Graduate Students

The Ott serves graduate students of all kinds: Masters鈥� students, doctoral students, and professional students from across Marquette鈥檚 campus. In the last year alone, the Ott registered more than 200 graduate writers, who came from Arts & Sciences, Business, Dentistry, Engineering, Nursing, and both Occupational and Physical Therapy. Through nearly 500 appointments, trained peer tutors helped graduate students understand new genres of writing, incorporate and document sources effectively, and organize as well as explain complex material to diverse audiences for conference posters and presentations, scholarly publications, and both job and grant applications.

We offer personalized support for graduate writers in the form of weekly or bi-weekly meetings; learn more about our Writing Accountability partners program here. We also offer support for English language learners wanting to practice their spoken and / or their written English; learn more about our SWELL program here.

We celebrate writers and writing all year, through a menu of special events. In fall, we dedicate the month of October to Ottoberfest, when we host competitions and offer special prizes to participating writers. In spring, we observe the Feast of St. Cuthbert, the patron saint of Otters, with an open house on March 20th, and we collaborate with the MU Libraries to host a day-long transcribe-a-thon on February 14th in honor of author and activist Frederick Douglass. We also recruit new tutors each fall, and we welcome writers to join us.

We also have answers to the questions that graduate writers frequently ask about the Ott:

 

I'm in a STEM discipline / I'm writing on a very advanced subject: Can a tutor really help me write about such technical material?

Yes, and here's why: Although we can never promise to be an expert in your subject area, we can promise to be an enthusiastic reader with rich knowledge of common genres of writing and the processes of writing. Our tutors spend time reading and analyzing many different examples of genres common across the disciplines, including lit reviews, research/grant proposals, research posters, and personal statements/statements of teaching philosophy. Because they are familiar with the genre expectations (and the common challenges for writers composing these genres), our tutors often begin with ideas of what your writing needs to accomplish rhetorically鈥攏o matter how advanced or technical your subject matter may be. Additionally, one of the biggest challenges for graduate students is to explain their complex research to a less knowledgeable audience; our tutors can respond as less-knowledgeable-but-articulate readers, pointing out places where a draft takes for granted background information or terminology that may need to be explained or defined.

Can an undergraduate student tutor really help a graduate student with an advanced project? Isn't that awkward?

Yes, our undergraduate tutors can help鈥攁nd no, it doesn't have to be awkward. At the writing center, we understand that all writers鈥攏o matter how advanced鈥攂enefit from conversation with interested, experienced readers. Our tutors can never replace your professors or committee members鈥攚e're not here to tell you exactly how to fix your paper鈥攂ut we can offer something that some instructors aren't able to: experience coaching people through the writing process and the time to offer encouragement on a regular basis. We can offer familiarity with many common academic genres (explained above), experience with undertaking major revision, enthusiasm for fine-tuning the clarity and grace of a paper, and your own personal cheerleading service. Many graduate students find that making an appointment every week (or every other week) at the same time, with the same tutor, offers them a terrific, low-stakes accountability mechanism that can help keep a long-term project moving forward. (If you're interested, ask a tutor or reception staff member about setting up a "regular" appointment.)

Okay, but I'd really rather work with a graduate student tutor. Is that possible?

Each year we have several  graduate students on staff. You can find them by scrolling through our staff bios here. But if you find their scheduled availability doesn't match yours, we hope you'll consider working with one of our undergraduate tutors. Feel free to contact us for specific recommendations.