The Levinthal Tutorial program is one of the only opportunities for Stanford undergrads to work closely with the Stegner Fellows, a selective group of working writers based at Stanford.
The program, run by the Creative Writing Program, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Endowed by Elliott Levinthal Ph.D. ’49, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, and his wife Rhoda, it gives undergraduates the opportunity to work on a creative writing project of their choice.
“I would have died for a program like this in my undergraduate life,” Stegner Fellow Kai Carlson-Wee said.
For five units of credit, students accepted to the program complete an individually-designed reading list of about three books and a writing project of up to twenty poems or around 50 pages of creative fiction or non-fiction. They also meet with their assigned fellow for two hours each week. The program is offered only during winter quarter.
This access to the Stegner Fellows, a group of twenty working writers chosen from an applicant pool of more than 3,200, is unique to the program.
While students are welcome to attend readings by Stegner Fellows throughout the year, “undergraduates do not currently have other opportunities to interact as closely with Stegner Fellows,” said Sarah Weston ’14, a student adviser for the Creative Writing Program.
The inspiration behind the tutorials is “to add a layer of craft and counsel, after the workshops, to undergraduates,” said Eavan Boland, director of the Creative Writing Program.
“A workshop can flatten a writer, when really he or she should be bent and stretched and corrugated,” said Lucas Loredo ’12, who completed a tutorial in his junior year. “The Levinthal Tutorial was perfect for this.”
According to Stegner Fellow Mira Rosenthal, the program creates a more open environment for students, in addition to supplementing workshops.
“In class, students are performing and think[ing] about how they come across to the professor, pleasing the professor,” Rosenthal said.
In contrast, she said the Levinthal Tutorials are “more casual and more honest.”
“There’s not the same pretension as in class, the same trying to be smart,” she said.
According to Carlson-Wee, the program provides a unique experience for the Stegner Fellows as well.
“A mentorship is a middle ground between being a teacher and being a friend, and that matters a lot,” Wee said.
He compared the Levinthal Tutorials to his experience as a student in the tutorial system at Oxford. Studying there, he said, “empowered [him] as a writer and as a thinker.”
Program alumni agreed it is a worthwhile endeavor.
“Everyone I know who has taken a tutorial has spoken of it as one of the best parts of their experience at Stanford,” Weston said.
The 2011-12 program accepted only 17 students out of 70 applicants.
While all students involved in the tutorial must demonstrate a serious interest in creative writing and have completed one of the introductory creative writing classes (English 90, 91, or 92), there are no other course or departmental requirements.
Many undergraduates enrolled in past Levinthal Tutorials were not Creative Writing minors — many are not even majoring in the humanities. Past participants have gone on to start bands, study medicine or even work in the technology industry.
This changes the relationship the mentors have with their students.
“It’s exciting to feel like I’m sowing the seeds of literature — helping to establish a firm institution of literature in someone who will become a promoter and lover of it,” Rosenthal said.
Applications are still open for the 2012-13 program, and will close Nov. 5. Applicants must submit a writing sample and a paragraph outlining a possible program of study.
A previous version of this article stated that Stegner Fellows are a “group of twenty working writers chosen from an applicant pool of more than 3,200” but 10 Stegner Fellows are chosen annually from a pool of more than 1700 and they stay for two years making the applicant pool 3,200 for two years. The Daily regrets the error.