Survey Says: Salem State Graduate Students Want

and Need Writing Support

By Megan Grandmont, MA/MAT in English, graduate assistant in the School of Graduate Studies
In 2014, the School of Graduate
Studies and the writing center
distributed surveys to graduate
students and faculty in an
effort to discover more about
writing experiences and writing
instruction at Salem State
University. The student survey
sought to elicit information about writing tasks
graduate students find challenging and the kind of
writing support they may want or need. The faculty
survey was intended to gather data on the writing
tasks students frequently need assistance with
and the writing skills students need to succeed in
particular disciplines.

Listening to the Data

While faculty reported the research paper as
the most frequently assigned writing task and
the kind of writing for which students need
more support, graduate students ranked it as
the most challenging writing task.

The greatest disconnect between faculty and

student responses was in their respective
treatment of the masters thesis or capstone,
often an extended, heavily-researched piece of
writing. Students identified the masters thesis
or capstone as the second-most challenging
writing task, yet faculty ranked additional
support for the thesis or capstone relatively
low on a list of proposed writing services. This
finding could indicate that faculty are unaware
of the extent to which students struggle with
these genres.

A majority of faculty indicated that students

area of greatest need in their writing was
citation conventions and logic. This finding
diverges somewhat from students own selfreporting, perhaps suggesting that students
may not have a strong understanding of citation
practices.

Among students, the two most highly-rated

potential workshop topics were Submitting
a Paper for a Conference Proposal or Call
for Papers and Habits of Writers in Your
Discipline. Together, this data suggests that
students desire to better understand and more
fully participate in the scholarly life of their
disciplines.

Faculty highly rated a proposed workshop

on academic writing for multilingual student
writers.

146 graduate students and 47 faculty from a range

of disciplines such as criminal justice, social work,
education, and business completed the surveys. Here
are a few graduate student responses:
I had not been in school for 35 years and I needed
specific help and I was greatly disappointed that
help was not available. Jos P. 6
This is a struggle. I have a registered learning
disability Michelle B.
as an international student, I have some
problems about how I can write properly
Jenny L.
I had no experience in academic writing when I
started this program. I was surprised at the lack
of support compared to the high expectations.
David H.
These responses capture the general sentiment of the
data: students and faculty alike want more writing
support at the graduate level.
6

All student names are pseudonyms.

6 | WIC Program Newsletter | Fall 2015

Responding to Student and Faculty Needs

Taking the findings from these surveys into
account, heres a sampling of some of the forms of
writing support that have been developed over the
past year:
The research paper. In January 2015, the writing
center and the library facilitated a workshop
on Introducing Campus Writing & Research
Resources. A workshop on Using Sources
Effectively will be offered this November.

The masters thesis or capstone. Over Spring

Break 2015, the School of Graduate Studies and
the writing center co-sponsored a three-day
Thesis and Capstone Writers Retreat. Writing
center tutors were available for consultations
during the event.

Citation. In September 2015, Professor Tristan

Abbott, coordinator of the writing center,
offered a workshop on Plagiarism and
Citation.

Conference presentations. In May 2015,

Professor Julie Kiernan of theatre and speech
communication developed a half-day workshop
series entitled Taking Research from the Page
to the Stage.

Support for international/multilingual

students. Education professor Sarah Dietrich is
facilitating writing workshops for multilingual
students on a monthly basis throughout the
2015-2016 year. Students who attend six
workshops will receive a Multilingual Writer
Certificate of Achievement.

Reflecting on Graduate Student Writing Support

Salem State University is not the first institution
to start paying attention to the unique needs of
graduate student writers. A recent issue of Across
the Disciplines , a scholarly journal that focuses
on writing and writing pedagogy across the
curriculum, is devoted to graduate writing across
the disciplines. In the introduction, the editors
suggest that while faculty may expect graduate
students to enter programs with well-developed
academic writing skills, in reality graduate students

are arriving in need of explicit writing support.

Their observation echoes the results of the student
and faculty surveys at Salem State University.
There are many reasons why writing support is
needed at the graduate level. The editors of Across
the Disciplines7 note that graduate writing is
marked by its increased duration, complexity, and
length, as compared with undergraduate writing.8
Salem States graduate students may also struggle
with academic writing for other reasons, as they
themselves describe in the quotes above. Some are
working professionals who have been out of school
for a number of years and others have learning
disabilities. Many are first generation graduate
students (and may have been first generation
undergraduate students as well), with minimal
background knowledge about graduate school and
its expectations. And finally, many are international
or multilingual students whose first language is not
English.
But what these surveys reveal more than anything
else is how deeply invested Salem States graduate
students are in improving their writing skills.
Students demonstrated a keen understanding of
the importance of writing to their academic and
professional futures. Salem State must avoid
the possibility of losing worthy students due to
discouragement over their writing abilities, like one
student who heartbreakingly shared, My writing
would be the reason I stop the program if I ever
were to. Thus the institution must continue to
provide ample support to graduate student writers.
Bibliography
Brooks-Gillies, Marilee, Garcia, Elena G., Kim, Soo
Hyon, Manthey, Katie, and Smith, Trixie. Graduate
Writing Across the Disciplines, Introduction,
Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language,
Learning, and Academic Writing 12 (2015).
wac.colostate.edu/atd/graduate_wac/intro.cfm.
Marilee Brooks-Gillies, Elena G. Garcia, Soo Hyon Kim, Katie
Manthey, and Trixie Smith, Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines,
Introduction, Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language,
Learning, and Academic Writing 12 (2015), http://wac.colostate.edu/
atd/graduate_wac/intro.cfm.
8
Ibid.
7

Fall 2015 | WIC Program Newsletter | 7