Re: Forms, Etc

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

Joan, I'm not sure there's any institution where collecting this kind of 
info isn't desirable (or necessessary). I'm in the midst right now of 
doing several things that are provoking me to think about what my WC is, 
where it's going, and how to define it to its various and sundry 
publics.  One thing that strikes me is how anomalous my WC is within this 
university (are we teachers?  Well, we're not classroom teachers, but we 
do teach; we provide a service, but we'd like people think of us as more 
like lawyers than like scullary maids; our mission is to help undergraduate  
writers, and we do that well, but we also help undergrads by teaching 
their teachers how to teach writing .... etc.).  I guess the first law of 
life for anomalies is that they have to understand themselves, explain 
themselves (often to audiences that can take a long time to get it), and 
sometimes they have to defend themselves.  If you find yourself 
unable to conform to conventional definitions or to do what everyone else 
does in quite the same way they do it, then you have a duty to explain 
yourself and demonstrate how you make a contribution.

I share your reservations about defining success or failure solely in 
terms of numbers and I'm concerned that the upper level admins around 
here sometimes think just about the numbers.  I'm not exactly a 
mathematician, and numbers 
make me anxious ;-0  But more to the point, numbers should reflect 
processes, changes, or trends, and part of it is simply understanding 
what the numbers are telling you and figuring out how to respond.  Our 
admins are rejoicing because, as a result of new incentives, more faculty 
are teaching writing-intensive courses.  Fine, cool -- but the next step 
is figuring out how *well* those courses are being taught; more *bad* 
courses are worse than nothing at all.  Our writing center is seeing more 
and more students -- again, cool -- but we need ways of figuring out 
whether we're doing things well, and we need to leave room for staff 
training and professional development.  Again, if we're doing things 
badly, more is not better.  And so it goes.
sara kimball
 

On Tue, 6 Aug 1996, Joan 
Mullin wrote:

> 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.
>