Jenn won the prestigious 2013 Undergraduate Tutor Award at the Southeastern Writing Center Association (SWCA) conference in Ft. Lauderdale last month.

Jenn has been a tutor at the Stetson Writing Center for four years, except for her one semester studying abroad. She thoroughly loves teaching writing skills and is focusing her efforts on becoming an English professor.

Both a fellow student and a professor nominated her for her award. I’m including some portions from their recommendations.

Her fellow tutor wrote:

Jenn was the first (and to my knowledge, only) tutor hired to work in the Writing Center as a first-semester freshman. From the very beginning, she set herself apart with her dedication to her job; she often worked with individual students on multiple sessions throughout the semester and would stay with a student as long as he or she needed to feel comfortable with a paper. Her compassion and attention to detail were first-rate and more than any other student tutor, she went above and beyond the call of duty to ensure our students left the Writing Center with a stronger sense of themselves as writers.

A professor wrote:

Certainly Ms. Schmitt’s aptitude as a tutor alone would make her stand out; she regularly receives high satisfaction ratings from students, who consistently cite her friendliness, clarity and patience in their comments on exit surveys. However, Ms. Schmitt has also distinguished herself as a mentor and leader whose influence on the Writing Center will remain long after she has graduated. In particular, Ms. Schmitt took the lead in researching, writing and compiling our in‐house tutoring handbook, A Tutor’s Guide to the Writing Center, which… is required reading for new tutors. Ms. Schmitt has also served as Lead Tutor, a competitive rotating position among experienced tutors that involves mentoring new tutors, performing faculty outreach, and collaborating with the Writing Center Director on special projects… Currently Ms. Schmitt is working with three of her peers on a research project focusing on writing center assessment…

And your family says: Congratulations, Jenn, for your hard work. We’re so proud of you!

NOTES:

• Jenn and her fellow tutors were featured on the front page of Stetson Today, Stetson University’s online newspaper. You might want to pop on over to read the article, Stetson Writing Center tutors win awards.
• Jenn is also in the far right of a group photo in another Stetson Today article, Summer Freiburg Program Rewarding. (She joined the summer students from Stetson on some of their field trips while she was doing her semester abroad in Freiburg, Germany.)
• The photo of Jenn with her award was taken at the SWCA conference.