Why I Do Community Work

Hi Everyone, (If you haven't read the two posts below about the workshop abstract, please do that before reading this one. Otherwise, it will make no sense).

I've been thinking a lot about this question for the past 24 hours and had an epiphany when I woke up this morning. Well, rather than an epiphany, I finally remembered why I have been doing this work for the past decade. (It's sad that doing the actual work starts to cloud the reasons for it.) What follows is not very qualified or restrained, and not appropriate for academic discourse, but I'm hoping we're in a more brainstorming-focused level now.

Pure and simple, I think that institutions of higher education have an obligation to the communities they reside in to provide flexible opportunties for self-directed learning. And, I believe that writing centers are uniquely positioned to provide these opportunities.

I came to this realization at the University of Southern Califronia--a wealthy private university in the 'ghetto'--when I worked for a program that provided edcuational support to students in two surrounding junior high schools. USC felt obliged to be a good neighbor to their community. And, they're a private university, not receiving taxpayer funding.

My notion of higher ed having an obligation to the larger community, is only strengthened when talking about publicly-supported institutions. The national average for Bachelor's Degree attainment is 27%. Yet, 100% of the people are providing support to their colleges and universities. I'm not saying that the other 73% do not benefit from the traditional education that higher ed provides to members of the community--they do in the many ways that education provides an infrastructure for community growth and services.

However, a public institution is a part of the community and, therefore, should be flexible, to a reasonable extent, in providing options for ALL community members to improve their knowledge and skills.

Now, why writing centers? I see writing centers as one of the most flexible and innovative 'institutions' within the larger higher education system, and thus, they can respond to community educational needs with dynamic responses. Also, equally important, writing is a skill, knowlege, need, etc. that all (or nearly all) people encounter. Not everyone needs to know how to code the human genome, or fix air conditioners or understand the physiology of a flower. These are academic and vocational pursuits that universities and colleges house within their traditional programs.

But, the need for writing abilities transcends traditional programs.

So, does the obligation of the university/college fall on the Writing Center's shoulders? To me, yes and no. I think that the writing center is uniquely poised to provide opportunities to the community, but finanically, it is the university/college that should be held responsible. It is their obligation and the writing center can be a vehicle for it to occur.

Financial support for such work will always be a miniscule amount of the institution's budget, but the payoff in terms of public appreciation and institutional image is huge. The CWC's budget accounts for only 0.14% of SLCC's E & G (state appropriated) budget, only a bit more than a tenth of one percent. But, we reap huge rewards for the college as they can point to our work as truly dedicated to the community that we belong to.

Now, I don't know how to turn this into a 'hook' for our abstract, but does it give any of you ideas?

Thanks for listening,
Tif