Making Do by Making Space: Multidisciplinary Graduate Writing Groups as Spaces Alongside Programmatic and Institutional Places

Abstract

Graduate students are often students, teachers, consultants, mentors, and facilitators all at once. Their knowledge is utilized in teaching and administration, yet they are not fully credentialed and their decisions are under higher scrutiny than those of full-fledged faculty. Given the in-between position of graduate students, we argue that there is a great need for spaces that are free from the judgment of institutional assessment (outside departmental places) while still meeting institutional writing needs graduate students have (alongside the more official places). In two focus groups of graduate writing group members, we asked participants to tell us about their motivations for joining these groups, the benefits they gained through the groups, and the ways the groups were limited. In this chapter, we illustrate why such writing groups are important spaces for graduate education in that they provide support and community, structure and accountability, and multidisciplinary perspectives to their participant.