...FROM THE EDITOR...

If mid-winter, post-holiday blahs have descended upon you and you feel in need of some uplifting reading, turn immediately to Michele Douglass’s es-say. It’s a superb tribute to all that she learned as a tutor and a very useful document for those intent on convinc-ing their institutions that tutoring can be a major educational (and sometimes life-changing) experience for students. And if any of your ex-tutors come back to express their gratitude to you for their time in the center, please encour-age them to share their thoughts and insights with the rest of us who read the Writing Lab Newsletter.

Also in this issue, you’ll find three reviews of Beth Boquet’s Noise from the Center, reviews written by three important voices in the field. Their re-sponses to Boquet’s book make us more aware of how reviews can also be important scholarly essays that contrib-ute to our understanding of our work and our goals. You’ll also find Marga-ret Garner and Carolyn Young’s essay on training tutors to work with ESL students and Kelly Knickmeier’s essay on acknowledging differences in writ-ing processes in tutorials.

Indeed, a lot of great reading! Enjoy.

• Muriel Harris, editor

When undergraduate and graduate ESL students enter the University of Wyoming, they are generally unfamil-iar with the discourse of their field, particularly the expectations of a U.S. academic audience. Although many have studied the basic concepts of their

The Writing Lab Newsletter, published in ten monthly issues from September to June by the Department of English, Purdue University, is a publication of the International Writing Centers Association, an NCTE Assembly, and is a member of the NCTE Information Exchange Agreement.ISSN 1040-3779. All Rights and Title reserved unless permission is granted by Purdue University. Material will not be reproduced in any form without express written permission.

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One successful series of conferences was with an older Taiwanese woman in the field of international studies. She had learned how to benefit from an ef-ficient conference. She brought only a section of her long master’s thesis each time, had specific questions marked in the margins, and immediately began to read aloud. Knowing she had article problems, she would pause slightly be-fore the appropriate nouns trying out an a or a the until the tutor could con-firm which one was the right article.

Another of our clients forced us to bend our rules of the traditional confer-ence. This young woman from China wanted only to practice her oral En-glish so that she could qualify for a teaching assistantship. She made an appointment every day and wanted to have conversations about a topic (whether about math or where to get her car fixed). Feeling that she didn’t understand our writing center culture or protocol and not wanting to turn her away, we made up assignments for her so that we had some way to discuss concepts of written language and rhetoric with her. We arranged for her to give an oral presentation on Chinese opera, which happened to be her pas-sion, to a music appreciation class. Then we talked about introductions, development, and closure, and we fi-nally helped her with paragraph devel-opment and sentence structure, which ultimately improved her oral grammar.

Establishing common ground and gaining the trust of our ESL clients means we often have to start conferencing at their level and not ours. For many ESL students the prin-ciples of academic rhetoric are still quite abstract. Therefore, they are un-able to ask the larger questions about their writing because they do not yet know the language. However, ESL stu-dents are comfortable with the lan-guage of grammar because most have learned English in their native coun-tries and have been taught English through translation and grammar. When they come to the writing center, they most often ask for help with grammar because that is the language they know. In our experience, we have found that talking about the more con-crete issues of grammar can help an ESL writer come to understand the more global or abstract issues that their writing should address.

Margaret Garner and Carolyn Young University of Wyoming Laramie, WY

Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors

An active, productive advisory board also furnished us with institute leaders: Muriel Harris of Purdue University, Jon Olson (Penn State University Park), Neal Lerner (MIT), Pam Childers (The McCallie School), James Inman (University of South Florida), and Jill Pennington (Lansing Commu-nity College). These leaders come from schools of various sizes and writ-ing centers of different types; they are people who can serve as experienced mentors not only to university writing center directors, but to secondary and middle school as well as community college staffers. Topics will include models and missions for writing cen-ters, writing center literature and re-search, tutor selection and training, technology and writing centers, OWLs, assessment, facilities and space needs, funding and budgeting, communication with faculty and administrators, record-keeping, and other issues and questions that participants bring to the institute.

