Presenters: Laura Hope, Success Center Coordinator, Chaffey College; Robert Rundquist, Writing Center Instructional Assistant, Chaffey College
Moderator: Sterling Warner, Evergreen Valley College

“Re-Imaging in the Writing Center: It’s Not Just a place to Get a Paper Checked” exceeded expectations set forth by the session in the ECCTYC 2007 program. Apart from a marvelous PowerPoint presentation, Laura Hope and Robert Rundquist fully explained the reason student access doesn’t assure their academic success, discussed the limitations of learning measured as “time served” in a writing center, and identified reasons why reversing the Carnegie paradigm has offered underprepared students genuine learning opportunities “using unique methodologies to create an extension of the classroom.”

In the course of their presentation, Hope and Rundquist demonstrated how the Chaffey Success Centers have integrated three components of Chaffey’s curricular culture—Foundation Courses, Occupational Courses, and Transfer Courses; each overlaps the writing center. Like many two-year colleges in California, students at Chaffey tend to be deficient in reading, writing, mathematics, and 70% of the time all three. To address student needs, the Success Centers provide academic support for the classroom instructors and the students. All total, Chaffey College supports eight Success Centers: an Interdisciplinary Writing Center, a Language Success Center, a Reading/Multidisciplinary Success Center, a Math Success Center, as well as full service centers at campus locations in Chino, Ontario, Fontana and the California Institution for Women in Chino.

As Laura Hope put it, “Students fail because they can literally and figuratively disappear.” By eliminating a perceive risk in asking questions and voicing their concerns, students combat invisibility by engaging in learning as a social—rather than solo—act. In addition to minimizing a feeling of isolation in a writing center, the presenters explained that their success centers “emphasize the process of learning rather than product.” By providing students with a safe environment to practice “contextual learning,” Chaffey’s Success Centers avoid the pitfalls of pseudo-mastery of in traditional classrooms or writing center settings. Prior to a lively question and answer period accentuating their stellar session, Hope and Rundquist pulled together “Re-Imaging in the Writing Center” by explaining how Chaffey’s innovative writing/success centers demystify learning, and a student’s quest for a correct answer—emphasizing that “authentic learning is often learning to tolerate degrees of rightness.”