the time and space (Lee and Golde 2).

The evolution of our GWMP practices corresponds to the guidelines in the existing literature of writing groups, including “...personal goal setting, timelines, and accountability...navigating relationships and networking...knowledge-sharing...encouragement” (Remmes Martin and Ko 14–15). The added structure and accountability enhanced the participants’ engagement and retention. Participants also revealed their liking of the one-on-one conferences and brief moments of peer interactions during this weekly three-hour-long program.

With factors affecting graduate students such as long commuting, familial obligations, job commitments, and COVID-related challenges, we suggest a hybrid model of the GWMP. Providing students with the option of a physical or virtual cohort would contribute to retention rates and students’ continued success. It is expected that once students have selected their cohort, they will commit to attending all of the scheduled sessions, barring special circumstances.

method

We conducted an IRB-approved mixed-methods study (Approval #: IRB-21-0291) to explore GWMP participants’ perceptions of the program during COVID-19 and their expectations of the program post the pandemic. We successfully recruited 14 participants from the 2021 summer GWMP cohorts (N=30) for surveys and 10 for one-on-one interviews. The survey questions were informed by the GWMP exit survey in Spring 2021 and the existing literature (e.g., Bell and Hewerdine 50; Kells 29; Kim and Wolke 238-240; Mannon 60; Radke 11; Remmes Martin and Ko 13). For instance, there were options in the survey about the purpose of the GWMP, including a modified option as “Set personal goals, timelines, and accountability” from the list of Kathryn Remmes Martin and Linda Ko (13). Another example is a modified question of “What forms of feedback are you looking for?” to “What forms of support are you looking for?” in our survey (Mannon 60). Some of the demographic questions included graduate students’ language experiences, first-generation college/graduate students, and their fields of study.

Data Collection

We conducted a pilot study on Spring 2021 GWMP participants to finalize the survey validation. We conducted purposeful sampling and then disseminated the Qualtrics survey with close-ended and open-ended questions in Summer 2021 (see Appendix C). This online survey took participants approximately 20 minutes to complete; the final question gauged their willingness to participate in a subsequent interview by providing the option to leave their email address. We followed up with the respondents who consented to be contacted by email by employing nested sampling and conducted ten one-on-one interviews via Zoom with audio recording only. The interview questions included follow-up questions to the survey responses (see Appendix D). The quasi-structured interviews (with mostly prepared questions) were scheduled to grant interviewees’ availability in Summer 2021 and lasted 25 minutes on average. Data from the survey and interviews remained confidential. All the following names used are pseudonyms.

Data Analysis

the survey; Zoom audio transcripts provided raw interview transcripts. We verified the qualitative data from the survey and interview transcripts and agreed to leave our first thoughts by inserting comments in our own saved files. We continued our qualitative data analysis by converging words into different coding categories (via different color highlights). The coding categories were words and phrases that represented the regularities, patterns, and topics covered by the data and derived from the survey and interview questions. We then discussed those categories together to collapse and refine our categories into themes, to resolve discrepancies (Van Scoy et al. 573), and to triangulate our analyses from our individual perspectives—one as a writing center administrator who helped establish the GWMP and two as graduate consultants who had led GWMP sessions over multiple semesters. For instance, we merged growth in writing and growth as writers into one theme. We also merged planning and time management into one theme. In addition, we subdivided writing factors into those within, across, and for writing and exemplified and visualized the three subcategories in our findings.

Based on findings from both quantitative and qualitative data, a meta inference was made. The meta inference, as an integration of the findings, would improve our understanding of “how” GWMP worked and “not just if” it worked or not (Hitchcock and Newman 48). That is to say, whatever the quantitative results were, looking at individuals’ answers to those open-ended questions via survey and interviews might tell us why the results were as such (i.e., explain and interpret the quantitative data). We threaded the draft with themes and categorized answers and evidence from the analyzed data to further organize and interpret the findings.

