On a blusteiy morning, the two of us sat together in Neal's office on the MIT campus-back issues, manuscripts, announcements, subscriber lists, and budget sheets strewn about-editing our first issue.Up until now, our meetings have consisted of frequent phone calls and even more frequent email messages (most of which with attachments).Thus, we feel grateful to be able to do this work face -to -face, and we feel grateful to the WCJ editors, all 10 of them (3 pairs, a trio, and our one beloved lone wolf, Dave Healy), who have shaped the Journal over the past 2,2, years.We are especially thankful, of course, to Joan Mullin and Al DeCiccio, not only for their inspired vision of the directions writing centers might be taking-two of our favorite issues in this regard being the "Where are We Going?Where Have We Been?" issue ( 2,0.2, , Spring/Summer 2000) and the international issue (22.2,Spring/Summer 2002)-but also for their advice and assistance during this transition period.If you've been receiving WQ J for awhile, one of the first things you'll see about our inaugural issue is a new look.In its 22 -year history, WCJ has undergone three different design changes.We wanted to introduce a fourth, updating the look of the journal to reflect its seriousness as an academic publication but also to increase its accessibility and attractiveness.

I use this term [contact zones] to refer to social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today. (Pratt 34) When Maiy Louise Pratt applied her thorny idea of the contact zone to literacy communities, she raised a complicated challenge for writing centers to move beyond the usual paradigm. Certainly writing center pedagogy is radical, envisioning ( la Bruffee) peers meeting to share writing in process, thus replacing hierarchy with collaborative learning.

The frustration level at a recent writing center staff meeting rose with the first mention of tutoring non-native -English-speaking (NNES) students.

Statement on Professional Concerns," by Jeanne H. Simpson, which outlined ideal conditions for writing enter directors and sought to "encourage a trend toward graduate programs that

The editors of this long-awaited volume have aimed "to open, to formalize, and to further" the writing center research dialogue in order "to encourage and guide other researchers," as well as to present the "new knowledge that has resulted from the studies it reports" (back cover). They have succeeded.

survey data Christopher Ervin provides in the September, 2002, edition of The Writing Lab Newsletter. Ervins survey reveals that of 194 writing center directors polled, only 46% reported having held their positions for more than five years, and, of the remaining 54%, roughly 12% had held their positions for less than one year. We've known all along that the writing center community is characterized by a large pool of transient student staff, but these data reveal that it is also characterized by an overwhelming percentage of relatively inexperienced, and perhaps transient, administrators as well.

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The Writing Center Journal, Volume 20, Number 2, Spring/Summer 2000 quality of teaching; the teacher’s insights improve the quality of the learning. For writing centers to continue to be en(viable), those who teach and learn there must exploit the uses of the margins. They must claim their institutional space within the academy as well as their connectedness to the periphery, to the areas and spaces outside. They must find ways to build alliances within the university, while continuing to open its doors to those who have traditionally been excluded from university life. Writing centers must take advantage of the contradictions on which their work depends. In that way they can remain en(viable), while defining in new ways what it means to be viable. Preparing to Sit at the Head Table: Maintaining Writing Center Viability in the Twenty-First Century

most people associated with writing centers have devoted most, if not all, of their time and energy to keeping their programs alive and healthy. But in the future we predict that writing centers will assume a more prominent role in researching not only writing and writers but also more general undergraduate research issues, such as retention and assessment. It is our hope that writing centers will also increasingly be viewed and valued as sites for research. We sincerely believe that writing centers are poised to assume a more prominent role in the institutions and communities in which they exist. Increasingly, writing centers are no longer seen as supplementary but as programs that are central to the mission of the school and essential to its being competitive in terms of attracting and retaining students. Opportunities for fund-raising, grants, and community involvement frequently accrue to writing centers. Some writing centers have begun literacy projects that might, with concerted effort, lead to a network similar to the National Writing Project. Thus, in the future, writing centers could have a synergistic effect on literacy nationwide. Clearly, our vision of the future of writing centers is optimistic, but we believe it can be a reality. The years of existing in the margins, struggling to survive, may not be completely over for every writing center, but certainly most writing centers are now enjoying the fruits of those early years of labor. Writing Center Work: An Ongoing Challenge

