Profile:
The Writing Center, Central Michigan University
The Central Michigan University Writing Center is founded on the
philosophy that writing should be at the center of a college education.
The CMU Center has been in existence since 1976, when the then “Lab,”
under the auspices of the English Department, began providing one-on-one
help to basic writing students. In 1998, with the help of a CMU
Initiatives grant, the Center expanded its vision, its mission,
and its services, offering assistance university-wide while continuing
its basic writing curriculum, which requires weekly WC sessions.
To say the least, the Center has grown tremendously in the last
six years to include three sites and multiple services. It has also
outgrown its home site’s 600 square feet and will be moving
to a different, 1500 square foot site in fall 2004.
The Center’s new home is located on the lower level of Anspach
Hall, the building that houses the English Department and most of
the Center’s College (Human and Behavioral Sciences). Features
include much needed space for student consulting, some office space,
a computer section, and an adjacent classroom with a movable wall;
a computer lab is across the hall and another meeting room around
the corner. The Center also has two satellite sites: at a freshman
dormitory complex and another, evenings, in the library.
Staffing includes paid and for-credit peer writing consultants (full-time
students, working 6 to 20 hours per week, 24 in spring 2004), two
or more graduate assistants (10 to 20 hours per week), a director
(.3 time, tenure faculty), and an associate director (.5, adjunct
faculty). Currently, the Center has an annual operating budget of
approximately $50,000, excluding Director and Associate Director
salaries. Consultant wages, which start slightly above minimum,
vary depending on status (graduate or undergraduate student) and
on the length of time (training and experience) at the Center. In
their first semester of working at the Center, all consultants participate
in the Writing Center Practicum class, whether for credit, for pay,
or for some combination of the two; on-going training continues
bi-weekly throughout the year. Also associated with the Writing
Center is a registered student organization, the Writing Circle,
which invites all university students to participate in writing
and teaching writing activities and which allows members to apply
for conference and travel funding.
The Center offers a variety of services: on-site consulting (over
6,000 sessions in 2003-04); in-class workshops (e.g., orientation
to writing/the Center, peer-editing); an online service that is
offered to first-year writing classes and to students in the College
of Extended Learning (CMU’s off-campus national and international
programs), and a small amount of outreach (e.g., a basic writing
student publication) and writing-across-the curriculum support.
During the academic year, the Center is open 76 hours/week among
the three sites: Sunday through Thursday evenings and Monday through
Friday mornings and afternoons (primarily 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
and 6:00 to 9:00 p.m.). In summer the main Center is closed but
a minimal number of hours (15 hours/week) are offered at the Library
along with support for the online service. Today, the Center works
with students from a wide variety of courses and instructors (190
different courses and/or instructors in 2004); first-year writing
courses, including the basic writing classes with weekly sessions,
account for over half of the sessions (57%) but only 44% of the
students served are freshmen. This balance between younger and older
student writers fits the Center’s philosophy: that writing
needs to be not only central but on-going, supported throughout
students’ university careers.
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