Marketing the Writing Center

When Professor Dolson mentioned that we could do our own project for the final, my mind automatically jumped to marketing. It's funny, because marketing has never been my strong suit. I have always been more of a theoretical person, someone who likes to think about lofty ideas and theories that never really make it into reality. Yet this entire semester the marketing question has kept on coming up in my blogs and in my mind. I remember very vividly sitting in class with Gyra and Allie, discussing why the Writing Center is so empty and how we could change it - they came up with the brilliant idea of the Writing Center doing a campaign to help with love letters on Valentines Day. And so when the idea of doing your own project came up, I automatically jumped on board with Gyra and Allie to start thinking about exactly how we could get the Writing Center out of Weinstein and into the rest of the campus.

I found a very interesting article about just this, marketing the writing center, in the Writing Lab Newsletter (linked below)
Marketing the Best Image of the Community College Writing Center

Though (as you can tell from the title) this article deals with community college writing centers, it has some very interesting strategies to get the name of the Writing Center out there. For example, it gives a list of recommendations for instructors in encouraging their students to use the Writing Center:

1. Give students a specifi c task(s) to complete in the writing center. 

2. Tie the task to an assignment or a graded paper. 

3. Have students bring specifi c assignment(s) to the center. 

4. Keep models of good completed assignments in the center.

5. Focus on the hierarchy that works with all levels of student writers. 

6. Tell students verbally and in their syllabus that they should take advantage of the writing 

 center’s services. 

7. Take their students into the center and have the staff explain the process and  services of 

  the writing center. 

8. Ask someone from the writing center to talk to their class. 

9. Be aware of what the writing center does and does not do. Accentuate the positive. 

10. Help students to become wiser users of the center . . . learning what questions to ask 

 and seeking guidance for the higher order concerns instead of looking only for editing 

 corrections. One way we can help instructors is to share our hierarchy with them. 

Emphasizing inclusivity, lack of labels for both the Center and the students, and intimate relations between the instructors and the Center, this article provides some answers in how to both eliminate the stigma attached to the Writing Center and how to make each consultancy more effective. 

However, this article does not touch at all on how to reach the students directly rather than going through the channel of their professors. Perhaps that is a less popular means of promoting the Writing Center, but I think that in the University of Richmond context, it would be extremely effective and beneficial if we could get the students to use the Writing Center out of their own free will, not because told to by professors. In fact, separating the Center from professors could create a more collaborative, relaxed, and less stressful environment. How can we reach the students themselves?