Re: Extra-curricular consulting

[Latisha LaRue <kfischer@keller.clarke.edu>]

Lynnell,
ahem, yeah.  We don't have any hard and fast rules in our WRiting Lab
about this but we've had lots of lousy experiences.  Just this a.m. I was
talking with a new tutor who told me she'd been warned by the other tutors
to set the perimeters around her "space" outside the lab.  Here's what we
do.  We tell the tutors how tempting it is to look over the papers of
friends, etc.  We've told them that when they do that outside of w.l. paid
time, the word gets out.  Others will beat paths to their doors,
particularly (on this campus) if they live in the dorms.  We paint the
truly gruesome picture that it is and then remind them a) they are highly
trained and deserve to get paid;  b) the w.l. is open many, many hours in
a week and students should find it pretty easy to find appointment times
that work for them;  c) they don't really want to work 24 hours a day now,
do they?

This usually works well resulting in tutors setting the limits.

Katie

On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Lynnell Edwards wrote:

> 
> colleagues:
> 
> I have a curious situation that may or may not be a problem, but I would
> like some responses from any of you who might have a similar situation.  I
> have a slight suspicion that the writing consultants in our center may be
> doing so much advising outside the time they spend in the center that it is
> actually undermining use of the Center itself.  Let me explain:  Concordia
> is a very small campus with a small residential population.  The students
> who work in the writing center are well known, mostly live on campus and
> want to work in the writing center partially because they like and have been
> doing a lot of this business of helping people with their papers.  The
> problem I'm concerned about is that students have been used to going to them
> late at night, in the dorms, at their convenience, etc and so don't think
> about the effort (and foresight) that might be involved in going to the
> "official" writing center instead. On one hand, I'm not that territorial
> about "forcing" people to only get help on their papers in a certain room at
> a certain time, but it may be presenting some problems:
> 
> 1. protecting the tutors' own time --- they run the risk of being
> overwhelmed by requests for help at the expense of their own study time. 
> They are generous, hard-working souls but may not know how to say "no." 
> There is also no way to pay them for this kind of work.
> 
> 2.   The "official" writing center is sometimes (too often) very, very slow
> and it looks like we are paying tutors to "sit around".  
> 
> 3.  We have no way to track or get credit for the work the tutors (via
> their writing center training) are doing for the campus.
> 
> 
> I think given our budget and the nature of the school, we are open at
> optimal times, and, unfortunately, any move to hold "writing center" hours
> in the dorms would come at the cost of a further reduction of regular hours
> open to everyone.  Plus, I do think that if the tutors could somehow start
> channeling this "extra curricular" consulting they're doing late night into
> the regular hours, we'd be much busier.  On an institution-wide assessment
> we did the number one reason why people didn't use the writing center was,
> "I get help somewhere else."    I don't think most of this extra-curricular
> consulting occurs because the student was legitimately unable to ever use
> the center at a convenient time.  I'm still exploring creative solution for
> delivering our services ---- and am not ruling out putting tutors in the
> dorms at night (particularly on Sunday night). But, I would be really
> interested on hearing any responses to the following:
> 
> 1.  Peer tutors out there who are on this list:  How much "extra-curricular
> consulting" (as described above) do you do?  Do you have trouble saying "no"
> when you're really busy with your own work?  Do you do anything to encourage
> people to use your campus writing center instead?
> 
> 2.  Do any of you at small campuses percieve this as an issue at your
> school? 
> 
> 3.  Am I just being a control freak??
> 
> thanks!
> 
> Lynnell Edwards
> Concordia University, Portland OR
> 
>