Findings

Demographic Information

The 14 survey respondents lived off campus and were in their respective programs anywhere from half a year to four years. Their graduate programs ranged from humanities to STEM to social sciences. Twelve were full-time students, nine were first-generation graduate students, and six were first-generation college students. They represented diverse racial/ethnic groups: 7 White, 3 Black, 3 Hispanic, and 1 Asian. Eleven of them spoke more than one language, including Turkish, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Russian, Greek, and Hebrew; six were multilingual writers, stating that English was not their first language (i.e., Spanish, Turkish, Russian). Among the ten interviewees nested from the 14 survey respondents, some of them held the university’s Teaching Assistantship (TAship), some were full-time employees, and some mentioned their responsibility when childcare was not available and/or when the lab experiments relied on them.

Overall Perceptions of the GWMP

None of the 14 survey respondents showed dissatisfaction with the current GWMP; they were all interested in continuing the GWMP in the following semester, either virtually or in person. The ten interviewees showed their generic liking of the current virtual GWMP in the following aspects: easy accessibility, a familiar and comfortable writing space, helping prioritize writing time and having a consistent writing schedule, giving accountability, and exhibiting peer motivation. Most of the interviewees envisioned a virtual GWMP for the future, citing convenience and accessibility, along with the reasons mentioned above. A few did prefer in-person GWMP meetings when applicable; one interviewee, Roxie, felt that “it's easier to get distracted in a virtual environment.”

Two of the 14 survey respondents participated in the GWMP for the second time. The remaining 12 were first-time participants; they all acknowledged that the GWMP and the writing center were their only resources for writing at the university. One of the interviewees, Eddie, mentioned online writing groups they joined during weekends along with the GWMP. This participant stated that the Friday GWMP served “as the kick-off of the weekend...plan what to write over the weekend.” Then this person used weekend online writing groups to implement their writing plans.

Nine out of 14 survey respondents agreed they saw improvement in their writing, and 10 out of 14 agreed there was an improvement in themselves as writers. In the interviews, the interviewees elaborated on both aspects: Nickolas and Eddie found their writing was clearer to readers; Dexter asserted that “I think being able to outline a flow of logic for, like my introductions….” was particularly useful. The enhanced sense of writers’ responsibility was evident. The interviewees expanded on their growth as writers. Nickolas, for instance, mentioned several cognitive strategies they gained in academic writing: paraphrasing, writing resources utilized, and breaking tasks into small manageable sections; Dexter noted they were better able to focus on proofreading their writing and editing for clarity (i.e., “make sure that everything I wrote was saying what I wanted it to say”). Bradford and Katrina highlighted their growth in metacognitive ability to manage time for writing efficiently; Lyn articulated that “[The GWMP] made me sit down and collect my thoughts”; Roxie was more driven and strategically self-paced and feels that “I've gotten better at setting more specific goals and holding myself accountable to those goals.... I've gotten better with a writing routine.”

Writing along the GWMP

Most of the participants were working on a dissertation and were at the write-up stage, either proposals or dissertation chapters (i.e., literature review and/or data collection). They typically achieved one quarter to over three quarters of their writing goals during each three-hour-long GWMP session; some of them used the GWMP and the corresponding week as an interval to plan and manage their writing goals. For instance, the interviewee Nickolas remarked that their writing week started with the GWMP and ended with the writing week until the next GWMP session. They usually fulfilled 90% of their writing goals in each writing week. All the interviewees perceived the completion of their writing goals above three quarters over the semester.

Needs and support within, across, and for Writing

During the GWMP sessions, participants expected mentor support on common needs: literature review, formatting, sentence structure, organization, time management, breaking up a more extensive project into manageable sections, stress and anxiety, and communication with committees/advisors. Their survey responses show that the needs range from linguistic patterns to rhetoric development and from metacognitive strategies to emotional and interpersonal factors impacting writing. Eleven out of 14 survey respondents believed the support was sufficient from GWMP, and three chose “maybe.” They found the GWMP most useful in the following aspects: more knowledge in how to write, more confidence in making progress with a project, more self-regulation to motivate themselves in writing, more confidence in graduating (on time), more awareness of writing resources from the university and online, less anxiety about deadlines, less anxiety to let others read their writing, and less nervousness to talk about their writing with peers and mentors. Almost every participant chose the metacognitive change — “more self-regulation to motivate myself in writing,” and half of them chose “more confidence in making progress with a project” and “more awareness of writing resources from the university and online.” One response about self-regulation, for instance, was how “[The GWMP] assisted [them] with keeping a writing schedule and developing smaller goals.” One of the resources from the survey response was “software for plagiarism checking.” All the themes emerging from responses helped the authors identify the relationship among the three aspects (needs and support within, across, and for writing) as shown in the Figure 1 (see Appendix E). This iceberg figure has been developed and agreed by us, because of our review of the existing literature and our research participants as multilingual and first-generation graduate writers and their multi-layered needs, from linguistic patterns to rhetoric development (i.e., within writing) and from metacognitive strategies (i.e., across writing) to emotional and interpersonal factors impacting writing (i.e., for writing).

