Two weeks ago, Ann went to the national CRLA (College Reading and Learning Association) conference to learn about how we can justify our purpose and then be able to adequately assess our impact at Sam Houston.
In the past year, Ann has been working to prove -- in numbers -- that we are a well-utilized student service at Sam. We've made alliances with faculty members and begun a sort of campaign for getting more students in the door. We started doing more orientations, offered presentations for classes with specific needs, advertised with the Student Services weekly email, and changed the way we approached freshmen orientation, just to name a few things. We tracked the numbers from the year before and the present one and guess what? We discovered we had more students come through our doors. Both semesters in the 2008-2009 academic year saw a record number of students at The Writing Center, and it seems as if we may break that record again.
All this is great news. We have people coming in our doors.
But, let's say we're a restaurant. The purpose of a restaurant in our capitalist country is to make money, which supports our purpose of being a business. We can be the most popular restaurant in town, sell out of burgers every night and always have a wait list, but if we don't charge enough for our famous avocado-salsa-and-barbecue sauce burgers, we're not running our restaurant effectively and we're going to go bankrupt. The same concept applies to the Writing Center, but with writers instead of dollars. We can have folks come in our doors all day long, but if we're not effectively tutoring whatever points need to be made in a session, we're not fulfilling our purpose, and we're going bankrupt, but in writers. If you ran a Writing Center, would you rather go bankrupt with the bank or a university? The former is an economic issue that could possibly be corrected when the economy corrects itself, the latter is a credibility issue that may never be able to be corrected. Starting a business is a one-shot gamble and this is our one shot.
Ann came back with all sorts of ideas to measure our effectiveness as a Writing Center and she plans to begin the process of assessment as soon as possible. Most of us tutors won't see the assessments until next semester, but the wheels are turning. It'll be an interesting process. I personally make the hypothesis that we are going to find we have been effective in unexpected ways in addition to finding our places of needed growth. Also, if we don't find anything that we can expand upon or refine, we aren't looking hard enough. There's always room for growth. But, we will find something. We have a sharp pair of directors and a staff that's just as tough on ourselves. We are sure to find something.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
National Day on Writing: Part II
It's been a hectic couple of weeks and we've been booked at the Writing Center lately, and we've been booked with our own studies, causing a brief absence from the blogging world. The last time we posted was before the National Day on Writing, which happened on October 20, 2009.
Now, you may ask as you read this, "We have a national day on writing? What is the importance and relevance of having entire day dedicated to writing, according to Congress?" Well, while the debates of the accomplishments of Congress will be left to other bloggers, writing -- and the study of it -- is absolutely necessary in the 21st century.
We are a generation of writers. We blog, we facebook, we tweet, we text, IM, email, write invoices, office memos, justify our careers through writing (just ask any teacher, scientist or historian), and even occasionally, such as on college campuses across America, can witness people taking pen to paper. And that's not just in a revision session at the writing center, either. That's right. I'm talking about taking notes, folks. If we are a generation of writers, even more so than another other generation before us, we should be keenly interested in the craft of writing. Yes, the study of writing has been going on for a number of centuries, but never before has it been as important as it is today. In order to understand how our language, writing processes and the tools we use for writing are evolving, we must study the craft of it with more zeal than ever before. It is our only hope to keep up with credible evolution of our society.
And that's what The National Day of Writing is about, and exactly what we celebrated.
At Sam Houston, the way we celebrated was simple, but the heart of it was no less there than on any other campus. We held a poetry and fiction reading outside (thanks to the amazing weather we've been having lately!) which had a fair representation of poets, fiction-writers and creative non-fiction writers across the campus, from different disciplines, and included one of our faculty members, Dr. Bridges. Part of the craft of writing includes keeping up with your contemporaries, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by going to readings and witnessing their writing process. One of the best things about readings is we go in with the assumption that everything is still a work in progress. It's never an easy task to present our own work, but if we realize that it's always progressing, it takes off the pressure.
After the poetry/fiction reading, we held a reception at the writing center, complete with rainbow sherbet punch! Faculty members were invited and we visited with them and discussed what we do at the Writing Center, what new things they were doing in their classrooms, and in general, formed a networking bond. At the SHSU Writing Center, we like to think of ourselves as the bridge between students and professors, and while the tutors are constantly maintaining the connection on the student side of the shore, we often don't have much of an opportunity to connect on the professor's side, at least in such personable means.
We look forward to maintaining these network connections with faculty and students. If we can help keep the communication between that relationship open, not only are we helping students learn the craft of writing, but we become the communication tool and by extension, develop our own skills in writing.
Now, you may ask as you read this, "We have a national day on writing? What is the importance and relevance of having entire day dedicated to writing, according to Congress?" Well, while the debates of the accomplishments of Congress will be left to other bloggers, writing -- and the study of it -- is absolutely necessary in the 21st century.
We are a generation of writers. We blog, we facebook, we tweet, we text, IM, email, write invoices, office memos, justify our careers through writing (just ask any teacher, scientist or historian), and even occasionally, such as on college campuses across America, can witness people taking pen to paper. And that's not just in a revision session at the writing center, either. That's right. I'm talking about taking notes, folks. If we are a generation of writers, even more so than another other generation before us, we should be keenly interested in the craft of writing. Yes, the study of writing has been going on for a number of centuries, but never before has it been as important as it is today. In order to understand how our language, writing processes and the tools we use for writing are evolving, we must study the craft of it with more zeal than ever before. It is our only hope to keep up with credible evolution of our society.
And that's what The National Day of Writing is about, and exactly what we celebrated.
At Sam Houston, the way we celebrated was simple, but the heart of it was no less there than on any other campus. We held a poetry and fiction reading outside (thanks to the amazing weather we've been having lately!) which had a fair representation of poets, fiction-writers and creative non-fiction writers across the campus, from different disciplines, and included one of our faculty members, Dr. Bridges. Part of the craft of writing includes keeping up with your contemporaries, and one of the easiest ways to do that is by going to readings and witnessing their writing process. One of the best things about readings is we go in with the assumption that everything is still a work in progress. It's never an easy task to present our own work, but if we realize that it's always progressing, it takes off the pressure.
After the poetry/fiction reading, we held a reception at the writing center, complete with rainbow sherbet punch! Faculty members were invited and we visited with them and discussed what we do at the Writing Center, what new things they were doing in their classrooms, and in general, formed a networking bond. At the SHSU Writing Center, we like to think of ourselves as the bridge between students and professors, and while the tutors are constantly maintaining the connection on the student side of the shore, we often don't have much of an opportunity to connect on the professor's side, at least in such personable means.
We look forward to maintaining these network connections with faculty and students. If we can help keep the communication between that relationship open, not only are we helping students learn the craft of writing, but we become the communication tool and by extension, develop our own skills in writing.
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