Re: Forms, Etc

[Joan Mullin <jmullin@UOFT02.UTOLEDO.EDU>]

As I read the replies to this strand I am again struck by the differences in
each of our writing centers--necessary differences based on our contexts.
The exchange of ideas (we do this, we do that) is the purpose, right?
I mean, we're not saying you should do this, you should do that....just
wondering. I include Sara's e-mail below because that is why we do keep
statistics. Had we not, the WAC program would have been scuttled this year
due admininstrators fightened by budget cuts and Ohio legislators. 
The only thing this last group understands is numbers, and unfortunately,
many admininstrators and faculty have succumbed to the same dis-ease.

I envy those of you in institutions where this is not the case.

joan

At 09:33 PM 8/5/96 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm at some level an anti-b too, though I've had to become one to 
>survive and prosper, and as I'm trying to pull together 
>course material for the course I'm teaching with a friend from Classics 
>on Hittites and Mycenaeans, I realize that many of the texts we both 
>study are b. detritus (*all* of the Mycenaean ones are), and I 
>figure as I generate more and more paper, that I could be making a 
>contribution to scholarship many millennia hence. ;-)
>	More seriously, statistics have been crucial to our getting and 
>keeping our funding, and we're especially concerned with demonstrating 
>that we serve all undergraduates from all colleges in the university in 
>roughly the proportions in which they're enrolled. We keep information on 
>a Filemaker Pro database.  It's taken by person sitting at the reception 
>desk, who also functions, inter alia, as official greeter and intial 
>friendly face.  For each 
>visit, we record information like what the student wanted to work on, 
>what was worked on, the instructor's name and the assignment.  The 
>consultant writes a brief description of work done in the session, and 
>that can be transferred to a different form that becomes a note that is 
>printed and sent to the teacher if the student wants us to.  On students' 
>first visits we take some basic demographic information, such as the 
>student's college, year in the university, how (s)he heard about us and 
>the student's gender (the latter we don't ask).  I designed the basic 
>system myself, but at the beginning of the summer, Xavier, our 
>administrative assistant revised it pretty thoroughly and streamlined it, 
>taking out the Kimball-derived Rube-Goldbergesque aspects.  It's 
>now all electronic, for example, and it seems to be working very well.  
>Of course as a reward for his efforts, Xavier now gets to document it.
>Sara Kimball
>UT Austin
>(Who is too tired to spell the b-word even enought to look it up).
>
>On Mon, 5 Aug 1996, Latisha LaRue wrote:
>
>> Linda,
>> 	Hmmm well as a staunch anti-beurocrat:) I'm nearly inclined to
>> agree with you.  But tutors fill out what the clients/writers need?  I'd
>> be afraid they were putting in their own words the needs of the other.  I
>> prefer to have those who avail themselves of our services state their
>> needs in their own words.  And can you imagine the data base if no forms
>> whatsoever are used? 
>

joan
jmullin@uoft02.utoledo.edu

When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.
                -- Abraham Maslow