Do you enjoy writing and working with diverse peers from across campus?
Do you want to deepen your own knowledge about writing while helping others?
Then becoming a Cornell Writing Centers tutor might be the perfect job for you!
What Tutoring Writing Involves
The Cornell Writing Centers offer free writing support for anyone on campus, for any writing project, at any stage of the writing process. We have roughly 30-40 undergraduate student tutors who work one-on-one with writers at five campus locations. The goal of a tutoring session is for the tutor to facilitate an engaged, supportive, and thoughtful discussion of the writer’s work, whether it’s to help them brainstorm ideas, understand an assignment prompt, work on an outline, develop a thesis statement, use evidence effectively, revise a draft, or notice consistent patterns of error in a finished essay. While tutoring services can sometimes be assumed to be only for weak or struggling writers, we believe that all writers benefit from sharing their writing and ideas with others.
Why Tutors Love It
Tutors find this work to be rewarding for a number of reasons. They love getting to discuss and read about topics and ideas from across the disciplines; the intellectual engagement of tutoring; collaborating with diverse students from across campus; deepening their own knowledge about writing and pedagogy through ongoing professional development; and being a part of a vibrant and diverse tutoring community! This work is generative, creative, and an excellent opportunity for students interested in communication, writing, education, and collaborative learning.
Job Description
The Writing Centers are open Mondays through Thursdays 3:00-5:00pm and Sundays through Thursdays 7:00-10:00pm. Thus, tutors either work 3:00-5:00 or 7:00-10:00 shifts. Tutors usually work between 1-3 shifts per week, or between two to nine hours a week. At the beginning of a semester, tutors submit their schedules and shift preference forms so that they’re only working shifts that fit with their schedules. In addition to tutoring, tutors are required to attend 5 staff meetings a semester, which are held on various days at 5:30pm. Staff meetings include checking-in on tutoring shifts and rich discussions about different types of writing and working with others (pedagogy).
Requirements
The tutor hiring process only occurs in the spring. Applicants must submit an application (see below) and complete a group interview. After group interviews, we invite selected applicants to take the required half-semester spring course, WRIT 2101: Responding to Writing: Theory & Pedagogy. The course is scheduled based on applicant availability, but it is likely to be either Tuesdays or Wednesdays 4:30-6:00pm, weekly, starting the week of March 11, 2024. The course is one-credit and required to tutor. Tutors are offered the option to start tutoring during the exams period spring 2024 or to wait and start fall 2025.
To Apply
Please complete this application form.
Additionally, you will need to locate our job ad in Cornell’s Workday. For the workday ad, you do not need to include information about your schedule or repeat information from our longer application. However, you do need to be in the Workday system. Thus, we recommend that you skip any information on this application that you can and just input the basics (your name, email, and anything they require).
Applications are due Friday, February 9, 2024.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact the CWC Director, Dr. Kate Navickas, ken43@cornell.edu
