mission statements

[Robert W Barnett <rbarnett@spruce.flint.umich.edu>]

Has anybody drawn up a mission statement or goals and objectives for 
their center? Is this a common practice or extra, unnecessary busy work 
(more so the mission statement I guess).  Depending on where each of our 
centers is housed within the institution, I'm sure we would all answer 
this differently, Anyway, I recently received word down the 
pipe that another unit is attmepting a hostile merger with our writing 
center and I need a trump card. Or at least some hard evidence that our 
missions are not similar enough to warrent a merger.  By the way, we 
tutor students from every discipline, students from the developmental 
writing program, we train tutors, we do much outreach with faculty, 
community, and public schools, and we operate a computer lab. The unit 
that wants to merge is Student services (they do all of the content 
tutoring, no tutoring of writing). If anyone has advice or a mission 
statement or goals and objectives, I would love some models. My fax is 
810-762-3687. I'm just as interested in hearing responses as I am getting 
models. 

Thanks

Bob Barnett
Writing Center Director
University of Michigan-Flint
Barnett_R@crob.flint.umich.edu