RE: Percentage of students using writing centers

["Jane V. Nelson" <JNelson@UWYO.EDU>]

Sara makes an important distinction between numbers of visits and numbers of
students.

She also talks about tracking the colleges where students come from.  We've
done the same kind of tracking and have discovered that the percentages are
interestingly proportionate.  For example, let's the College of Agriculture
here has 10% of the majors on campus.  About 10% of the visits we report are
from College of Ag majors.

This business of numbers has a lot to do with numbers of tutors that you
have working.  It is the second week of classes here and we are booked solid
today, which is a bit surprising to me.  But we have only one tutor per hour
at this point in the semester.  The numbers of visits you report eventually
will be linked to the number of tutors you have.

Another statistic to report, then, is how "booked up" you are.  Today we are
booked up 100%. (This depends, of course, on whether you are a drop-in or an
appointment service, or some combination of both).

Jane

> ----------
> From: 	Sara Kimball[SMTP:skimball@uts.cc.utexas.edu]
> Sent: 	Saturday, September 05, 1998 3:49 PM
> To: 	Jane V. Nelson
> Cc: 	'wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu'
> Subject: 	RE: Percentage of students using writing centers
> 
> 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
> > 
> > 
>