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The View from the Other Side: From Consultant to Director Fall 2003 / Columns

by Julie Garbus

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University of Northern Colorado Writing Center Director Julie Garbus reflects on her transition from consultant to professor and administrator.

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Julie Garbus My experience at the Undergraduate Writing Center (UWC) at the University of Texas at Austin definitely got me my job, a tenure-track position as assistant professor of English and director of the Writing Center at the University of Northern Colorado (UNC).

In the English PhD program at Texas, graduate students in their first year of teaching composition teach one composition class per semester and work seven hours per week in the Undergraduate Writing Center as well. When I began my mandated UWC gig, I discovered I enjoyed it immensely. Teaching writing oneon-one seemed extremely effective for students and suited my own informal, extroverted personality. As I consulted, I learned skills that transferred to the classroom: focusing on one issue at a time, addressing conceptual issues before mechanical ones, developing rapport with students. And I gleaned teaching tips and good conferencing techniques from other graduate students working in the UWC. I’d entered the Texas PhD program intending to specialize in literature, but I wasn’t sure which literature. I’d written an MA thesis on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry at another university; I’d flirted with becoming a Victorianist, a Renaissance scholar, a Modernist. But when I started consulting and teaching composition, I realized that I’d finally found my focus. Switching to the rhetoric and composition track at Texas took an extra year of coursework but it was a good move, both personally and professionally.

After two years of consulting in the UWC I became one of its assistant directors, a two-year graduate student position. I learned how to arrange and lead staff meetings, to train and be a resource for other consultants. I began to notice the various dynamics of power relations between administration, faculty, administrative staff, and consultants. Being able to "read" and negotiate these usually unspoken relationships has been important in my new job as a writing center director. As an assistant director, too, I began foraying into the field’s conversations by reading writing center scholarship, lurking on the active and congenial WCENTER listserv, and presenting at conferences. In my last two years at Texas I ran a one-person writing center at the university’s law school; this job presented a new set of complexities, since I was working for the first time with graduate students, many non-native English speakers, who were writing long, complex documents.

When I went on the market I decided that my ideal job would be a tenure-track position with some variety; I wanted to run a writing center, teach rhetoric, composition, and even literature courses, and do research. A few jobs fit this description, and I applied for many other jobs as well: some tenure-track rhetoric and composition jobs without a writing center component, some tenure-track writing center director jobs, a few non-tenure track writing center jobs. Of the four campus visits I was asked to make, three involved running writing centers. My job at UNC, which I began in August 2002, fit my “ideal” profile. Besides directing the writing center, I teach one course one semester and two the next.

My first year at UNC has been rough in some ways. Moving from one of the largest writing centers in the country to a more typical one was a shock. At the UWC I didn’t have to attend to administrative matters: making sure staff gets paid, ordering supplies, getting the Xerox machine fixed. At UNC I can’t afford an administrative assistant or an assistant director. Negotiating the bureaucracy of the payroll, facilities, and supplies departments at my school frustrates me consistently. More compelling challenges include improving and streamlining our services: starting a tutor-training course, holding in-house workshops for consultants, offering workshops for students, increasing publicity, creating a good webpage. And finally, there’s the budget crisis. Colorado’s in financial trouble, and higher education has sustained massive cuts. Next year, my center’s already tiny budget will be reduced significantly–just as student need for it increases because of larger class sizes and lower funding for other student support services. Strategizing about and pursuing alternative funding sources are interesting intellectual challenges–but ones I’d gladly forego.

On balance, though, I love the job. The consultants–mostly undergraduates and a few graduate students from my department’s MA program–are a joy to work with. If university politics get me down, hanging out in the center restores my equilibrium. I like to consult several hours each week in the writing center; it helps my classroom teaching, and vice versa. I also enjoy the large variety of students who visit our center: foreign graduate students, basic writers, older students, and more traditional undergrads from all colleges on campus. Faculty and administration at my university are usually approachable and happy to support new initiatives.

And, as I’d hoped, my job combo–administrative work, teaching, research, some consulting, and university service (committees, advising) makes for a full and always interesting workday.

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Julie Garbus directs the writing center at the University of Northern Colorado and is an assistant professor in English. ‚ Meeting Them Half Way: My Life as a Teacher, Tutor, Consultant

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