Within Writing. As a core of the writing process, the participants in the GWMP benefited from and expected more knowledge about how to write. For example, Dexter said, “I think being able to outline a flow of logic for like my introductions and what I'm trying to say…[so] that someone who is not in my line of research could understand” was a notable improvement. Nickolas sought more specific feedback (including formatting, phrasing, clear and concise language) to make their writing “clearer to readers.” It should be noted that the GWMP was not a replacement or substitute for the graduate tutorials the writing center provided; it aimed to enhance graduate writers’ writing progress in a cohort-based community. Both Dexter and Nickolas developed their writer responsibility, which emphasizes the awareness of target readers.

Across Writing. As revealed in the demographics, around half of the participants were multilingual writers. For instance, Raven stated clearly that they expected the GWMP to embed “the opportunity to ask some specific things about English as a Second Language”; Raven contextualized their writing background as “writing and publishing for almost ten years in Spanish.” Raven’s need for guidance on contrastive rhetoric applied to other participants in navigating academic writing standards across cultures.

For Writing. The external factors for writing would include the following: metacognition, emotional support, confidence, and identity. Compared with the first two elements: within and across writing, the third one is more process-oriented. In other words, the factors for writing seem irrelevant to the final academic writing product but matter significantly in reality. The GWMP participants liked the program and would like to continue because of the positive experiences with those external factors. Almost all of the participants complimented the role of the GWMP in regulating their writing schedules in terms of planning and managing their time. For instance, Katrina strategically did the following: “I met the day before with the Professor to discuss the things I needed to work on...and then I would work on them during [the GWMP]”; on the other hand, Eddie used the GWMP on Friday as a kick-off to their weekend—planning what to write over the weekend with two online writing groups. Eddie stated that “...last weekend like I already did this, on Friday, so this weekend I can work on X, Y, Z, so it definitely has helped me to kind of make sure [I'm] continuously moving along.”

Some of them also felt a sense of belonging in this virtual community where they could share resources, strategies, and feelings. More importantly, they felt comfortable sharing their vulnerability and celebrating each other’s achievements, even small ones. The weekly check-in and wrap-up enhanced their perceived identity as emergent writers and supported scholars.

Expectations of the Program

From the survey, the expectations of the future GWMP included: setting and sharing goals to be shared as a group at the end; inviting some “prolific writers” to come for talks to further inspire and motivate; allowing for longer one-on-one time (in the event that fewer people sign up for that time); reading some students’ work together and providing some feedback if necessary. The interview results echoed the survey responses. In summary, they expected more “peer engagement and accountability” as well as writing tools and strategies.

The Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic, which was mentioned in the data collection as a temporal context, caused many obstacles for the GWMP participants: physical isolation and unavailable daycare, in addition to their loneliness and anxiety. Take Nickolas, for instance; this participant was reconnected academically after disconnections with their lab members and mentor during COVID-19. Eddie, who worked full-time during the pandemic, still felt forlorn and lost because of “[a] struggle with...no sense of community...because we don’t meet periodically or anything like that we all had our classes, the same our first year and then we all kind of went our own separate ways.” Eddie referred to their own disciplinary cohort “where they hadn’t met other three students in the same cohort for at least a year and a half” during the pandemic. The GWMP, a multidisciplinary virtual cohort amidst the pandemic was “more active and engaged as a connected community,” as Eddie complimented. Also, the virtual GWMP during the pandemic was more reasonable and accessible for graduate participants since some participants were out of town, some needed to attend to their children due to daycare closures or lab work at times, and several held full-time positions. It should be noted that COVID-19 was also an era when some online writing groups were formed voluntarily; the scale was yet to be known.

