When discussing the benefits of writing centers, the focus is often on the support we offer student writers. But the Writers Workshop also provides transformative learning experiences for the students who work with us as peer consultants. Research has identified peer tutoring as a “high impact practice,” an experience that enriches students’ learning and engagement and contributes to their future success (Bell et al., 2025). At the 2026 Student Success Symposium, the Writers Workshop presented results from a survey of our consultants—both undergrad and graduate students—that helped us learn more about how working in the Writers Workshop has influenced their educational journey here at Illinois.
According to Writers Workshop consultants, working as a peer tutor allows them to:
Become better writers: “We help writers think of themselves as writers, and encourage intentional reflection and targeted growth. In doing that, we can’t help but to do that for ourselves as writers, too.”
Feel a sense of belonging on campus: “It took me quite a while to figure out how I fit in when starting college, and becoming a part of this community helped me find my place. I was very intimidated by academia before I started working at the WW, but getting the opportunity to learn from and become friends with experienced and accomplished consultants who ranged from undergrads all the way to PhD candidates has demystified academia for me in many ways and shown me that I, too, can belong in higher ed.”
Learn about topics they otherwise wouldn’t: “I learned an immense amount about fields I never would have encountered otherwise…I learned about the health benefits of adzuki beans, ancient Byblos and its kings, and sociolinguistic knowledge and language testing. I read manuscripts about teacher-trainer AI models and had some sense of the decisions software engineers were making to train them well before ChatGPT 3.0 was released a couple years ago. I had read papers drawing on Critical Race Theory before it became politicized and pulled into the mainstream to manipulate public discourse.”
Prepare for graduate school: “I began to realize, throughout my time working here, that the aspect of the job that I found the most impactful and rewarding was the opportunity to help writers gain confidence: being there in their moments of doubt, stress or uncertainty and being the person that helps them understand their next steps and believe in their own abilities. These experiences were a major part of why I decided to pursue librarianship and have become interested in student success, and why I have decided to continue my education journey by pursuing another master’s degree in EPOL focused on higher education.”
Develop as mentors: “I became a better mentor through the repeat consultations with my regulars. Being a mentor is not a skill that is really taught to us as graduate students and there are a lot of amazing researchers who are completely sh*** mentors, in part because mentoring is rarely emphasized as a valuable career skill to have even though as academics we spend a lot of our time doing it.”
Prepare for future careers: “Being a consultant and having to interact with a different person every hour, sometimes once every 15 minutes, means I have gotten really good at talking to strangers… for my expected career in journalism, I am going to need to be extremely good at those things. The Writers Workshop has made me much more comfortable interacting with anyone of any age, and being confident in my abilities as a student, writer, consultant and journalist.”
These responses demonstrate the ways working as a peer tutor can enhance students’ time on campus, contribute to their personal development, and shape their future aspirations. We look forward to offering this unique transformative learning experience to many more students in the future!
By Meg Cole, Writers Workshop, Associate Director