Madison is my alma mater, and I can’t think of a more vibrant, lively place to hold the first institute. It will be held in a state-of-the-art lakeside conference facility that’s just a short block from UW’s impressive writing center, from the student union, from the library, and from State Street, an eclectic, exciting pedestrian mall that connects the university with the State Capitol. Brad and his colleagues, Terry Maggio and Melissa Tedrowe, along with many others at Madison, have worked hard to make this an exciting, productive week; they have arranged for graduate or continuing education (CEU) credits and for child care.

Full information about the institute can be found at <www.wisc.edu/writ-ing/institute>; online registration is available. To assure a high-quality ex-perience, we have restricted its size to forty registrants. The institute is filling fast, so if you want to join us for an in-tense week of presentations, informal discussions, and breakout groups cov-ering a range of writing-centered top-ics, please act quickly to secure fund-ing and assure yourself a place.

Book Review

Boquet, Elizabeth. Noise from the Writing Center. Logan, UT: Utah State UP. 2002. 180 pp. $19.95.

Reviewed by Christina Murphy (Marshall University, Huntington, WV)

Both Grimm and Boquet excel at the use of analogies, stories drawn from personal experience, case studies of students, and histories of places and lo-cales as they define people’s identities. These stories and anecdotes illuminate theory and make abstract concepts ac-cessible. The use of these tropes within research and scholarship affirms the passion each author holds for the subject at hand. For Grimm, it is the belief that writing centers need to be advocates of reform and change in education. For Boquet it is . . . .? Per-haps it is a good thing that I cannot so easily express her premise as I can Grimm’s, but perhaps it is not such a good thing. Grimm and Boquet have similar epiphanies—those moments in writing center work when one thinks, as Boquet states, “maybe I had been asking the wrong questions, that maybe I needed to come up with a dif-ferent set of questions, a different way of imagining the work of writing cen-ters and the relationship of the work that goes on in them to students, to fac-ulty, to . . . me” (3-4). The result of this reflection is that both Grimm and Boquet do come up with a different set of questions and a different way of imagining the work of writing centers. What is ironic, perhaps, is how similar their conclusions about differences are.

Boquet lays the groundwork for her analysis in a chapter on early meta-phors for the writing center familiar to us all—the clinic, the lab, the center. She explores these metaphors from the traditional perspectives of existing scholarship and then adds some “messiness” (my term) to the picture. Nothing in these metaphors was as fixed or black and white as one might conclude from the scholarship; often where one’s own view falls with re-gard to the white, black, or shades of grey says more about one’s own phi-losophies and expectations for writing center work than it does about the clinic, lab, or center itself. In the same vein, the concepts of the feminization of writing center work and composi-tion instruction in the academy and the prevailing notion that “getting one’s hands dirty” with practice is inherently inferior to the “cleanliness” of theory are concepts that Boquet investigates. The manner in which she does so may delight some, puzzle others, and turn off a few. The manner is a far-ranging mix of quotations from postmodern writers like Derrida to personal discus-sions of friends in labor and giving birth. The questions raised in all set-tings are: where is the noise, and where is the static? Essentially, is the vision simplified by dichotomizing (at best) versus including the noise of multiple perspectives and the static of ideas still being formulated? Boquet’s response is that she views her book— and all of her scholarship from her dis-sertation on—as “a project now work-ing against the certainty of the whole, the centeredness of the (writing) center” (24).

