in-person tutoring; writers' identities; tutoring session logistics; writing process; prewriting / brainstorming; drafting; revising / editing; writing in the discipline / writing across the curriculum

ABSTRACT

This training offers graduate writing tutors a roadmap for an initial writing center session with a graduate student at the thesis or dissertation stage of their program. After the more interconnected years of coursework, graduate students must transition to independently working on a dissertation or thesis. And this transition can be challenging (Hyland, 2016; Lappalainen, 2016; Holmes, 2018; Gimenez et al., 2023). Graduate writing tutors can provide students crucial guidance, accountability, and encouragement. To do so, however, graduate writing tutors need a clear understanding of the thesis/dissertation process and a strategy for how to help students understand and navigate it. This training aims to:

1) Familiarize tutors with the process and genre of the thesis and/or dissertation 

2) Offer a roadmap for a first session with a graduate writer working on their thesis/dissertation

3) Provide a bibliography of relevant resources that tutors and graduate writers can draw on as they continue working together.

CONTENTS

TRAINING DETAILS

LESSON OVERVIEW

This training is grounded in the idea that even though many graduate students excel in their coursework, they are not always prepared with the understanding and skills to complete a longer research and writing project. In fact, only 72 percent of students who enter flagship public universities graduate in 6 years, and the number is reduced to 57 percent in non-R1 institutions (Denning & Turner, 2024).

Graduate writing consultants are uniquely poised to provide personalized feedback and accountability to graduate students who struggle to manage these longer projects. This training was developed by graduate tutors at BYU’s Research and Writing Center who work with all levels of graduate students, often on their long-term projects such as theses and dissertations. In addition to one-off consultations, our center also offers regular Graduate Thesis and Dissertation Writing Day Camps to help build camaraderie and productive writing habits among graduate writers. While these camps are one-off events, they frequently funnel graduate students into the writing center and drive applications for our PACE program, where graduate students and tutors meet weekly or bi-weekly over the course of a semester (or longer).

This training is designed to prepare new graduate tutors for the first appointment with graduate students writing theses or dissertations. While this could be adjusted for any appointment, our target audience are those who will be working with students long term, and would be particularly helpful to guide experienced tutors as they prepare for appointments with more advanced—graduate student—writers. Tutors participating in this training should understand writing center best practices generally to set up the differences between traditional one-off consultations with undergraduates and more consistent meetings with graduate students. This training could be positioned as part of a wider training on working with graduate students or as a “just-in-time” training immediately before consultations with graduate students begin.

LEARNING OUTCOMES/OBJECTIVES

After completing this lesson: 

• Graduate tutors are prepared to have a successful initial session with graduate students working on a thesis or dissertation

• • Graduate tutors can help graduate student writers identify relevant stakeholders in their project

  • Graduate tutors can describe the purpose of a thesis/dissertation and the major steps a typical student must complete as they write and submit one 

  • Graduate tutors understand the various forms that a completed thesis/dissertation can take depending on genre expectations and program requirements, including IMRaD, journal-ready, and capstone report

  • Graduate tutors can help graduate writers identify and navigate appropriate resources both within and without the center for graduate student writing support

INSTRUCTIONAL PLAN

PRE-WORK

This training is designed for experienced tutors who have already completed a graduate degree and have written their own thesis or dissertation. Tutors who have not had that experience may need to familiarize themselves with the process of writing these longer, academic genres before beginning the training. For example, readings may include chapter 2 in Re/Writing the Center,  “The Rise of the Graduate-Focused Writing Center: Exigencies and Responses” (Summers, 2018) to better understand the need for graduate-focused support, part 2 of The Thesis Writing Survival Guide: “The main parts of your thesis” (Sternad & Power, 2023), or units 7 and 8 of Academic Writing for Graduate Students: “Constructing the Research Paper Part I” and “Part II”  (Swales & Feak, 2012). Additionally, the rubrics in Making the implicit explicit: Creating performance expectations for the dissertation by Barbara E.Lovitts could be helpful prework reading (2007).

Tutors may also choose to gather thesis/dissertation procedures and samples from their institution. For instance, at our university, the School of Education provides a dissertation template Word document with explanations of the abstract, keywords, introduction, etc. that can be helpful for tutors who are less familiar with the parts of a dissertation. Other programs include sample theses/dissertations/professional projects on their websites to demonstrate disciplinary expectations for graduate writing. Prework on creating a “wiki” about different disciplines on campus and their graduate writing expectations would be helpful for tutors who are less experienced with interdisciplinary graduate writing conventions.

