Baruch College Writing Center Strategic Plan
AY 2013-2016
Working Document
Updated October 3, 2014
Boldface indicates completion; asterisks indicate in-progress.
I. Service Expansion and Student Outreach
A. Goal: To meet demonstrated student demand for services, the Writing Center will expand and
adapt our hours, physical space, and service formats.
1. Increase number of appointment hours to approach the point of meeting student need
(estimated at roughly 80% utilization) while allowing for manageable and strategic
expansion of our staff and constrained space resources.
2. Expand operating hours.
3. Establish satellite locations in the Newman Library and other departments, units,
and venues as appropriate.
4. *Retrofit the current Writing Center space with soundproofing and more efficient
furniture to better facilitate conversation and collaboration.
5. *Seek and advocate for new space as the College acquires new physical property.
6. Establish formal service to address brief or contained student questions outside
50-minute appointments and workshops.
7. *Establish regular, weekly student writing groups with consultant facilitators, allowing
greater student collaboration and interdependence as well as higher student-toconsultant ratios.
B. Goal: To ensure that we serve not only those students who already seek us out, but also those
students who may most benefit from our services, we will expand our outreach programming.
1. Establish a new website to better communicate with a wider student audience.
(Cross Reference: Goal IV.C.1.)
2. Establish additional avenues of direct student outreach, such as open houses and/or
information tables at semester start and other key times.
3. *Request invitations to visit classrooms in courses that are most likely to yield high
numbers of students with writing assignments, especially introductory-level and CIC
courses.
4. *Request invitations to present and distribute literature at orientations (e.g. for new,
transfer, exchange and honors students).
5. Request invitations to visit student clubs and organizations.
6. Analyze Writing Center student user data and cross reference with Institutional Research
and centralized student information systems to identify, contact, attract and retain as
Writing Center users students whose demographics indicate a likely need for writing
support.
II. Curricular Development
A. Goal: To consistently and efficiently support student academic writing skills that manifest most
frequently across the curriculum, the Center will continue to develop, deliver, support, and assess a
robust curriculum of writing workshops.
1. Hire part-time Workshop Specialist(s).
2. *Review past assessment practices and results, and develop future implementation plan
for workshop and session assessment.
3. Develop new workshops, including one addressing claims, evidence, and
analysis.
4. *Explore adapting workshops to an online/hybrid environment.
B. Goal: To better serve our diverse student body, the Center will expand our programming and
services to more directly support multilingual writers.
1. Hire part-time Multilingual Writing Support Specialist to consult with students
(one-to-one and small group), develop programming to better support
multilingual students, and work to support and train staff; pursue hiring full-time
Multilingual Writing Specialist.
2. Design and implement programming expressly targeted to multilingual writers, such as
peer writing groups and workshops.
C. Goal: To support CUNY- and College-wide initiatives of expanded student research
opportunities, the Center will support the highest levels of individual research writing at the College,
in collaboration with relevant stakeholders.
1. *In collaboration with the Honors Program, the Office of the Provost, the Provost’s
Office for Undergraduate Research and its subcommittees, and the Committee on
Undergraduate Honors, develop a sustainable support plan for individual undergraduate
research projects, including honors theses.
2. *In collaboration with the School of Public Affairs, develop a program of support for
Master’s theses in the MPA program.
D. Goal: To invigorate and expand our celebration and support of strong writers across the
College’s disciplines, the Center will renew its commitment to publishing i Magazine, the Center’s
online journal of undergraduate and graduate curriculum-based writing.
1. *Rebrand and re-launch i Magazine with editorial leadership bolstered by Writing Center
consultants.
2. *Actively recruit nominations and submissions that represent the wide variety of writing
undertaken across the College’s curriculum.
3. Seek funding for small monetary prizes recognizing selected works published in i
Magazine.
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III. Faculty Outreach and Development
A. Goal: To strengthen partnerships with faculty across the College, we will expand our faculty
outreach and communication.
1. Launch expanded faculty section of the Center’s website that clarifies and
highlights our resources and services for faculty, mission, and policies.
2. Establish Faculty Open Houses at semester beginnings.
3. *Request invitations to discuss writing support at departmental meetings.
B. Goal: To more efficiently and effectively support student writers as they encounter writing in
their classrooms, and to embrace the Center’s role as part of a varied Writing Across the Curriculum
program, the Writing Center will formalize and expand support for the teaching of writing.
1. Create a Faculty Referral Form for student consultations to create a clear,
accessible avenue for referrals to writing support aligned with our values.
2. Initiate and participate in College-wide faculty workshops on issues such as
assignment design, rubric creation, and writing assessment.
3. *Provide one-to-one or one-to-few consultations with faculty on assignment design,
responding to student writing, assessments, rubrics, etc.
4. *Invite faculty participation in Center-based inquiry groups (cross-referenced below in
“Staff Development”).
C. Goal: To advance faculty scholarship and creative output, as well as capitalize on faculty writing
as opportunities for attention to writing pedagogy, the Writing Center will launch programming to
support faculty in their own writing and research.
1. Pilot expansion of consultant development programs to extend to broader faculty
development as well, potentially including faculty inquiry groups.
