Re: e-mail tutoring

[becky.rickly@umich.edu (Becky Rickly)]

Well, Sara, the almuni OWL is really only an idea now, but here's the
scoop.  U of MI is going to offer its alumi the opportunity to use their
resources and computers with them as a service provider for a monthly fee
and a charge for connect time.  They wanted to have some good reasons for
people paying a bit more than they would through, say, AOL, and they're
thinking about offering services like the GopherBLUE gopher service and the
Alumni OWL as some of those extra services.  The cost of all of this would
be included in the fee structure, and we'd get a kickback that would allow
us to staff an alumni OWL and keep up the web pages.

Now, of course, students know they can use the OWL for free, but they also
know that U of MI tutors are students.  The alumniOWL would not only
include more sophisticated resources, but it would also be staffed by
graduates/instructors/perhaps even PhD'ed professors.

The good news is that we did a pilot during the summer where we analyzed
our usage, and we looked at outside papers, U of M alums, as well as
potential:  those seniors using the OWL to apply to professional schools,
those sending job letters/resumes, etc.  THe bad news is that we gave the
results to the powers that be, and while they're interested, they don't see
enough revenue just yet.  So we're on the back burner as of now, but I
think there's a good chance we'll be called up in the future.

I think your idea of a commercial OWL to fund local outreach is a great
idea.  I'd like to hear more about that--perhaps over lunch sometime?

--Becky

At 7:37 PM 2/26/97, Sara Kimball wrote:
>Becky, hi.  I would be *really* interested in anything you have to say
>about this alumni OWL idea, and the possibility of having clients
>subscribe and pay **$$**  Lest anyone get the idea that I'm hopelessly
>mercenary, here's why I'm interested.  Our writing center is funded by
>fee money paid by undergraduates, not only can I NOT use staff paid off of
>that fee money to work online with people not enrolled as undergrads at UT
>Austin, I even have to turn away enrolled grad students from our f2f
>center, because they don't pay the fee.  We're looking for ways of funding
>our work with high school students, which is a constructive sort of
>community service, good PR for the university, something our admin wants
>us to do for the previous reason, AND fun. So far, we've been been
>finessing the issue in various ways, but we can't do much unless we can
>devote paid staff time to these projects.  I've been looking around for
>grant money, but I'm wondering whether a service for commercial
>subscribers couldn't help fund high school outreach--something along the
>lines of "get good advice and contribute to the education of Texas high
>school students."
>
>Sara
>