OK, a couple of questions here. The first is whether Boquet’s sense of our being a threat from within rather than from without is all that different from Kevin Davis’ view (espoused in 1995) that we can be “subversive”? [Let me add I am assuming this is a reference to Kevin Davis’ often-quoted 1995 ar-ticle on “Life Outside the Boundary: History and Direction in the Writing Center” since Boquet gives a citation to K. Davis but no K. Davis is included in the list of References at the end of the book.] Is this concept all that dif-ferent from Grimm’s challenges to our “good intentions” in her 1999 book and her call to a new vision of writing center work that is counter-institutional when the institution itself is indifferent or impervious to challenges to its hege-mony from within or without the acad-emy? I don’t find that much differ-ence. I see Boquet’s call for change as written with a new twist or angle through its broad-ranging images drawn largely from music and popular culture, but actually not that substan-tive when the call and the images are examined in some detail. Aside from the fact that one might claim a faulty analogy to compare an institutional construct like a writing center to an or-ganic entity like a salamander, the question still remains as to what a Monstrous writing center might look like—or perhaps, more to the point, what it might be able to achieve. Boquet is quiet silent on that point—a special irony for a book on noise. We are left with statements like this:

Exceeding expectations for the “nor-mal” is “potentially a way in/out/ around the central/marginal/commu-nity quagmire we’ve been stuck in for too long”—how so? and why only “potentially”? and what exactly is the “quagmire” we have been stuck in for too long? The next set of sentences on how central our work is to the academy provides no new insights, and I think that this set of assumptions is inaccu-rate both philosophically and histori-cally. If the assumptions were correct, then the history of writing centers would not be what it is today. Instead, we would be in the hegemonic and cul-turally conservative writing centers of the 1950s and 1960s and not the writ-ing centers that serve multicultural populations and needs. Few of us find our institutions unwilling to support multicultural and postmodern efforts to address literacy concerns. More and more of us continue to find ourselves working in and directing writing cen-ters that define complex literacy needs and that develop initiatives to respond effectively to these concerns. More and more of us occupy faculty lines and tenured positions and find our pro-fessional concerns at the center of many of our institutions’ efforts for in-struction and for community outreach. Institutional mandates are broad to as-sist the range of students who populate our campuses, and the concept that marginalized writing centers are those that oppose counter-hegemony on most academic campuses seems to me an in-accurate view. If it were true, most writing centers would have been shut down years ago as opposed to the much brighter, more vigorous, and more institutionally situated actuality for many writing centers today. What problems remain often reside more with the faculty who tend to misunder-stand our work (shades of Stephen North in 1984) than with the structure of institutions that often support our work with faculty lines, budgets, space, support staff, graduate or peer student stipends, institutional affilia-tions with WAC programs and other literacy efforts, instructional technol-ogy, and so forth.

I accept that postmodern writing does not favor the traditional structures of argument, such as transitions and logical connections, so the disjunction between the chapter on metaphors for the writing center and the chapter that follows on “Channeling Jimi Hendrix, or Ghosts in the Feedback Machine” seems a reasonable postmodern leap from metaphors of institutionality to metaphors of activity and purpose. I must say here that I think this chap-ter—which is filled with much energy and many vibrant images and memo-rable lines and that also provides many interesting glimpses into Jimi Hendrix’s life and music—takes the long way home to some very pedes-trian conclusions. In fact, I think some of these conclusions could be lifted from this context and dropped into tu-toring manuals from a decade or so ago, and few readers would find much difference in them or consider them radically out of place. For example, Boquet brings this chapter to shore af-ter discussing the changes Jimi Hendrix brought to the music of his day, with these statements:

away from the question of asking

“what (or how much) do tutors need to

know” to encouraging tutors, instead,

“to operate on the edge of his or her

expertise.” What is this expertise and

where does it come from if we are not

concerned with “what” and “how

much” tutors need to know? And I

truly wonder, for all of Boquet’s hopes

and expectations that musical experi

ences and metaphors can translate into

realities in tutoring, how many tutors at

any level (peer, graduate, faculty, etc.)

and what Boquet describes as “jammin’”. What is not here is any-thing new—new, that is, beyond the “new” re-labeling of familiar terms and concepts. And there are passages that, in my opinion, are difficult to extract meaningful insights from. For ex-ample, when one of Boquet’s tutors comments that one of the passages in this book that describes a tutoring ses-sion is not “optimistic enough,” Boquet writes:

I am hopeful (or is it optimistic?) that there is some “deep” message or distinction here that is an important one, but I think this is “language jug-gling” as only a rhetorician can do—or a Sophist. After all, was it not Aristotle who described hope as the expectation of some future good? And hope by Boquet’s definition is still an-ticipating successful outcomes, only with less optimism (or is it hope?). See what I mean?