myth was well established in our minds and embedded in our job descriptions. Then, with typical irony, we punched our own ticket by using hard won, added on research to validate our service role. Let me put it another (only slightly exaggerated) way: as Writing Center Director my priorities are teaching, service, service, service, and then research—on our service. One step to develop the potential for systematic research in writing centers, as distinct from occasional research about writing centers, is to attempt to renegotiate the writing center statement of purpose, rewrite its myth of origins, so that research is a featured character, not a walk-on part. That might make for an interesting situation. It might mean, for instance, that research output, not the number of students served, would be the primary justification for writing center viability. It might mean that writing center directors would carry research appointments, and research budgets to go along with them, and job descriptions that have high expectations for publication in exchange for job security and promotion. It might mean that writing center training and procedures and environment would all change to meet the needs of research and publication. Is such a “renegotiation” desirable or even possible? Another way to get at this same issue is to ask, are we, the readers of The Writing Center Journal and The Writing Lab Newsletter, the research community to which we want to remain a viable contributor? Or is the research community that we seek to influence larger, more diverse, and less interested?

When most writing centers in the United States were being founded and developed, colleges and universities had very few entities they labeled “centers.” Today, however, centers are cropping up with increasing regularity. At our own institutions, we have (between us) Centers for Humanities, Centers for Advanced Materials Research, Centers for Cognitive Studies, Centers for the Study of First Americans— even a Center for Epigraphy. It seems worth pausing to consider this phenomenon: Where are all these centers coming from, and why are they proliferating so rapidly? One strong possibility: Centers create spaces for the kind of work that needs to be done in higher education, work that is difficult or impossible to do within traditional disciplinary frameworks. In almost every case, for example, the previously mentioned centers allow for interor cross-disciplinary research and scholarship, and at their best they encourage highly productive forms of collaboration. Furthermore, they often initiate projects designed to bring college and community closer together. In short, these new centers seem to us one of the major signs of stress on old ways of taxonomizing and creating knowledge. Their growing popularity signals, we think, one institutional response to changing educational demands, populations, budgets, and technologies. We are well aware that these are difficult times at most community colleges, colleges, and universities, and that faculty and staff in many writing centers must spend an inordinate amount of time struggling to provide basic services. Nevertheless we wish to emphasize those opportunities that we believe are available to writing centers, even those that are in various ways marginalized on their campuses. The opportunities that we will discuss involve four potentials that we see for institutional refiguration: the refiguration of institutional space, of concepts of knowlWork Cited

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what Lerner and Gillespie point out is at the heart of the writing center conference—dialogue—and explains the importance of the Guide for new and continuing writing center workers. We believe that these articles and reviews will present a new line of discussion among those of us in the field. We lament the fact that one of the most important contributors to that discussion is no longer with us. Robert J. Connors, Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Director of the Writing Center at the University of New Hampshire, died this summer. For those of us in the field, the loss is tremendous, as Bob had so much more to provide the larger field of rhetoric and composition and the writing center field of which he has worked so hard to be a part. We have many memories of Bob Connors: in all of the major journals, in many texts, at NEWCA conferences, at UNH conferences on rhetoric and composition, at URI summer workshops, and at CCCC. In all of these, we remember his keen insights and helpful suggestions for conducting important research in the field and for practicing effective pedagogy in the classroom or in the writing center. While we will certainly miss Bob Connors, we will continue to value his ideas and to implement his suggestions for placing rhetoric, composition, and writing center work at the heart of the institution. When Hard Questions Are Asked: Evaluating Writing Centers

