Undergraduates
We also employ undergraduate students who have completed and done well in the module AW4006, Peer-Tutoring in Academic Writing.
This is an optional extra module which runs in the Spring semester and is open to undergraduate writers from any discipline. AW4006 will fully prepare the ardent student for paid employment in the Writing Centre and also develop their own writing process.
We look forward to receiving CVs from graduates of this module.
We also offer a Co-operative Education position for undergraduates to work as our administrative assistants.
Postgraduates
The Regional Writing Centre employs postgraduate students with strong writing skills to tutor peers and undergraduates in writing for academic assessment.
We recognise that, although some writers are conscious of their writing competency (having a good sense of what constitutes good, competent writing and knowing how to measure it), equally competent writers may not be so aware of what establishes good writing or what measures need to be taken to develop such competency.
We require that writing tutors have a good sense of what makes them excellent writers and be able to articulate what they do to achieve their research and writing goals.
The Regional Writing Centre at UL will train potential tutors to employ several reflective strategies that will bring some of what they do, and how they do it, to the surface, better preparing them to tutor others.
The Regional Writing Centre also works with potential tutors to prepare them to meet any writing situation with confidence.
Applying for a role
Postgraduate students who can demonstrate a high degree of writing competence in their particular discipline are invited to email a letter of application, a CV and a sample of written work submitted for academic assessment about which the candidate is particularly proud to @writingcentre.ul.ie or drop off at our office:
The Regional Writing Centre
Room C1-065
University of Limerick
Limerick
The writing sample should meet the expectations of a discipline-specific audience, having a high readability level while deftly employing the stylistic expectations of the genre. Do not send work submitted for publication.
The process by which postgraduate students are hired is as follows:
When there is an opening in The Regional Writing Centre, students who have submitted the material above are contacted for an interview. The choice of candidates for interview is based on the quality of the writing, whether they have some similar or related experience that we think will help them in the job and, to some extent, their field of study, partly because we like to keep a nice spread of subject specialists if possible.
The purpose of the interview is to determine whether the candidate is reflective about their process and whether they are able to articulate their strategies for getting good grades on papers. If we are happy with the interview, we organise a training schedule.
We would need to identify three mutually available four-hour periods of time in which to train. Our preference is to train more than one person at a time, but that is not always possible, so it is conceivable that it could be one-on-one training, and that happens in the RWC’s Writers’ Space. Once trained, the trainee would observe a tutoring session and then co-tutor a session. The training, including the observations and co-tutoring sessions, is paid.