Presents a correlation study of student satisfaction with Writing Center services based on the number of visits students made to the Center during two different semesters. Tells a story of how the writing center staff learned to stop fearing numbers and love the interpretation of them. Finds no statistically significant correlation between number…

Indicates a desire and need to construct an elaborately detailed and historiographically sophisticated model that would effectively account for the complexity of writing center development and history. Critically examines two models currently in use, the "evolutionary" model and the "dialectic" model. Offers a cultural model of writing center…

Traces the origins and development of writing centers. States that a reasonably solid history can be seen beginning in the early 1970s and earlier. Provides a definition of the features found in writing labs. Describes a program founded in World War II designed by the Armed Forces to teach officers two years of English in two semesters. (PA)

Argues that only from the inside can writers define their own metaphors to make what others say about writing centers the same as what they themselves say. Asserts that this goal will always remain elusive; and, though to pursue it is to empower writers, to achieve it would be to arrive at a definition, a comfortable but naive position. (PRA)