RE: Percentage of students using writing centers

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

We differentiate between number of visits (8,818 last year) and number of
students (3662 last year, or ca. 10% of total undergrad. enrollment).  I'm
no mathematician, to put it mildly, but I suspect that one reason figures
for percentage of available clients go up at smaller institutions is that
they *can* go up in *practical* terms. For example, if our WC saw 50%
of the 36,000 undergrads enrolled at UT, we'd be working with 18,000
people; if
we saw 75% we'd be working with 27,000 people, all of which would be
pretty staggering.


For us, the key figures are visits and students by enrollments in colleges
that have undergraduates.  we're supported by a student fee paid by all
undergraduates and to get and keep that fee we've had to demonstrate that
we serve undergraduates from all colleges in roughly the proportions that
the colleges enroll them.  I've started also reporting the percentage of
undergrads in each college that we worked with.  The low is 5% from the
College of Architecture; Liberal Arts (12%) and Communications (11%) are
the second and third highest, but, interestingly enough, the highest is
Pharmacy.  We saw 14% of the undergrads in Pharmacy last year..

Sara Kimball 



On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Jane V. Nelson wrote:

> Don,
> 
> I agree with everything Sara says--it all depends on the instituion.  But
> for what it's worth:
> 
> The University of Wyoming is a state university, research oriented; we serve
> both undergraduates and graduates; student body is 10,000.  We do a little
> over 2000 conferences a year, which is 20% for the year, or 10% each
> semester.  I, too, suspect the usage would go up at smaller institutions.  I
> wonder what Molly from Colorado College would report--Molly, are you out
> there?
> 
> 
> Jane
> 
>