 "Photo: Elizabeth Miller / UCD Advocate")
When Justin Bain took over as director of the Writing Center in 2006, the Center was seeing between 600 and 800 students per semester. Now, he says, it’s serving over 3,000.
“We’re running at about 95 percent of capacity and we’re pretty much booked about two, two and a half weeks in advance,” he said.
“Students show up for the first time ever and are almost discouraged with how busy we are. The schedule is booked, the couches are full, and we’re doing sessions in the hallways,” said Drew Bixby, assistant director of the Center. “The campus’s awareness of the Writing Center appears to be outgrowing our space.”
Students have reported needing to book two weeks in advance just to get an appointment, and even earlier to get a preferred time slot.
“We’re also 50 percent booked for the semester,” said Dori Koliha, a consultant and one of the front desk staff at the Center. “Now everybody is kind of fighting tooth and nail to get in. It’s incredible that a Writing Center could be in such high demand.”
Sarah Funsch, a junior creative writing major at UC Denver, booked several appointments in advance, based on when she knew she had papers due.
“I booked three weeks ago,” she said. And booking early isn’t the only advance prep work she suggested.
“Come prepared,” she said. “You only have 50 minutes, so you need to know what you want to work on.”
Had she been so much as five minutes late, her appointment would have been given over to someone on the waitlist, which these days can have as many as 25 people on it waiting for email notifications of an opening. And a few more hovering around the Center ready to grab an open slot in the schedule.
“Most days, we’ve got students who either don’t know our system or are on campus and desperate for an appointment, and they show up,” said Bixby. “Some of them will camp out on the couches for hours, hoping someone doesn’t show up or cancels their appointment.”
Traffic has increased, Bain said, because of the outreach programs—classroom visits and workshops consultants do—and from occupying a new location. The Center moved from the Central Classroom into the North Classroom a year ago, providing it a larger space and a location closer to where UCD students spend a lot of their time.
Though it has just doubled its space, the Center still struggles to find room. It has moved consultants into other conference rooms and has a set of bistro tables in the hallway.
“[The students] have all just been happy to have sessions, so none of them have complained that they’re sitting in the hallway,” Bain said. “We just need to find more creative strategies to do things like that where we find small spaces like that where we can smash consultants.”
To cope with the crowding, Bain said, the Center has opened a satellite center at the Anschutz campus. This spring, Bain plans to open another satellite office at Campus Village. Both of those Centers would draw funding from fee sources different from the main Center, which is funded by College of Liberal Arts and Sciences fees and a continuing grant. That might free a little space in the budget for hiring more consultants at the main Center.
Because, although the traffic has changed at the Center in the last two years, its budget has not and shows little sign of adjusting to match the increased use of the Center.
“Given the current state of the economy, there’s probably not going to be any immediate increases,” Bain said. So he’s pursing some grants and looking for other outside sources for funding.
Even as UCD continues to negotiate with budget shortfalls over the coming years, Bain said he thinks student fees will continue to support the Center.
“It would be basically a catastrophe for us to have the student fee budget cut,” he said.
Despite the tight budget, Bain has been able to add more staff and more hours, and he expects to hire another two or three people next semester. That will add between 30 and 60 hours of additional appointments per week.
But even that wouldn’t be enough to meet the demand of 20 to 25 people on a waitlist almost daily.
“It’s probably the best we can do right now with our budget constraints. If the satellite works out well, it would definitely give us the opportunity to hire more staff out there,” he said. It’s nice to be busy, he added, but he knows students are a little frustrated—he’s seen an increase in complaints about not being able to get an appointment.
“We’re just trying to come up with creative ideas to help as many students as possible,” Bixby said. That includes online consultations in the evening, a drop box for grad student papers, and a website loaded with handouts and instructional videos.
“It’s been our goal to get where we are now, and now that we’re there, now we’re trying to figure out how we could possibly grow, how we could help more students,” Bixby said.
The Writing Center is open 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Monday–Thursday, and 10 a.m.–2 p.m. on Friday. Online consultations are available seven nights a week from 6 p.m.–10 p.m. Appointments can be scheduled on their website at ucdenver.edu/writingcenter.
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