This is a book that has a chapter called “Conclusion” but that has diffi-culty with a convincing conclusion. Ultimately, Boquet tells us this is “a book, in the end, about hope.” Unfor-tunately, the hope she advocates here does not support her earlier quotation from Ernest Bloch that hope “is ca-pable of surviving disappointment” be-cause, in the end, this book does disap-point. In the end, it falls back on clichés—however heartfelt—such as the comparison of the writing center to the description of a guitar in the pro-motional material for an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum—that the guitar is “no longer merely a machine that makes sounds.” Boquet writes: “The last several decades on writing centers has provided us with rich descriptions of the skills and strategies of writing center practitioners. We have not so self-consciously considered, however, the ways in which the writing center is no longer (was it ever?) merely a ma-chine that makes writers (much less writing). How, without sounding a note, the writing center is already a bundle of meaning and possibilities hinted at, if not entirely contained, in the product” (149).

OK, label me stupid, but if that re-ally is the case, then where is Boquet’s response to this problem—where does she consider the issues she raises about the “bundle of meaning and possibili-ties” that has not been “self-con-sciously” examined in writing center scholarship over the last several de-cades? If Noise is to be viewed as that exploration, then it has not achieved its objectives. Like many articles and books on writing centers, Noise is ef-fective at describing a set of “issues” or problems a writer identifies with writing center practice—yet ineffective in providing meaningful approaches, alternative, or solutions. Where are we headed next, and will we get there by “jammin’”? Will we get there by drawing our metaphors and images and guiding concepts from Jimi Hendrix and popular culture? Or will we get there by some truly new ideas and some genuine honesty about our cur-rent circumstances and challenges in the writing center? After all, the writ-ing center Boquet directs and describes is not a conservative writing center working in support of traditional aca-demic hegemony. Instead, it seems to be composed of “writing center staff and students” who are quite good at “bastardizing the work of the institu-tion” (32). In fact, the writing center she describes contradicts Boquet’s broad philosophical claim: “The ques-tion of whether our practices are cen-tral to the work of our universities is closely aligned with the degree to which those practices adhere to institu-tional expectations. The degree of our marginality, in contrast, corresponds to the extent to which we fail to adhere to those expectations (and to the extent to which our institutions fail us)” (32). Boquet’s writing center is not de-scribed as one marginalized for failing to adhere to institutional expectations or for “bastardizing the work of the in-stitution.” In fact, its greatest “crime” seems to be producing too much “noise” that annoyed a professor under pressure to complete his tenure file on a late Sunday afternoon. Other than that, Boquet, from what she describes, seems to have broad latitude and sup-port in exploring new territories, in bastardizing old practices and chal-lenging the traditions of the “fathers,” and in creating both “noise” and “static.”

and Boquet to be a fine romancer, in the tradition of great storytellers who can spin engaging fantasies. Noise tells us that the writing center should be/can be more noble than what it is, and that a better world lies ahead—if only we will embrace it. Unfortu-nately, even though Boquet has a genu-ine concern that the work of the writ-ing center will “go right” and will matter in the institutional and cultural landscape, she is short on the specifics of how this transformation will occur. This is the “silence” or “static” at the center of the beautiful “noise” that Boquet has created.