2. *Pilot services to directly support faculty in their own writing lives, potentially including
one-to-one faculty writing consultations, and faculty writing groups.
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IV. Staff Support and Development
A. Goal: To capitalize on the tremendous talent and experience of our staff as teachers, scholars,
writers, and editors, the Writing Center will create new opportunities for consultants to participate
and invest in the Center’s programming outside of one-to-one consultations and workshop teaching.
1. Invite consultant engagement with and leadership of Writing Center
programming outside of one-to-one appointments, including serving on the i
Magazine editorial board, developing workshop curricula, and launching new
initiatives such as student writing groups and consultant or faculty writing
groups.
2. *Establish means by which consultants can publicly participate in and contribute to
broader professional conversations, such as through conference attendance and
presentation, and a public staff blog.
3. Collaborate with colleagues from the Journalism and the Writing Professions
Department, as well as the Starr Career Development Center, to host student
events discussing writing and editing professions, drawing especially on the
experience of Writing Center staff.
B. Goal: To foster a staff that is better supported, trained, engaged, and empowered to contribute to
the growth of the Writing Center, we will expand and establish programming to further develop
consultants’ skills as teachers, writers, and consultants of writing.
1. Establish consultant inquiry groups to allow sustained, collaborative
investigation of issues of greatest relevance and intellectual interest to
consultants.
2. *Pursue staff development programming that draws from and builds on the knowledge
and expertise of not only our staff, but also that of our colleagues in the Schwartz
Communication Institute, SACC, Honors Program, Library, English department, and
other relevant units.
3. *Formalize a sustainable training model for new consultants.
4. *Establish support for consultants who request or require additional development in
specific areas.
5. Formalize the dedication of 10% of consultant time to professional development
and Writing Center support in forms other than one-to-one appointments.
C. Goal: To contribute to and benefit from best practices of teaching and learning in the field of
writing studies, we will strengthen relationships with our broader community via conversation with
colleagues, conferences, and scholarship.
1. Establish a new website to better communicate with a wider audience of
colleagues. (Cross Reference: Goal I.B.1.)
2. *Establish a public staff blog to reflect on issues related to teaching and writing. (Cross
Reference: Goal IV.A.2.)
3. *Participate in and initiate opportunities to collaborate with other CUNY and NYC
metro-area writing centers and writing programs. For example, investigate establishing
the Writing Center as a Writing Program Administrators NYC Metropolitan lab site for
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the development of best practices in professionally supporting adjuncts and other
contingent academics.
Materially support the Director and Associate Director in the research and writing
necessary to participate most fully and reflectively in professional conferences and
institutes.
Structurally support the Director and Associate Director’s more active participation in
public conversations regarding teaching and writing via conferences, institutes, listservs
(WPA-L, WCenter) and published scholarship in the field.
Develop Center-based scholarly research project.
*Ensure full-time staff have completed IRB certification.
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V. Administration and Operations
A. Goal: To support a fair work environment for our largely part-time, adjunct staff, we will increase
transparency of terms of employment and seek feedback on ways in which we can more effectively
support our employees.
1. *In collaboration with Human Resources and the Professional Staff Congress, clarify,
codify and communicate to relevant staff issues related to evaluation, re-appointment,
promotion, step increases, health care eligibility, and other relevant procedures,
responsibilities, and benefits.
2. *Formalize and distribute descriptions of staff roles and reciprocal responsibilities for
Front Desk Attendants, Consultants, Administrative Coordinator, Associate Director,
and Director.
3. Develop, distribute, and analyze consultant workplace satisfaction survey.
B. Goal: To provide a fair, responsive, and efficient work environment for all employees, and to
ensure the most efficient use of our resources—human, fiscal, and material—we will streamline and
codify administrative processes in the Writing Center.
1. *Reorganize Writing Center space to cluster work functions and resources while
maximizing consulting space.
2. *Document institutional memory regarding administrative concerns via creation of or
updates to existing handbooks for center administration, front desk administration,
and consultant administrative concerns.
3. Formalize and codify budget management.
4. Streamline complex administrative processes such as eTutoring.
C. Goal: To ensure thorough and efficient collection and distribution of data and information, we
will improve our internal information sharing and tracking processes.
1. Move informational resources to publicly accessible locations, such as our website,
shared drives, or new blog’s backend.
2. *Establish an internal server or other system for more efficient file sharing among staff.
3. *Ensure 100% of consultants regularly access @baruch.cuny.edu email accounts,
facilitating timely and direct communication of HR concerns and IT needs.
4. *Collect more reliable and useful student data via mechanisms such as swipe card
readers, backend authentication of online scheduler accounts, and installation of student
data applications (Dixon Tables, now being replaced by CUNYfirst) on administrative
computers.
5. Use Filemaker Pro or similar database management system to manage assessment data.
D. Goal: To facilitate the contributions of the undergraduate front desk staff, now and in their
careers to come, the Center will develop the role of Front Desk Attendant as one that not only
employs but also more actively mentors Baruch students.
1. *Codify front desk hiring timelines, initial training plans, and new-hire handbook.
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2. Establish regular front desk staff development programming, including, potentially,
formalized training and meetings.
3. Establish development and/or mentorship programs for front desk attendants.
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