sad news

[Beth Rapp Young <youngbr@email.uah.edu>]

Well, I just learned some sad news.  The excellent, well-established
Writing Center at Rollins College is being dismantled . . . without
anyone consulting the director (Twila Yates Papay--most of you know
her) . . . and for reasons which, to me at least, make no sense.

"The college wants a center which will serve all writers at Rollins,
not just freshmen."  "The college wants a place where people who like
writing, and are interested in writing, will be able to go--not just
a place for people who are required to go." "The college wants a place
which deals with all aspects of the writing process, not just
invention."  I don't need to point out to you that the Rollins Writing
Center fulfills all of these things--and more.

Service learning projects.  Professionals from the community, graduate
students, and undergraduates working shoulder to shoulder on projects.
Numerous impressive presentations at national conferences.
Word-processing instruction mixed in with consulting about writing.
Special workshops for content classes, at-risk freshmen, students
travelling abroad, etc.  I was fortunate enough to work there both as
a student 12 years ago, and more recently as Twila's assistant, and I
am very depressed that this is all ending.

What's replacing it?  Well, strangely enough, the replacement will not
give the college anything it supposedly "wants.  All of the "centers
on campus" will be merged under a new assistant dean, along with all
the student advising.  Students "won't even need to know what they
need"--they'll show up and someone will refer them to the appropriate
help.  Bear in mind that this apparently is mostly for freshmen and
students who are struggling--advanced writers will have a
separate community, somewhere else (I'm pretty vague about how this
advanced community will happen--no plans seem to be in place, so
maybe it won't.)

Oh, and no one in particular will train these new "everything"
consultants.  Since all faculty will want to send students there,
various faculty will chip in with training, here and there, as
needed--no training course is planned.

I don't know what is to be done with the Writing Across the Curriculum
program, which was designed to be interactive with the Writing Center.
It sounds like that will be dismantled, too.

I should stress that these are my impressions, based on info I dragged
out of Twila when I called her yesterday about a possible joint
project b/w her center and mine.  Twila is expected to be positive and
upbeat about this--she has to break it to her consultants soon in a
way which will not upset them. Oh, and a major
potential donor is coming to Rollins soon, and she's expected to be
positive and upbeat to him, too.  The line goes something like,
"Rollins cares so much about the Writing Center that we're expanding
it into something even better."

And I should also stress that Twila is taking this very
professionally, and she is working on a proposal for a new writing
program, which I hope she tells you about.

But I am VERY upset.  If this could happen to her wonderful program,
what hope is there for us?



Dr. Beth Rapp Young
U of Alabama in Huntsville
YoungBR@email.uah.edu