Reviewed by Nancy Grimm (Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI)

Boquet begins her book with the dis-sonance created by a condescending memo from an irritated colleague com-plaining about the “noise” emanating from the writing center that she directs at Fairfield University. Rather than slam the door shut, Boquet instead takes the memo as a productive en-counter (as in a productive cough), one that eventually leads her to embrace the metaphor of noise as an apt one for theorizing writing center work. Musing about her colleague’s complaint and her response to it, she remembers a much earlier but still disturbing writing center encounter with “Todd,” a stu-dent she tutored when she was a peer tutor. She credits her unproductive ses-sions with Todd for initiating her search for answers “about the things I thought I knew, about the things he didn’t know, about how we both came to be where we were” (2). She con-cludes that to close the door (some of us would prefer to slam) as a defense mechanism would signal “an unwill-ingness to engage, a refusal to ask

What is it I hear that others fail to hear?” (23). This becomes a central question in her book as she pokes at various metaphors for writing centers, searching for one that opens up possi-bilities rather than produces closure, one that invites transformation rather than one that reduplicates the noise of the institution. In reflecting on the noise a writing center is not supposed to make, Boquet observes, “Ironically, it is the noise, not the official informa-tion, that allows for the mutation and potential reorganization of the system” (51).

To explore the possibilities of writing centers becoming places “powerful enough to allow for the mutation and potential reorganization of our system of education,” Boquet wisely begins with tutor training, which she aptly calls staff education. (51). Thinking through the approaches and texts she has used in her nine years as a writing center director, Boquet comments, “I think we do tutors a disservice when we ‘train’ them in ways that suggest that we are more concerned with their being competent than with their being truly exceptional” (81).

Noise from the Writing Center con-tributes to a growing movement in writing center studies that sees writing centers not strictly in terms of service to the institution but also as places where knowledge is constructed, op-portunities are created, and transforma-tion is begun. Noise from the Writing Center ends rather than concludes, fit-tingly perhaps for a book inviting the field to think differently about what writing centers do. I hope the field takes up the invitation in active ways, making substantive changes and shar-ing the results. These are the efforts I hope will come next:

Reviewed by James McDonald (University of Louisiana—Lafayette, Lafayette, LA)

Boquet’s noise metaphor is in part an attempt to disrupt the sterile debates about the place of writing centers at the center or margins of the institutions that house them: “Tales of writing cen-ters are invariably tales of location, space. They involve a privileging of the gaze” (38). So, instead of the vi-sual metaphors of the politics of loca-tion, which tend to fix and objectify their subjects, Boquet turns to sound metaphors, drawing on the example of Jimi Hendrix and on the theories of noise developed by Michel Serres and others. “Where we can shift our gaze, avert our eyes, even (as Peter Elbow points out) close them altogether,” Boquet writes, “. . . we receive sound in an undifferentiated manner–it is dis-order; it is chaos–and we must con-stantly labor to make sense of the in-put, to filter and to direct our attention properly. Our writing centers seem clearly to be academic spaces designed to explore the relationship, to exploit the tension, between sight and sound” (38-39). Boquet does not present noise as a metaphor for what a writing center should or should not strive to become but as a metaphor that can help tutors and directors listen more for the sounds of pain and dissonance as well as for the opportunities and possibili-ties in the writing and writers that come to the writing center. Theories of noise can get at some of what the contact zone metaphor gets at—the clash of systems where what is intelli-gent and valued in one system is heard as chaotic noise in another system. But a metaphor grounded in sound rather than sight and territory suggests more of the fluidity that Boquet sees lacking in many accounts of writing centers and allows Boquet to develop a metaphor–feedback–that works par-ticularly well in understanding dia-logue between tutor and writer, not only the creative possibilities of a con-ference where tutor and writer are at-tuned to each other but also the pain that criticism of a student’s writing of-ten causes and the deadening effect of a “feedback loop” where tutors, for ex-ample, rely on “stock methods and stock responses” (78). Because of the relationship to information theory, a theory of noise risks treating human communication and relationships too mechanically, but Boquet largely avoids this problem, largely because of her use of music and Hendrix.