Discussion

Multilingual Writers’ Growth across Writing

The current study’s findings have substantially enriched the existing literature on multilingual graduate writers. Eleven of the participants spoke more than one language, including Turkish, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Russian, Greek, and Hebrew; six stated that English was not their first language (i.e., Spanish, Turkish, Russian). These multilingual writers may have faced extra challenges in navigating graduate writing in English and needed more targeted support. For instance, Raven clearly stated that they expected the GWMP to embed “the opportunity to ask some specific things about English as a Second Language.” The “specific things,” connected to existing literature, include Lavelle and Bushrow’s Intuitive, a factor as “predictive of the quality of an academic writing outcome” (Lavelle and Bushrow 816). Lavelle and Bushrow acknowledge that some writers have an understanding of writing that exists on “‘another’ level, or beyond the cognitive plane” (816). Perhaps the “Intuitive” factor points to a challenge unique to multilingual writers who need more explicit guidance and immersive exposure to scholarship than their peers. The GWMP graduate consultants have been trained to notice a spectrum of multilingual writers’ needs. For instance, Sarah Nakamaru’s categorization of multilingual writers into two groups—visual and auditory (117), informed the GWMP consultants that multilingual writers’ previous language acquisition could yield some common mistakes and various self-correcting strategies in their revising process. Depending on the acquiring styles of those multilingual writers, some of them who had learned English visually could not “hear” their voice in writing and correct unnatural phrasing (Nakamaru 112) by sounding out. The auditory learners would have more “Intuitive” to make sure their sentences flow (Nakamaru 112). Accordingly, the GWMP consultants shared relevant resources and encouraged their graduate writers to reserve sessions at the writing center.

Moreover, Raven’s “specific things” also echo Liebman’s new contrastive rhetoric. Such an expanded contrastive rhetoric is embodied not only in writers’ finished written products in terms of their organizations, but also in writers’ writing processes at a metacognitive level– why to write, to whom to write, what to write, how to write, and what to write for (Liebman 142). That is why when asked, Raven, an established multilingual scholar, still felt challenged in composing academic writing in English. The approach to audiences was mentioned by GWMP participants as an aspect of their growth. For example, interviewee Dexter imagined their reader as “someone who is not in my line of research could understand.” Similarly, interviewee Nickolas tried to make their writing “clearer to readers.” Both aforementioned responses also confirm with one part of Liebman’s contrastive rhetoric: to whom to write (142), The content knowledge in their writing projects, though within specific disciplines, should be conveyed as clear and understandable text in a broader academic discourse. Such cognitive awakening aligns with Starke-Meyerring's rhetorical awareness in which Ph.D. students acculturate to their specific disciplines’ established genres and discourses (66).

The Submerged of an Iceberg—More about and for Writing

Writing is a complicated process for graduate students (Shapiro 125), which is a belief shared by the participants of the current study and shown in Figure 1 (see Appendix E). At the bottom of the figure, there are four salient concepts derived from the data: metacognition, emotional support, confidence, and identity. In this interdisciplinary platform of GWMP, the participants’ growth as writers embraces enhancement in metacognitive ability in the interviews, such as efficiently managing time for writing efficiently (Bradford and Katrina), sitting down and collecting thoughts (Lyn), and being self-paced (Roxie). Moreover, almost every survey respondent chose the metacognitive change — “more self-regulation to motivate myself in writing.”

The GWMP also has offered emotional support naturally in one-on-one consultations and peer-sharing moments. The peer-like safe space within the GWMP, as an extension of classrooms and coursework, has built peer learning, peer mentoring, peer cheering, and peer networking. As Eddie expressed, the GWMP is “more active and engaged as a connected community,” where graduate writers could feel free to share their vulnerabilities and achievements as well as other moments “about not knowing, doubting oneself,...or failing” (Fredrick et al. 162). Those graduate writers, many of them multilingual writers, credited GWMP with relieving their anxiety about writing as a process as well as their timelines and deadlines. It should be noted that first-generation college students or first-generation graduate students, even as native-English speakers, might have similar anxiety because of their lack of previous exposure to scholarly literature or highly conventional writing. The emotional support from GWMP has transformed the participants’ writing journey of solitude into solidarity.

