> Here is our questionnaire: > > > 1.) What is the enrollment size of your school? 65,000 students, full- and part-time, undergrad and graduate > 2.) Do you have a student support service that could be classified as a > writing center? a number of services usually called writing labs--8 in the undergraduate colleges (Faculty of Arts and Science) plus 4 beginning in professional faculties > 3.) How would you (generally) define your writing assistance facility? We mainly offer individual tutoring to students, and also give group workshops. Increasingly we are being called upon to support faculty by giving workshops, consulting individually on designing assignments and grading them, training TAs, and participating in policy decisions (e.g. about admission). > 4.) What is the philosophy of your writing center? Does it have a > mission statement and defined policy? The college labs have produced a joint statement on what we do that we distribute to our students. We agree that our function is to help students develop skills in language, high-level literacy, and reasoning; we also see a role in faculty development. We see ourselves as faculty, not staff, and are careful to refer to our function as teaching. > 5.) Is the writing center staff involved in developing tutoring > programs, workshops, and resources? Yes, in nearly all cases we develop our own programs and are eager to participate in larger policy decisions. The coordinator of writing support has also developed workshops for tutors and other faculty, written student and faculty handouts, developed online material, requested lists of books from the library, etc. Individual writing labs and tutors have developed and taught their own non-credit courses and workshops, and have (in one case) designed and run an admissions and placement test. > 6.) What proportion of the student population does the writing center > serve: certain programs or departments; all students; faculty? The college labs serve approx. one half the undergraduate student population; the new facilities in the professional faculties potentially serve another one third. The least served groups are graduate students, especially those for whom English is not a first language. The new coordinator, writing support, has made contact with faculty members in most divisions, with especially strong contacts in Arts and Science and the health sciences. One writing-lab director in a professional faculty serves nearly completely as a faculty consultant. > 7.) Where does the writing center fit into the administrative structure > of your institution? The college labs report to college administration; the professional labs report to deans. The Coordinator, Writing Support, is centrally funded but reports to the Faculty of Arts and Science for administrative convenience. That position is consultative only. > 8.) How is the writing center staffed? Most facilities have professional directors, usually with Ph.D.s, and tutors in their final years of Ph.D. studies or with completed Ph.D.s. Most jobs are part-time, but nearly all are considered faculty appointments. > 9.) Where is the writing center physically located? Various.... Private space is essential. We have discovered too that secretarial support is important for taking appointment bookings. > 10.) What facilities, equipment, and resources does the writing center offer? One college lab has 8 computers with some style-checking and drill programs, along with the individual tutoring. The others offer individual tutoring, books on writing, handouts on writing. A number of student handouts and faculty documents are online. > 11.) How many hours per day is the writing center open? various....distinct busy seasons in November and March-April > 12.) What is the usage per semester? At the college labs, it ranges from 10 to 20%, depending on resources provided--we are always fully booked. > 13.) How is the writing center funded? Most funding comes from central administration but it is channelled at the college or faculty level. Some college labs are supported by alumni money. > 14.) How is the writing center service evaluated? Mainly by student comment cards, from within local divisions. > 15.) What kind of promotion/public relations activities do you use to > raise awareness of the writing center's services? Local flyers, announcements, faculty references; speaking to orientation groups and other student groups; speaking to classes; participation in college or faculty activities. Also online announcements and listings in student guidebooks. > 16.) What helped you most in establishing your writing center? Our main support has come from faculty who are concerned that students cannot handle the kinds of discourse necessary for their curriculum--i.e., being able to write reflectively and analytically about the course material. Professional groups have also made clear to some faculties that their graduates needed better communication skills in general. Administration has also been concerned because of anecdotal evidence ("horror stories") of graduates being unable to write intelligibly; they had written nothing while at university. > 17.) What caused you the most grief in establishing your writing center? 1. A decision four years ago to fire one college writing-lab director and replace her with Grammatik. (!) This galvanized many faculty members to protest, and drew together the disparate writing tutors to define clearly and forcefully what we did and why it was valuable. 2. The continuing inefficiency of centralized decision-making about funding. Our new programs especially suffer from inadequate planning time for program design and hiring. > 18.) Who are other contacts we should question--probably persons not on the > CASLL listserv but vitally interested in writing centers in Canada? {see Cathy Schryer, Waterloo, for list of names in Canadian Association of Teachers of Technical Writing} > 19.) Would you like a copy of our survey results? (If so, please provide > an address, both smail and e-mail.) email: [log in to unmask] smail: Margaret Procter Room 216, University College University of Toronto Toronto, ON M5S 1A1 > 20.) Any final comments? > Thanks for undertaking this, Henry and Susan. I look forward to seeing your results.