Like many in our field, I rose up “through the ranks” to my present position as a director of the Writing Center at a small, private college of pharmacy and health sciences. My career path started while I was pursuing an M.A. in English, where I tutored in the university’s Writing Center. Then, when I was back in school to complete a doctorate in education, I once again was given the opportunity to tutor in the university’s Writing Center, and, eventually, to study that Center as the subject of my dissertation. I graduated in the spring of 1996, and by the fall of that year I was hired by my current college to start its Writing Center. Four years later, I am a faculty member in the School of Arts and Sciences and hold administrative responsibility for the entire writing program, as well as for a new initiative on first-year student experience. What a smooth path that narrative above seems to indicate, a path of increasing professional opportunities, from “novice” to “expert,” from tutor to director, from student to faculty member, a “transformation” of sorts that is easily the script that we would write for many in our field. But here is another way of telling that story: My first writing center job came during my second semester of pursuing an M.A. in English/Creative Writing and a high school teaching credential. I would have preferred to be a TA and teach composition in the classroom, but most of my fellow graduate students were experienced teachers and gained the coveted TA positions. Instead, I tutored in the university’s Writing Center for $7 per hour, a rate that did not change in the three years that I worked there. I worked primarily with basic writing students, who came to the Writing Center as a course requirement and who were made to sift through a grammar/usage workbook, completing exercises on modals and subject/verb agreement and nouns and antecedents (which still happens, though now these exercises are computer Sherwood, Steve. “How to Survive the Hard Times.” The Writing Lab Newsletter 17.10 (1993): 4-8.

In writing centers, technological progress requires collaboration among stakeholders who have varying degrees of expertise with pedagogical applications of instructional technologies. In “Cyberspace and Sofas: Dialogic Spaces and the Making of an Online Writing Lab,” Eric Miraglia and Joel Norris share an impressive list of individuals who collaborated to create and implement Washington State University’s OWL: Bill Condon, Writing Programs Director; Gary Brown, Associate Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning; Lisa Johnson-Shull, Director of the Writing Lab; Norris, Assistant Director of the Writing Lab; Miraglia, Learning Technologies Specialist for the Student Advising and Learning Center; Toby Taylor, an undergraduate student with expertise in graphic design; and Pete Cihak, an undergraduate who focused on North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English 46 (1984): 433-46.

The cultural informant role as sketched by Judith Powers, in her article “Rethinking Writing Center Conferencing Strategies for the ESL Writer,” was warmly received in our writing center when I introduced it shortly after her article appeared in 1993. With ESL students comprising a steady 30% to 40% of our clients, we had had plenty of experience with feeling not only the inadequacy of nondirective tutoring for meeting the needs of non-native writers but also the uneasiness of sessions that strayed from that approach, by then synonymous with effective one-toone work (Brooks 1; Ashton-Jones 31-33; Shamoon and Burns 135-36). The cultural informant role endorsed by Powers gives writing center tutors flexibility for meeting specific needs of ESL students not met by the nondirective writing center ideal. With their many cultural, rhetorical, and linguistic differences, ESL students often lack the knowledge to engage in the question-and-answer approach to problem-solving used in most writing centers (Powers 40-41). And the read-aloud method for discovering sentence-level errors, frequently productive for native speakers, provides little help to ESL students who lack the ear to hear their own errors (Powers 41-42). The value of the cultural informant role, then, is that it validates sharing information about English that these students have no way of knowing on their own. Yet after several semesters of basking in this more flexible approach, many of us on the staff, including graduate assistants in both English and Linguistics as well as practicum students, began to feel that too often this role, at least when sentence-level errors were concerned, tended to translate into the tutor editing and the student observing. Katherine Purcell, in her recent article “Making Sense of Meaning: ESL 6 The Writing Center Journal

We are mixed in with one another in ways that most national systems of education have not dreamed of. To match knowledge in the arts and sciences with these integrative realities is, I believe, the intellectual and cultural challenge of moment.