In terms of their scholarly identities, all the participants could see themselves and their peers in the process of developing “scholarly identities and disciplinary socialization” (Kranek and Regidor 64), by sharing and hearing obstacles and progress. The participating graduate students “continuously construct and (re)construct their identities as readers, writers...” (Kim and Wolke 214), by sharing resources and peer review. Interactions with their own texts and their peers’ texts in the collaborative space of the GWMP all helped promote the establishment of their scholarly identities.

Confidence, associated with the scholarly identity, was the fourth factor for writing shown from the current study’s findings. The majority of the GWMP graduate students had more confidence in making progress with a project and graduating on time. The consensus echoes Gray’s study about boot camp participants and their “increased confidence and motivation” (Gray 235).

Accountability within Uncertainty Affected by COVID-19

At the last stage of their academic journey, the participants needed and welcomed contextual structure to incentivize their writing regulation, especially amidst the pandemic crisis. COVID-19 has caused more obstacles and challenges for graduate writers—being away from their scholarly network, physical isolation, emotional toll, financial crisis, and changes in personal and familial responsibilities. Approximately two-thirds of the participants were first-generation graduate students and over 40% were first-generation college students. As their families do not have academic experience, they could neither easily notice their struggles, sympathize with, nor support them.

Participating graduate students expressed a desire for more accountability. They could see the merit of accountability in their growth, managing time, timelines, writing projects, and planning and prioritizing. Such accountability supports Lee and Golde’s second model — “Writing Process” (2), where “consistent and ongoing conversations about writing” are encouraged within the time and space (Lee and Golde 2). Derived from GWMP’s accountability and those participants’ growth in their managing skills, the participants could regulate their writing and life pace and further help prompt emotional well-being. In other words, accountability, the external factor, was internalized to help stimulate those graduate students’ self-motivation and self-autonomy to move towards these students’ ultimate success and completion of their graduate programs.

Conclusion

The current study, like other empirical studies, has its limitations. All the data were from GWMP participants’ self-reports, which might lead to the validity issue of the data. Also, through convenience sampling and nested sampling, the 14 survey respondents and ten interviewees in Summer 2021 might not represent the whole population of the GWMP participants over the years. Besides, the participants recruited from the HSI might not reflect student (linguistic and familial) demographics at other institutions.

Nevertheless, the study has contributed to the writing center field in practice and scholarship. In terms of practical application, the authors call for more explicit and targeted workshops for first-generation graduate students and multilingual writers and/or for dissertation writers at large that cover topics such as English writing conventions, novelty moves, and academic rhetoric; social hours, and mindfulness practices can be considered to better meet graduate writers’ needs, as the bottom part of the iceberg.  Graduate students are expected to complete high-stake writing projects on time and there needs to be more support and guidance in, about, and for writing at this level, as the iceberg figure emphasizes.  Our GWMP, with its contexts– COVID-19, diverse student writers, and an HSI, echoes and foregrounds the merit of other writing groups studied in various contexts. It also helps shift scholarly and administrative attention to writing groups from Yes/No to “how.” Our institutional context as an HSI provides pioneering thoughts for other institutions with increasing diversity, mirroring the growth of the national trends.

The next step of the empirical study regarding the writing group at large would be to examine those graduate writing group participants’ progress in their academic programs and other evaluation items of graduate students in general (graduation rate/dissertation completion and years of completion). The quantitative data can be used in a comparison to equivalent data of students without participation of writing groups (i.e., the GWMP); the quantitative data can also be used in a combination with the perceptions of those former writing group participants to present a whole and longitude picture of how writing groups support graduate students.

This study gives graduate student writing the attention that is long overdue. Even though our study cannot fully represent the U.S. graduate student population, as other studies, its temporal and local contexts call for more inquiries about how to support diverse graduate writers with various needs and circumstances. This study’s contextual factors could be a reference for other institutions with similar multicultural and multilingual contexts and growing diversity. Our GWMP at a large HSI could serve as a model to other institutions on how to accommodate the multifaceted needs of graduate student writers.    

