re: Promotions

[Sara Kimball <skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu>]

Hi, Jeri.  If you reached 50% of first year students on your campus in 
your first year, you did much better than we did.  I'd estimate that we 
saw roughly 30% of first year students enrolled in UT's two fy courses.
    As for attracting people from outside of English lit. and writing 
courses, again, it seems to be a matter of time and constant effort.  
We've been in existence since the fall of 1993, and I'd say we've only 
just begun to see solid growth in numbers of students from these 
courses.  Our first year, we were only officially open for students from 
writing and English courses.  In the fall of 1994 we moved to a new 
location in the Undergraduate Library next to a large, heavily used 
student computer center, and we started working with students from all 
undergraduate courses.  About 59% of our visits were from students 
working on writing for English or writing courses. This year, we've had 
the resources and funding to do extensive outreach across the campus.  
Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, our Coordinator and Xavier Ortiz, our admin. 
assistant put in a lot of time and effort over the break in getting out 
several mass mailings to faculty.  We've also been able to hire grad 
students from outside of Liberal arts who have contacts in their own 
colleges and who have done various things for outreach, like sending 
out mailings and making presentations to faculty.  It's begun to pay off, 
and already last semester we saw slight increases in percentages of 
visits from the colleges we've targeted, but a lot of people have put a 
lot of effort into outreach.
	As for administrators' attitudes, one thing we have going for us 
is that we're funded through a student fee.  We can make the argument 
that if students from a particular college are paying the fee, they have 
the right to use the service.  Elisabeth and I also stress that we are 
not a remedial service in doing outreach.  
	I should note that there are differences in scale between James' 
school and mine.  We're a large state university and a large writing 
center.  But there may be advantages to being in a smaller school.  It's 
fairly easy for us to get lost in the shuffle of everything else that's 
going on on campus, and we've had to get pushy, for example, to get the 
school newspaper to cover some of our activities.  It might be easier to 
become more visible in a smaller place.
	I have one piece of advice for people starting writing centers: 
never, ever, claim that once you hang out your shingle every one's going to 
flock to your doors immediately.  I didn't make this argument myself, but 
some of my senior colleagues did, and for various reasons I felt constrained 
about 
objecting too publicly.  Let's just say that if your department head 
makes the claim that everyone will immediately know and love a writing 
center and then you present your dean with a budget proposal that 
includes a hefty but realistic chunck of money for publicity, the dean's 
going to take his felt-tip pen and wipe out your publicity money.  I've 
also learned to call "publicity" "outreach." ;-)
	Good luck!
Sara Kimball 


On Fri, 2 Feb 1996, Jeri Gillin wrote:

> Wow, Sarah, your post was soooooo heartening!!  I started our 
> writing center just one year ago, and constantly worried about 
> our lack of "accountability" as far as numbers go.  We still 
> have a VERY long way to go, but this past semester more than 
> half of the freshmen on campus used the services.  We cannot 
> seem, though, to get students from other disciplines to come in 
> for help on papers that are not specifically for English 
> classes.  Any suggestions?  I've talked with faculty members, 
> deans, etc., but it's almost as if they see encouraging their 
> students to come in as some reflection of ineptitude on their 
> parts.
> Jeri
> -------------------------------------
> Name: Jeri Gillin, Ed.D.
>       Director, Academic Resources Center
>       Roger Williams University
>       Bristol, RI 02809
>       (401) 254-3219
> E-mail: Jeri Gillin <jgg@alpha.rwu.edu>
> Date: 02/02/96
> Time: 15:14:18
> 
> This message was sent by Chameleon 
> -------------------------------------
> 
> 
>