Re: Appointments

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

On Sat, 3 Oct 1998, Sonja Bagby wrote:

> Dear WCenter Friends:
> My center has grown so much that I have questions about a good thing--too
> many writers for the number of tutors.
> 
> In the past, we have allowed mostly drop-ins, but now we find the need to
> encourage appointments.   We have some unhappy procrastinators, but we
> manage better when we DO ask people to make appointments by phone or email
> or when we must turn them away.
> 
> The questions:
> 1)Do your centers insist upon appointments?  Why or why not?

We have both drop-in and appointment visits.  At the beginning of the
semester, visits are mostly drop-in, but during busy periods (midterm and
especialy the end of the semester) we encourage students to make
appointments. When I started the center five years ago I wanted to make
sure students experienced as few barriers as possible, so we've always had
drop-ins with appointments as an option. 


> 
> 2)Do you mostly have drop ins, or do you balance the two?
> 
About a quarter of our visits are appointments.



> 3)And do you hire someone simply to "person" the desk and control the ebb
> and flow of humanity?
> 
We have an administrative assistant for 40 hours who is in charge of the
desk and  the recod-keeping software, though she has other duties too.  We
also have a number of consultants who can work the desk from 5 to 10 P.M.
or during regular business hours when the admin. assist. is at lunch or
doing other things.
Michelle, our admin assist., and the other desk people are greatly skilled
at keeping consultants in reserve for appointments while managing
drop-ins.


> 4) Hhow do you handle the panicked, the frantic, the upset, the angry, the
> hurried and the harried?
> We end up trying to fit people in because they "didn't know" they needed an
> appointment.

Politely, and with compassion and common sense, I hope. People who come in
at the last minute sometimes do have to learn about advance planning the
hard way.  We encourage appointments in advance gently but firmly. We do
run
a waiting list on a first-come/first served basis during crush times, and
people who are more than 10 min late for their appointments lose them to
people on the waiting list.  What worries me at the moment, is that we've
already had to run a waiting list a couple of times this fall. 


> 
> 5)Will people eventually accept this change?  Is this just a growing pain
> or a mounting problem?

Mostly things have worked out for us.  It's a madhouse at the end of the
semester, though.


> 6)And if we do change to appoinment only, how can we spread the word most
> effectively?

How do you publicize your writing center anyway?  For example, we send
brochures and letters to all faculty teaching substantial writing
component courses, and about 50% of students who use our center claim they
first heard about it from a teacher. If we were to change to appointment
only, then we'd emphasize this change in the literature we send.

Good luck!

Sara Kimball

> I really need your input for this thorny challenge.
> Thanks in advance for your help.
> Sonja
> 
> Sonja S. Bagby
> Director, University Writing Center
> College of Arts and Sciences
> State University of West Georgia
> Carrollton, GA 30118
> sbagby@westga.edu
> 770-830-2258
> 
>