INTRODUCTION 

Welcome and outline (slides 1-2)

Introduce the training topic and outline:

• Freewrite
• Discussion
• Roadmap Overview
• Roleplay
• Questions
• Further Reading

Freewriting Exercise (slide 3):

Pass out paper to tutors and ask them to take three minutes to write down everything they know about writing a thesis and dissertation, including important people involved in the process, typical steps students follow, and what the finished product often looks like. In the process of  cataloging their current understanding of the thesis/dissertation process, tutors need not have written their own theses or dissertations to draw on previous knowledge, but could instead choose to write about any long-form writing project, such as term paper, capstone project or personal creative writing project. This freewrite activates tutors’ existing knowledge while also revealing gaps in understanding that the administrator can help fill and respond to over the course of the training.

BODY OF LESSON (40 minutes) 

Discussion (15 minutes) (slide 4): Ask tutors to share details from their writing exercise, starting with the details they are most confident in. Make a running list on a physical or electronic white board and engage in discussion about details. Students who have not completed a dissertation/thesis may compare/contrast the long form writing that they have completed with their sense of the thesis/dissertation process. The content and length of this discussion will likely be determined by the tutors’ prior knowledge—inexperienced tutors may need more instruction and information from the administrator.

During the discussion, the tutors themselves should provide most of the information, but by the end, you should have covered or funneled your way to the details covered in the following slides. 

1. Stakeholders (slide 5): Who are the common stakeholders in the student’s thesis/dissertation? 

   1. Advisor 

   2. Committee members 

   3. Funding partners 

   4. Graduate school

   5. Fellow researchers in the discipline

   6. Research participants 

   7. Community

2. Process (slide 6): What major steps does writing a thesis/dissertation include?

   1. Joining a lab / choosing a topic 

   2. Writing a proposal or prospectus (defense?)

   3. Research or IRB approval

   4. Collecting research

   5. Drafting, one chapter at a time 

   6. Revisions

   7. Defense

   8. Formatting

3. Product (slide 7): What should the thesis/dissertation ultimately look like?

   • Structure and Sample

     • 3 articles - intro & conclusion
     • IMRaD style report on a research project
     • Capstone Report 

   • Format and Sample

     • Documentation Style
     • Graduate School Submission Requirements

Roadmap Overview (10 minutes)(slides 8-14): Access the road map questions and overview how it can be used in your first session:

1. Start with the big picture: program and year they’re in, where they are in the process, committee, deadlines, project requirements, conflicting obligations, etc. 

2. Assess needs: what support are they looking for 

3. Identify goals: specific goals for the semester, goals for current appointment, build timelines

4. Identify their “resource network” from advisors to lab mates to writing consultants to family and friends to handbooks and workbooks.

5. Look at student writing (if any writing is ready)

6. Reflect at the end of the appointment, including writing a report that’s sent to the students with an overview of the session, as well as the next steps the student will take

Roleplay (15 minutes)(slides 15-20): In the roleplay, one tutor will play the graduate student and identify some potential roadblocks to completing the project. The other tutor will play the graduate writing consultant and, using the google form referenced above, provide resources and strategies to overcome such roadblocks. Together, they will create a plan that begins with any goals or deadlines and work backwards to achieve the student's goal.

Conclusion (15 minutes)

Review the Roleplay and Time for Questions (10 minutes) (slide 21): Ask tutors to share out with the group any insights gained, challenges experienced, or questions that arose in the process of working through their role play scenario, with special focus on the road map tool as a guide for discussion.

Discuss Further Potential Reading & Resources (5 minutes) (slide 22): Have students consider additional resources on the further reading bibliography and discuss which seems most interesting and how they can access them.

ASSESSING FOR UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the training, tutors will complete a write-pair-share where they will write down 2-3 things they learned from the training, share with a partner, and then share with the overall group. This will be a place where instructors can check and correct knowledge of the principles included in the training or answer questions that arose during the share discussion.

Instructors could optionally conduct a low-stakes “candy quiz” (an oral quiz where students receive candy for correct answers) reviewing key elements with some of the following questions:

• Here’s an acronym: IMRaD. What do two of the letters stand for? 
• Beside’s IMRaD, what are some other forms a thesis or dissertation might take?
• What do two more of the letters stand for? [Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion]
• Name two stakeholders in the thesis/dissertation process. [advisor/committee members, community, participants, disciplinary researchers, funding partners, degree-granting institution]
• Why might advisors want their grad students to complete a prospectus or proposal? [To clarify direction, define manageable scope, establish research niche]
• Who might be part of a grad student’s resource network besides an advisor? [Other committee members, lab members, family and friends]

   Administrators might make some of the following adaptions:

• Asynchronous online training could break down the parts of the training into different activities, e.g. an online shared document brainstorming stakeholders and timeline, a video with roleplayed scenarios with time to pause and consider the tutor’s response.