In an Internet posting a few years ago, a former writing teacher, having abandoned the academic life in order to raise Arabian horses, observed that the process of teaching college writing was similar in many ways to the enterprise of "dressage," a term that refers to the guiding of a horse through a series of complex maneuvers by slight movements of the hands, legs, and weight. In particular, he noted the following:

I have tried to achieve a comfort zone with this project. Ithappened in 1997, on one of those days before a staff meeting when wewere tired and cynical, feeling used by the society of writing that exists inthe college. We began to kid around about the students who wanted us topunish them, the students who wanted a quick fix, those who wanted topunish us. That is when the idea of Madam Barnett’s Writing Emporiumwas born. It started as a joke, the idea that we in the University ofMichigan-Flint Writing Center were like hookers. Perhaps it should haveended there, but with my affection for odd comparisons, and VinceLocke’s (Vince is another tutor) idea for a paper on writing center myths,the idea just wouldn’t go away.During the summer, I checked out books, social and psychologi-cal studies of prostitution, to see if the similarities were mere jokes, or ifthere was something important in the idea that tutoring and prostitutionwere partially alike. I thought the exploration would be amusing. I did notknow that I would discover things that disturbed me about myself and howtutoring has affected me.

In “a letter to a friend,” the opening lines of A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway writes, “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast” (title page). I like to think of a writing center as a moveable feast on a transient table—sweets and savories, an interesting mix of guests, perhaps unmatched place settings. An invisible table gathering ghosts of conversations, echoes of drafts, and old assignments. Writing centers lurk in a state of in-betweenness like Hemingway’s haunts in Paris. Writing centers house teachers who are students, writers who are readers, people who speak their written texts. Writing centers exist in an often uncertain present—but they work with a past brought in by writers thinking about a future. For years, writing center staffs have tried to define our place to ourselves, our administrators, and to our profession. We’ve attempted to create a definition that reflects our realities—our struggles as well as our successes—what we’ve been and what we may yet become. But definition eludes us. Writing center director/scholars, since we first had a forum in which to write, have considered this situation. Muriel Harris, looking over our recent history, writes of our “frill” status. Even the most successful writing centers, she notes, “may still have to contend with a diminishing minority who view them as unnecessary frills, sucking up

Over the past ten years or so, much has been written about whether writing center tutors should be generalists or specialists: when tutors help clients from other disciplines, is it an asset for the tutors to be familiar with discipline-specific discourse conventions? Scholarship attempting to answer this question has been bi-polar: either tutors should be generalists, or they should be specialists. On the specialist side, some scholars argue that tutors’ knowledge of discipline-specific discourse conventions is important to the success of tutoring sessions, since the tutoring should revolve around the rhetoric of the discipline (Kiedaisch and Dinitz; Tinberg and Cupples: Shamoon and Burns). Judith Powers and Jane Nelson, for example, argue that

The range of outreach projects recounted in recent journal articles, discussions on WCENTER’s electronic forum, and conference presentations indicate that collectively we as writing center professionals have indeed been working to extend the conversation about one-to-one work across our campuses. Writing across the curriculum partnerships with classroom teachers (Gill; Mullin, “Tutoring for Law Students”; Soliday), satellite writing centers in dorms or specific academic departments (“Advice on Satellite Centers”), on-line writing centers (Denny and Livesey), and administrative portfolios reflecting the complex combination of teaching, research, and administration entailed in the work of writing center directors (Olson; Perdue) are all examples of the expanding presence of writing centers at our institutions. Yet if we are to extend the benefits of one-to-one work to teachers, the individuals who most influence the type of writing our students do, we need to find ways of communicating with them directly and regularly. The conference summary—the record of a tutor’s interaction with a student, written up and sent to the instructor upon the student’s written request—offers one of the few ways we have to extend the discussion of one-to-one work beyond the center on a weekly basis. However, this form is not universally endorsed. Some writing center professionals—including those described as “sharers” by Michael Pemberton in a 1995 Writing Lab Newsletter “Ethics” column—perceive these reports as promoting “a unified educational experience for students” and “productive relationships with faculty” (13). Others—including those described by Pemberton as “seclusionists”—see summaries as just another instance of limiting tutors to the role of “service workers” for instructors (Pemberton 13).

