For AY 2026-2027, The Writing Center is offering paid Graduate Fellowships designed to contribute to fellows’ professional development while also supporting their writing efforts. This opportunity is open to all PhD students across the university. We encourage applicants from diverse fields across the humanities and STEM.
Learn more about our current cohort of graduate fellows: Our People | The Writing Center & Speaking Studio | Washington University in St. Louis
We’re hosting a recruitment open house for prospective applicants on Thursday February 26, 2026, from 11am-noon in The Writing Center classroom on the lower level of Mallinckrodt, room 132. Come meet us and ask questions about the fellowship or tutoring. There will be coffee, bagels, and plenty of current grad fellows happy to share their experiences!
Graduate Fellowships with The Writing Center
Application deadline: March 20, 2026
Writing fellows will receive training and experience in the pedagogy of one-on-one writing instruction, learn about effective writing workshop design and execution, and have the chance to design and deliver their own workshops. They will also learn how to translate their Writing Center training and experience into various classroom settings and situations. Their work will be supervised by Rob Patterson, director of The Writing Center, and require a commitment of approximately six hours per week.
Dissertation Support:
While The Writing Center is offering this fellowship as a way to provide training and experience useful on the job market, we are ultimately interested in supporting fellows’ dissertation and other writing progress. To that end, all selected fellows will receive individual and group writing support. For example, our interdisciplinary group of fellows meets every other week to share and discuss each other’s writing as part of the six-hour weekly commitment.
Duration:
Fellowship responsibilities begin August 2026 and end May 2027. We will hold a three-hour kick-off meeting in the week before fall classes begin.
This nine-month fellowship can be renewed for multiple academic years.
Time commitment:
Approximately six hours per week, including a weekly group meeting for training and writing support purposes. Weekly schedule will be flexible to accommodate fellows’ departmental and dissertation-related responsibilities.
Stipend:
$4120 for the academic year
Qualifications:
- PhD students in good standing who have their advisors’ support in pursuing this opportunity.
- At or near the dissertation stage, though we will consider applicants at an earlier stage on a case-by-case basis.
- Excellent writing and communication skills.
- Excellent interpersonal skills.
- Enjoy working with and helping others.
The deadline to apply is March 20, 2026. Interviews will take place in April, and decisions will be communicated by early May at the latest.
Frequently Asked Questions
While all sessions are different, because they are tailored to the writer and the project, our approach remains the same. We work with writers to help them clarify their own ideas, develop their writing skills, and gain confidence in their own writing process. We meet writers where they are in the writing process, whether just getting started with brainstorming or polishing up a final draft. We do this largely through careful listening and reading, asking clarifying questions, giving our own reader response to drafts such as what we find convincing or confusing, and suggesting drafting and revision techniques. All of this happens live and through conversation. We don’t proofread or “fix” people’s papers; rather, we help them clarify what they want to communicate and empowering the writer to make their own choices in the revision process. Almost always, the writer will know more about the topic or discipline than the tutor, and this works well because as the writer explains the material to the tutor, they often gain more clarity on their ideas and realize the areas where they need to learn more. The tutor brings the expertise in academic writing and approaches to the writing process, and the writer brings the special knowledge of the topic, forming a collaborative, intellectual exchange.
The Writing Center’s graduate fellowship requires a commitment of approximately 6 hours per week. There is a 3-hour kick off meeting in August before the start of the fall semester. During the semester, we have a 1-hour weekly group meeting on Thursdays at 10am and fellows tutor for the other five hours. Our weekly group meetings often have some required reading. Fellows select their own standard weekly schedule of tutoring hours based on their availability for the semester. For the first 3 to 4 weeks of the fall semester, the weekly training meeting will be 2 hours each week. During those weeks, fellows will be shadowing other tutors rather than tutoring writers themselves.
The Writing Center offers tutoring appointments anywhere between 8am and 9pm Sunday through Friday. Evening and weekend hours are online only, meaning fellows can work remotely for those hours. For daytime hours, fellows work from The Writing Center, even if their clients have scheduled online appointments. We ask all fellows to select a mix of daytime hours and evening or weekend hours.
No, many of our graduate fellows do not have this experience. If your graduate program involves significant writing, then you are qualified to apply. Most PhD programs involve significant writing even if they don’t require essays in coursework: grant proposals, conference papers, article manuscripts, and other genres of writing commonly done by researchers. Our training will give you the skills and techniques to support writers from all disciplines and departments. We value having an interdisciplinary cohort of graduate fellows.