Yet if I were to choose one book on writing centers for reading at the beach, I’d select Noise from the Writ-ing Center. Like a good summer book, Noise from the Writing Center is an easy and pleasurable read, for all the troubles that Boquet explores, and Boquet certainly has peer tutors in mind as part of her audience. She writes as an essayist rather than in the style of an academic book. She writes with an informal style and tone, fre-quently with wry humor, and her book is filled with rich descriptions, stories, and characterizations of the individuals that populate the book, and Boquet en-gages in a lot of language play and play with print conventions. Boquet eschews an academic argument for the open-ended, less conclusive approach of an essay that takes the reader on a journey with the author that begins with a tense exchange of memos with her colleague and eventually leads to a summer spent in Meg Carroll’s tutor-training course at Rhode Island Col-lege. As much as Boquet cites and analyzes scholarly works, the heart of her book is her reflections of Jimi Hendrix’s use of noise and improvisa-tion for writing centers. The pleasure and joy in Boquet’s writing plays as a counterpoint to the pain and disillu-sionment of much of her analysis of writing centers, that her awareness of the deeply entrenched problems of writing centers has not blinded her to the possibilities and play that can be found in writing centers. Boquet’s style also seems to be an argument about what kinds of research individu-als should be conducting in writing centers; at one point Boquet objects to calls for writing center directors to do the “research we think administrators really care about”: “it is late in my day (some days) when I manage to do the research I really care about. I can’t tell you how nearly impossible it is to find time to do the research I don’t really care about” (47). Boquet clearly cares about her research here and works hard to get readers to care as well.

Boquet’s desire for an improvisa-tional approach to tutoring leads her to address the practical problem of tutor training. Boquet writes that she is “un-happy with a model of staff education that sets up a content model for tutor-ing, a low-risk/low-yield approach” (77). Because Boquet wants tutors to take more risks and be more respon-sive to individual students and unique circumstances rather than relying on a “carefully constructed shield of strate-gies” (77), she cannot offer one solu-tion to tutor training. Instead she de-scribes the experience of Carroll’s course at Rhode Island College that summer in detail without seeming to offer the course as a model to imitate. The process of tutor training here is a messy one, often not going as Carroll and her staff had planned, and while the tutors often benefit from the course, Boquet does not ignore the problems that occurred over the sum-mer. The messiness is part of the pro-cess, and Boquet makes a point of al-lowing the tutors to offer their own analyses and assessments of the class rather than offering her own evaluation alone. However, I would have liked more discussion of the issues of labor, identity, and institutional demands in the analysis of Carroll’s course. Read-ers, especially those who encounter Noise from the Writing Center in tutor training, should evaluate the lessons taken from Carroll’s course in light of the institutional contexts and student populations in their writing centers as well as with an ear to injecting pleasure and play in their work with writers.

After my first semester tutoring in the Writing Center, I have noted com-mon differences in how tutors ap-proach the writing process compared to their tutees. I feel these observations provide insight into our relationship with those seeking our assistance. Ac-knowledging the writing experience we bring to a session is important if that session is to be effective.

We like to write. This is a safe as-sumption among writing tutors. We wouldn’t take the time to help others become better writers if we didn’t en-joy the activity ourselves. To us, writ-ing is not a terrifying activity, but a re-warding one. We’ve achieved success as writers or we wouldn’t be tutoring the subject. However, unfortunately, the same can’t always be said of our tutees. This goes without saying, but can often be overlooked. Some tutees have an outright bad attitude toward writing. Others find it a scary and in-timidating process. I have found that assessing a tutee’s fondness for writing is necessary at the beginning of a ses-sion. An undetected bad attitude can limit effective communication in a ses-sion; an intimidated tutee needs more reassurance and encouragement from you than constructive criticism. Taking the time to assess attitude provides an opportunity for a friendly conversation, a conversation that can help create comfort and build rapport. It also al-lows a tutee time to relax and an open-ing to share with you background in-formation. Maybe English is their second language or they have a learn-ing disability. In my experience, taking the extra five minutes to evaluate a tutee’s attitude toward the writing pro-cess can only benefit the session. It re-veals with what sensitivity you need to approach someone’s paper. Never assume that the tutee relates to writing as well as you do.