• Tutors with less experience completing a thesis or dissertation could use more direct instruction that covers the typical thesis/dissertation writing process and format before discussing tutor support for the process (see optional prework steps).

• A shorter version of the training could involve shorter discussion with more prompting (e.g. “Who are the stakeholders on the side of the department?”) and/or fewer roleplayed scenarios.

• A larger group could do role-played scenarios concurrently, then report on their scenarios to the group. A smaller group could have volunteers complete the role-played scenarios in turn.

• As part of center observations and tutor check-ins, directors may choose to follow-up with graduate tutors to discuss the use and usefulness of the roadmap and other tools. 

• Consider reading one or more of the books listed on the “Further References” slide (23) and talking about it/them at a future training.

RESOURCES & REFERENCES

RefeRENCES

Denning, J. T., & Turner, L. J. (2024). The graduation part II: Graduate school graduation rates (Working Paper No. 32749). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w32749

Gimenez, J., Paterson, R., & Specht, D. (2024). Doctoral writing through a trajectorial lens: An exploratory study on challenges, strategies and relationships. Higher Education, 87(2), 491–508. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-023-01019-7 

Gross, S., Schulze-Vorberg, L., & Hansen, M. (2024). The procrastinating PhD student: A latent profile analysis. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 19, Article 5.https://ijds.org/Volume19/IJDSv19Art005Gross10142.pdf 

Holmes, B., Waterbury, T., Baltrinic, E., & Davis, A. (2018). Angst about academic writing: Graduate students at the brink. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 11(2), 65–70. https://openriver.winona.edu/educationeddfacultyworks/5/ 

Hyland, F. (2016). Challenges faced by second language doctoral student writers in Hong Kong and their writing strategies. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 39(2), 158–180. https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.39.2.04hyl 

Lappalainen, P. H. (2016). Pedagogical design promoting writing productivity on the doctoral level: A case study from Finland. Journal of Academic Writing, 6(1), 108–121.  https://doi.org/10.18552/joaw.v6i1.260 

Schramm-Possinger, M. E., Powers, D. E.  (2015). The first year of graduate study: Documenting challenges and informing ways to reduce attrition (ETS Research Memorandum RM-15-02). Educational Testing Service. https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/RM-15-02.pdf

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Administrator Resources

Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2006). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. Routledge.

Lawrence, P., Tetreault, M., & Deans, T. (2018). Intake and orientation: The role of initial writing center consultations with graduate students. In S. Lawrence & T. M. Zawacki (Eds.), Re/writing the center: Approaches to supporting graduate students in the writing center (pp. 107-123). Utah State University Press.

Lovitts, B. E. (2007). Making the implicit explicit: Creating performance expectations for the dissertation. Stylus Publishing.

McAlpine, L., & Amundsen, C. (Eds.). (2011). Doctoral education: Research-based strategies for doctoral students, supervisors and administrators. Springer.

Tutor Resources

Belcher, W. L. (2009). Writing your journal article in twelve weeks: A guide to academic publishing success (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press.

Bolker, J. (1998). Write your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day: A guide to starting, revising, and finishing your doctoral thesis. Henry Holt.

Eco, U. (2015). How to write a thesis. (C. M. Farina & G. Farina, Trans.) MIT Press. (Original work published 1977)

Feak, C. B., & Swales, J. M. (2009). Telling a research story: Writing a literature review. University of Michigan Press.

Germano, W. (2021). On revision: The only writing that counts. University of Chicago Press.

Sternad, D., & Power, H. (2023). The thesis writing survival guide: Research and write an academic thesis or dissertation with less stress. Springer.

Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2012). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (3rd ed.). University of Michigan Press.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Tyler Gardner

Brigham Young University

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5434-1538

Tyler Gardner directs the university writing center at Brigham Young University.

C. Chanel Earl

Brigham Young University

Web: https://chanelearl.com

Chanel Earl is a writer and writing teacher.

Mary Hedengren

Brigham Young University

Mary Hedengren teaches writing and rhetoric at Brigham Young University. Her research areas focus on graduate writers, genre, and writing acculturation.

Jacquelyn Christensen

Brigham Young University

Jacquelyn Christensen teaches writing, English literature, and linguistics classes, and tutors graduate students.

Larisa R. Schumann

Brigham Young University

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-1220-9037

Larisa R. Schumann PhD, studies and writes about nineteenth-century American literature, teaches writing, tutors graduate students, and volunteers with the International Society of Utah Pioneers.

Cristie Cowles Charles

Brigham Young University

Cristie Cowles Charles currently teaches classes in literature, writing, and global women’s studies at Brigham Young University.

Gardner, Earl, Hedengren, Christensen, Schumann, and Charles, Center Moves, issue 6 (Special Issue), September 2026 

es, no. 5, 2026.