Acknowledgement

We thank all the consenting participants for sharing their thoughts. We also thank Dr. Vanessa Kraemer Sohan and Dr. Glenn Hutchinson (Florida International University) for their advice and comments.

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Appendix A

Table: The Inventory of Graduate Writing Processes

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Appendix b

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Appendix c

Post-Pandemic Graduate Writing Mentorship Program (GWMP) Survey

I have read the information in the consent form provided to me and agree to participate in this study. I have had a chance to ask any questions I have about this study, and they have been answered for me.

●      I agree

●      I disagree

Dear Graduate Writing Mentorship Program (GWMP) participants,

Thank you for spending your time answering the following questions. This should take approximately 25 minutes.

1. What is your writing project for the GWMP?

2. Where are you in this process as of now? 

   ●      Brainstorming

   ●      Reading/literature review

   ●      Data collection

   ●      Data analysis

   ●      Write-up

   ●      Formatting

   ●      Revision

3. How much of your writing goals do you usually achieve during each session?

   ●      1-25%

   ●      26-50%

   ●      51-75%

   ●      76-100%

4. Which area do you mostly need mentors’ support? You may choose more than one.

   ●      Literature review

   ●      Formatting

   ●      Sentence structure

   ●      Organization

   ●      Time management

   ●      Breakup a larger project into manageable sections

   ●      Stress and anxiety

   ●      Communication with committees/advisors

   ●      Other

5. Was the support provided sufficient?

   ●      Yes

   ●      Maybe

   ●      No

6. How do you feel about the improvement in your writing skills? 

   ●      Strongly agree

   ●      Slightly agree

   ●      Neutral

   ●      Slightly disagree

   ●      Strongly disagree

   ●      Not applicable

7. How do you feel about your improvement as a writer?

   ●      Strongly agree

   ●      Slightly agree

   ●      Neutral

   ●      Slightly disagree

   ●      Strongly disagree

   ●      Not applicable

8. Which part of the GWMP do you find most useful? You may choose more than one.

   ●      More knowledge in what to write

   ●      More knowledge in how to write

   ●      More confidence in making progress with a project

   ●      More self-regulation to motivate myself in writing

   ●      More confidence in graduating (on time)

   ●      More awareness of writing resources from FIU and online

   ●      Less anxiety about deadlines

   ●      Less anxiety to let others read my writing

   ●      Less nervousness to talk about my writing with peers and mentors

   ●      Other

9. Why?

10. Which part of the GWMP do you find least useful? Why?

11. How can we improve the GWMP?

12. How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the GWMP? 

    ●      Extremely satisfied

    ●      Moderately satisfied

    ●      Neutral

    ●      Moderately dissatisfied

    ●      Extremely dissatisfied

13. Would you be interested in the GWMP next semester?

    ●      Yes, preferably virtual

    ●      Yes, preferably in-person

    ●      Yes, preferably hybrid

    ●      Maybe

    ●      No

    ●      No, because I will have graduated by then

14. Why?

15. This is my _____________ (e.g., first, second, third, etc.) time participating in the GWMP.

16. How does your experience in the GWMP differ from your experience in other forms of writing support (e.g., advisor’s mentorship, peer support, external writing groups, online writing resources, etc.)

    Demographic Information

17. What is your program and level (master’s or doctoral)?

18. How long have you been in this program (years and months)?

19. What is your first language?

20. What are your other language experiences and proficiency levels? Please provide the name of the language(s) and proficiency level (native or native-like, fluent, basic).

21. Are you a first-generation college student?

    ●      Yes

    ●      No

22. Are you a first-generation graduate student? 

    ●      Yes

    ●      No

23. Are you a full-time or part-time student? 

    ●      Full-time

    ●      Part-time

24. What is your race and ethnicity? 

    ●      White (Hispanic)

    ●      White (Non-Hispanic)

    ●      Black (Hispanic)

    ●      Black (Non-Hispanic)

    ●      Asian and Pacific Islanders

25. Do you live on or off campus?

    ●      On campus

    ●      Off campus

26. Please leave your email address for an individual 30-minute-long Zoom interview this summer. You will receive a follow-up email soon.