Kelly Knickmeier University of Vermont Burlington, VT

Justification for writing centers and tutor training

I realized the impacts of the writing center extend well beyond the handful of tutors who work there. The center experience affects the lives of the stu-dents who use the services offered. It impacts the businesses those students work for once they have left the halls of academia. I have come to the con-clusion that writing centers do make a difference: a big difference. They touch the lives of the entire commu-nity, not just the lives of those who come through the writing center doors.

Since I left the university, I have seen the influence of the writing center repeatedly reach out into the world and return to face me. Stephen North’s aphorism of making better writers in-stead of better writing still isn’t large enough to capture the spirit of the writ-ing center. Writing centers do help people create better writing. The cen-ters do help make better writers. But more than that, they make better people.

While I was working at the center, there was another tutor whom I didn’t like much. The woman drove me batty, no two ways about it. However, now that I’m out in the business world, set loose from my protective bubble, I am thankful I had the experience of work-ing with her. Back then, I resented hav-ing to share my air supply with her. Today, I would hire her in a flash.

People are different, unique. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses. For all that I disliked about the tutor, she had her strengths—positive quali-ties that her time in the center brought to fruition. Now, I would hire my greatest writing center adversary be-fore I would hire someone who hadn’t worked in a center. I would do it be-cause, in addition to their incredible writing skills, writing center folk un-derstand the value of diversity.

The writing center is a true celebra-tion of diversity. It is the one place on campus where writing across the cur-riculum truly happens. It is the one place on campus where diversity really is celebrated, embraced, and supported. The environment provides the tutors with exposure to that lifestyle. And we all learn it well—every last one of us. We learn to embrace and support di-versity as individuals. We learn to take advantage of its offerings. People who like me probably wouldn’t like the other tutor I mentioned. But, much to my own shock and dismay, not every-body likes me. And people who don’t like me may very well get along with the other tutor. Managing a business has taught me that diversity is a good thing. Diversity multiplies strengths, but it doesn’t multiply weaknesses.

Lessons like these prompted my business partner and me to model our training of new employees after the tu-tors’ seminar we took in college. Using the management of the center as a guide, we have created an exciting and rewarding work environment for our-selves and those we work with. Our project managers work as coaches, team members, and supporters. We avoid appropriating the work of others. We listen more than we talk. It works.

But as I write these words, my old writing center is struggling. The tutors’ seminar is in danger of being canceled because the university trustees decided classes with low enrollment, such as the tutors’ seminar, are not worth the expense. The director is seeking an exemption, but the fate of the seminar is uncertain.

I no longer call myself a tutor. I no longer share stale coffee with other tu-tors while we discuss our latest ses-sions. But I have been there, and I have carried away with me an understanding of the center process that has made my life—and the lives surrounding mine— more rewarding.

Thank you for that gift. I enjoyed my time at the writing center. Perhaps, one day, I will return. In the meantime, I hope you may find a way to make this affirmation of your worth serve as some small payment for all you have given to me and to the communities that embrace you.

Calendar for Writing Centers Associations

February 13-15, 2003: Southeastern WCA, in March 27-29, 2003: East Central WCA, in Marietta, OH Charlotte, NC Contact: Tim Catalano (catalant@marietta.edu) Director Contact: Deanna Rogers, Writing Resources of the Campus Writing Center, 215 Fifth Street, Marietta Center, 220 Fretwell, 9201 University City College, Marietta, OH 45750 <Catalant@marietta.edu>. Blvd., UNC Charlotte, Charlotte, NC 28223-Conference Web site: <http://www.marietta.edu/

