Established in 1992 primarily to provide writing workshop support to students and assistance to faculty interested in using writing to engage students in active learning and thereby in improving the quality and range of their students' literacy, the Writing Center at Michigan State University conceives its task broadly. Mindful that literacy is learned through use across contexts and over a lifetime, in addition to working to improve the quality and range of literacy in MSU, the Center has reached out to involve itself in the teaching and uses of literacy in both the communities and schools that send students to MSU and the communities and workplaces that students enter when they leave MSU.

Accordingly, the MSU Writing Center has established a range of pro-grams. Approximately 9-12 Graduate Writing Consultants (GWCs) and 25-30 Undergraduate Writing Consultants (UWCs) offer one-on-one workshop support to writers of all levels of proficiency, at all stages of the writing process, and from any field across the curriculum. During the 03-04 academic year, consultants led a total of more than 8000 sessions. Writing Consultants also provide a range of classroom presentations and lead graduate writing groups. The Center's Composing in Digital Environments program offers workshop support for students working on new media projects such as websites and digital videos, as well as support for instructors seeking to integrate technology into their writing-intensive courses in pedagogically effective ways.

The Center also has a robust set of outreach programs. The Red Cedar Writing Project, a site the of the National Writing Project, is a community of outstanding teacher scholars, researchers and leaders who come together for four weeks in the summer and periodically throughout the year to share their teaching experiences and develop classroom-based research projects that explore and highlight current theory in the teaching of writing. The Center also hosts two writers camps: Spartan Writers Camp for elementary school students and Greenrock for middle and high school students.

Each semester the Center offers a variety of special programming including, speakers, poetry slams, and a variety of workshops. In the past year speakers included Harry Reese, Andrea Lunsford, Joyce Irene Middleton, Stuart Blythe, and Detroit News editor and publisher Mark Silverman. Special workshops sponsored by the Center had a range of foci, from producing digital video compositions to designing poster presentations.

In addition to Graduate and Undergraduate Writing Consultants, the MSU Writing Center is staffed by three full-time faculty (Janet Swenson, Director; David Sheridan, Associate Director; and Troy Hicks, Outreach Facilitator) and one full-time Administrative Assistant (Carol Fenn). It is comprised of a suite of meeting spaces, including office space, conference rooms, and a large open space for consulting and whole-class presentations. Annual labor and supply budget for our work within the university, not including faculty salaries, is approximately $250,000.