Assessing how our institutions, and, therefore, our writing centers are changing requires understanding how the larger culture has changed and continues to change. One literature that is obsessed with change is books on business and management. Metaphors of chaos and whitewater became fashionable in popular books in the early 1990s, written before "whitewater" took on new meaning in the Clinton administration. While I infrequently read popular books in the business section, the whitewater metaphors resonate for me because I have spent so much of my adult life in a kayak on moving water. Rapids are the reason I boat. The enjoyment of kayaking, unlike rafting, is not simply going through the rapids but what you can do in them. The greatest pleasure comes when you can balance on moving fluid and use it to do what you want to dosurf a wave, turn 360 spins, or pop up in the air, sometimes getting the entire boat out of the water vertically. But it took me a long time to get over some basic fears of rapids and to understand that until rivers become unrunnable with waterfalls and unavoidable hydraulics, going down most rapids is not much more difficult than driving on a mountain road if you can stay focused, read the water, react, and be decisive. The times I've gotten into trouble are when I stopped paying attention and floated into places where I didn't want to be. Every era has been a time of change, but river metaphors suggest that some times of change are more accelerated and more turbulent.

Writing centers, in the most general terms, provide tutoring to help students develop and organize writing assignments. Certainly, a writing center also encompasses other roles and responsibilities. Students mostly see it as a "safe place," a positive, supportive, and collaborative environment where tutors encourage and work with students on a one-onone basis (see also Murphy; Harris; Fitzgerald). Most writing centers also make sure that tutors don't judge student work and don't put a grade on the paper. While policies differ from center to center, students, in most cases, are also promised that their visits are confidential, and that generally instructors do not have access to the information collected in the writing center.

A trend beginning in academic literature that takes its cue from popular literature is the turn toward an examination of "spirit." The authors who are doing this are selling books "literally by the millions" (45) and are feeding what Paul Heilker calls a "collective hunger" (107). This need is not only felt outside of the academy but within it, although the idea of including "spirit" in the academy is highly controversial. I will not offer a broad argument for including spirituality in academic endeavors -this has been done elsewhere (see Foehr and Schiller or O'Reilley). Instead I will provide a synthesis of what some of the popular and scholarly literature says about spirit, and then narrate a writing center story in which the writer's text served as a vehicle for a transformation of the people involved. 1*11 follow this with an analysis of the experience grounded in the literature on writing and spirit.

Hemmeter all identify definition as an issue critically important to the writing center community. Ede and Runciman assert that current definitions inadequately describe what happens in centers and invite us to redefine our positions within centers and the academy as a whole. Addressing such redefinitions, Carino states, "In one sense, this is how it should be. . . [Definition is always already tenuous, for to define is to symbolize, to create metaphors, to be in language" ("What Do" 31). Although Carino commends these re-creations, he nevertheless warns that "we must maintain critical consciousness about ourselves" (39), an idea shared by Hemmeter, who likewise remarks that we "need to become more self-conscious of how we talk to ourselves" (44). Examining the act of definition itself, both Hemmeter and Carino investigate the impact current definitions have on writing centers, and suggest that only through continual self-reflection will we understand how these definitions influence our theorizing about writing centers and our activities within centers.

By the 1 850' s the industrial potential of the United States was as apparent as its agrarian past, and there emerged a growing awareness that a new age required new training and new preparation. What was lacking, however, were any certain institutional foundations upon which to erect programs of agricultural and mechanical

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P]ower is, at its roots > telling our own stories. Without "good" stories to rely on, no minority or

Recounts a history of the National Writing Centers Association based on the author's personal recollection and minutes, back issues of "The Writing Center Journal" and "Writing Lab Newsletter," miscellaneous correspondence, and convention proceedings and programs. Explains why the organization exists and what road led the founders to it. (TB)