0001. Phone: (704) 687-4226; fax: (704) 687 ~mcwrite/eastcentral.html>. 6988; e-mail: drrogers@email.uncc.edu. April 5, 2003: Northeast WCA, in Nashua, NH Conference Web site: <www.uncc.edu/writing/ Contact: Al DeCiccio, Rivier College, 420 South Main wrcindex.html>. St., Nashua, NH. Phone: (603)897-8284; e-mail: February 20-22, 2003: South Central WCA, in adeciccio@rivier.edu. Conference Web site: <http:// Fayetteville, AR web.bryant.edu/~ace/wrtctr/NEWCA.htm>. Contact: Carole Lane and Karen Clark April 5, 2003: Mid-Atlantic WCA, in Westminster, MD (writcent@uark.edu), Quality Writing Center, Contact: Lisa Breslin, The Writing Center, McDaniel University of Arkansas, Kimpel 315, College, 2 College Hill, Westminster, MD 21157. Phone: Fayetteville, AR 72701. Conference Web site: 410-857-2420; e-mail (lbreslin@mcdaniel.edu). Confer-<http://www.uark.edu/campus-resources/ ence Web site: <http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/mawca>. qwrtcntr/scwca.htm>. October 23-25, 2003: International Writing Centers Confer-March 8, 2003: Northern California WCA, in ence and National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Monterey, CA Writing, in Hershey, PA Contact: Natasha Oehlman. E-mail: Contact: Ben Rafoth, brafoth@iup.edu. Conference Web ncwca@csumb.edu; phone: 831-582-4614. site: <www.wc.iup.edu/2003conference>. Conference Web site: <http:// www.asap.csumb.edu/ncwca>.

Call for Proposals April 5th, 2003 Westminster, MD Keynote Speaker: Terry Riley

Proposals are invited for presentations ( 20 minutes), workshops (60 minutes); roundtable for panel discussions ( 60
minutes); poster presentations ( easels and tables provided for presentations). Online submission available at the confer
ence web site: <http://www2.mcdaniel.edu/mawca>. A hard copy submission form is also available for downloading on
the web site. For those without Web access: Please submit in triplicate a one-page abstract with a coversheet, including
the type of presentation, names and addresses ( including e-mail addresses) of presenters, and a two-to-three sentence in
formative description. Proposal due date: January 31, 2003. Send to: Lisa Breslin, Conference Chairperson, The Writing
Center, McDaniel College, 2 College Hill, Westminster, MD 21157 Phone: 410-857-2420; e-mail: <lbreslin
@mcdaniel.edu>.

Associate Writing Center Director
Michigan State University
One-year, annual year position in the and teaching one course each semester	year salary is nationally competitive and
Academic Specialist system with an ex-related to the center mission (e.g. the	commensurate with qualifications and
pected term of five years. Annual re-consultant preparation course, course on	experience. Michigan State University
newal contingent on performance re-digital writing). MSU Writing Center	offers a highly competitive package of
views, program nee, and availability of <http://writing.msu.edu/>.	benefits, including highly attractive re
funding.	tirement benefits.
Qualifications: M.A. in Rhetoric/
Responsibilities: assisting the direc-Writing, English, or English education	Send (1) a cover letter explaining
tor by facilitating the day-to-day opera(Ph.D. preferred); knowledge of current	your interest in and qualifications for
tion of the center (including, for in-writing/writing center theory; experi	the position, (2) a curriculum vita, (3) a
stance, the preparation, scheduling, ence working in a writing center (ad-	scholarly writing sample, and (4) name,
supervision and on-going professional ministrative experience in a writing cen	e-mail address and phone number of
development of writing consultants, inter or writing program preferred);	three references to Janet A. Swenson,
cluding the development of digital writ-ability to develop Web sites, digital pre-	Director, The Writing Center, 300
ing consultants), development of new sentations and desktop publishing; and	Bessey Hall, Michigan State University,
initiatives related to on-line writing cenexperience teaching writing (on-line	East Lansing, MI 48824 -1033, or faxed
ter, support for writers and digital and preferred). AA/EO. Persons with dis-	to her at 517-432-3828, or e-mailed to
multimedia writing and rhetoric, develabilities may request and receive rea	jswenson@msu.edu. Review of appli
opment and involvement of writing consonable accommodation.	cations will begin January 1, 2003 and
sultants in center-related research initia	will continue until the position is filled.
tives (including the development of Salary & Benefits (http://www.hr	Start date: August 16, 2003 or earlier,
grant proposals to fund such research), .msu.edu/depts/benefits): The annual-	depending upon candidate availability.

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