Before and After: from the margins to the center
Before: This was our the entrance to our old location in Monitor Hall, located on the border of the campus, across a busy street. That small square in the window was our only way of letting anyone know that we were there. The building housed the speech and hearing clinic, which serves the community and the major, but we were on the top floor, so no one just randomly visited this building.
After: This is our new building, right in the center of the academic side of Wisconsin Avenue, right in the heart of campus. It's the Raynor Library, named for John P. Raynor, S. J., a much-loved president who died a few years ago.
Before: When writers entered Monitor Hall, they found themselves in the reception area for the Speech and Hearing Clinic. The elevator to the fourth floor was just to the right of the speech pathology student and her client.
Before: when writers reached the fourth floor, this was the view that awaited them. Signs pointed the way to the writing center, at the very end, just to the left of the permanent "Wet Floor" sign.
Before: this was the corridor in our old location. The reception area was to the left, and tutoring rooms lined the corridor. The building had been an old dormitory. One student told us that the plastic bins outside the offices reminded him of a doctor's office.
Before: The corridors and entrance were forbidding, but the rooms were inviting spaces. The tutors like color and painted some of the rooms in their favorite colors. We had semicircular tables in many of the rooms, good spaces for conferences.
Before: Each room had a window. Doors were generally left open.
After: this is our entrance now. We don't have a big sign outside, but about 5,000 students use the library daily, so they know where we are.
There's a steady stream of students, faculty, and guests using the Raynor Library.
When you go through a turnstile, you see this staircase to the second floor, where we're located.
From the top of the stairs, this is the entrance to the writing center. The sign is brushed metal, on the wall, center. It's hard to photograph well, but it's clear and easy for students to see from across the room. Quite different from our 8.5x11 sheet in Monitor.
Just outside the writing center is a computer center. We were assured that we could take our sessions out here if we got too busy in our space, but it's always full of students. So far we have had no problems with our smaller size because the space is so well designed for our use.
This is the study area just outside our door.
This is our reception area, the view from the open door. My office is just behind the reception desk in this photo. It has large windows onto Wisconsin Avenue, the main street. The rooms to the right are two of five tutoring rooms. They each have glass panels beside the doors so doors can be closed for noise control, but there's still a feeling of connectedness and openness.
The tutoring rooms have spacefor three to five chairs; the tables are roomy enough to invite writers to haul out all their notes and drafts. We only have one desktop computer; the rest are all laptops the tutors can use for tutoring or their own work. They are wireless, but each office has a data port in case someone needs a really fast connection. We didn't want the tutoring areas to be dominated by computers, but we can have one up and running in just a minute.
This is a popular gathering area for tutors to study or eat lunch or just talk.
The Raynor Library picked out our furniture. The chairs repeat the motif and colors of the library's designs. Later, the tutors will choose posters and wall art for the tutoring rooms.
Here's my office.
My corner office overlooks Wisconsin Avenue from two directions. The light from the windows brightens the main reception area.
The window in my office wall connects me to the reception area, even when my door is closed.
A bridge from the old library to the new is a cyber cafe. Raynor is considered a very cool place to congregate, study, and socialize. It's always full of students. It's set up with many small rooms for group study and collaborative work, so the writing center fits right into its mission. The books are in the old library; reserves, current periodicals, and great technology is in the new. Students call the old library "the brick" and the new library "the click."