The PCCC Writing Center on the Road

Wanaque

Passaic

During year 3 of the Initiative, the PCCC Writing Center provided services at the main campus in Paterson and also on our Wanaque (WAC) and Passaic (PAC) locations. Unfortunately, there is no permanent location for these services on either of the satellite campuses. We have used the tutoring/computer lab area at WAC and a computer lab at PAC during the past year.

As we compile our year 4 statistics on Center usage on all campuses, here are some stats and information on usage by students.

In all we met for 722 appointments and workshop attendees in Paterson in year 3. Unfortunately, use on both satellite campuses has been poor.At Wanaque, for example, Fall 2009 had only 10 reservations and Spring 2010 had 14 reservations.

It is difficult for us to justify budgeting the current tutor budget (or any increase in hours) for those other campuses with the low numbers we have experienced.

There have been some student requests for workshops on our other campuses, so we started scheduling workshops in Wanaque and Passaic starting in Oct. 2010.

No-shows continue to be an issue on all campuses with the number hovering at around 25% in Paterson and at WAC. ("No-shows" are appointments not kept and without prior contact by the student that they were unable to attend.) Weather has sometimes been a factor in this, as are the busy lives of our students. We hope that with some new approaches to reminding students of their appointments and with more students being able to schedule and cancel their own appointments online, no-shows will decrease.

The Writing Center in Paterson has been open during the summer the past two years although there are no writing intensive courses offered during the summer. The focus for summer has been supporting students preparing to retake the College Writing Exam.