Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 19, No. 2 (2022)

Whose Space Is It, Really? Design Considerations for Writing Center Spaces

Rachel Azima
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
razima2@unl.edu

Abstract
While space was once a central topic in Writing Center Studies, conversations around physical space have quieted somewhat in recent years, particularly after Jackie Grutsch McKinney’s critique of the idea of writing centers as “cozy homes” in Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers. But as empirical work in allied fields such as Writing Studio Studies and Library Studies has shown, physical spaces do affect both student learning and instructor pedagogy. This article discusses findings from a study focused on a writing center renovation that sought to create an “invitational,” “zoned” space (Purkey, Inman). This IRB-approved mixed-methods study employed surveys and interviews conducted before and after renovations to examine what difference space changes made to how students and consultants felt about and worked in the space. Results suggest space matters differently to different stakeholders, and writing center professionals should continue to question received knowledge about “ideal” space. Based on these findings, I offer data-supported guiding principles for writing center leaders looking to create, renovate, or make the most of current writing center spaces.

Introduction

As I complete this in my “home office” in summer 2021 (read: from a couch in my basement), it feels like a strange time to reflect on writing center space. Our writing center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) sat vacant over the 2020-21 academic year. Every consultation took place online.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, conversations about physical writing center spaces appeared to have lost some currency. Jackie Grutsch McKinney’s questioning of the “grand narrative” of writing centers as “cozy homes” in Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers marked the end of an era of relative consensus on space. Much-needed scholarship on online modes of delivery (see, for example, the scholarship collected on the Online Writing Centers Association website) seemed to take the place of a focus on physical space. Ever-shrinking writing center budgets have likely played a part: how many writing center leaders can currently afford to make significant changes to their center spaces? And at this historical moment when serious questions around power, inequity, and social justice have been front-of-mind for many, the intricacies of writing center space design may seem less pressing.

But spaces are not, in fact, neutral, and none are ever exempt from questions of power: who wields it in that space, how it is negotiated, the messages it sends about who belongs and who may find it a “cozy home,” and so on. And in this pandemic time when many of us have missed the camaraderie of face-to-face centers, we have been further reminded that physical spaces¹ do, in fact, matter. The study I discuss explores how it matters and to whom, using the 2015-16 renovations of UNL’s Writing Center as a lens. Before beginning the renovation process, I attended Roberta Kjesrud’s 2015 IWCA Collaborative workshop on writing center space, which inspired me not only to proceed in as informed a way as possible, but also to study what measurable differences renovations actually made for students and consultants.²

After attending the workshop, I quickly designed an IRB-approved mixed-methods study incorporating surveys and interviews with consultants and students conducted before and after renovation. I wanted to learn:

Do changes in writing center space shape how consultants and students teach and learn within that space?
Are there measurable differences in how consultants and students feel about and behave in differently organized writing center spaces?

My findings may reassure those unable to make significant changes: the tl;dr of my analysis is that space both matters and doesn’t, and it matters quite differently to students and staff. While the data I discuss are 5+ years old, I do not make claims for the latest-and-greatest in technology. Rather, I share what worked and didn’t on practical and conceptual levels, focusing on considerations that remain relatively constant over time for standalone writing centers. I offer data-supported guiding principles writing centers leaders can use when contemplating changes, large or small, to their spaces. Overall, I argue for letting go of received notions of what constitutes “ideal” writing center spaces in favor of listening with genuinely open minds to what consultants and (especially) students need.

Space in Writing Center Studies and Beyond

Practical and theoretical discussions of writing center space were once ubiquitous in the literature but have ebbed somewhat in recent years. Joyce Kinkead and Jeanette Harris’s foundational Writing Centers in Context: Twelve Case Studies, published in 1993, contained physical descriptions of each center, offering a primer for directors setting up new spaces. Throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, writing center scholarship tended to focus on how writing center spaces differed from others on campus, particularly via their “hominess” (Bishop; Sunstein; Hadfield et al.). In 2005, however, Grutsch McKinney’s “Leaving Home Sweet Home” called into question these truisms on writing centers as “home” or homey—what she would later frame as the “cozy homes” grand narrative in Peripheral Visions. Still, in their 2012 look back at scholarship to that point on writing center space, Nathalie Singh-Corcoran and Amin Emika note that, after Grutsch McKinney’s article, “the community appears to be only slightly more attentive to the complexities of space.” Like Grutsch McKinney, Melissa Nicolas, and others, Singh-Corcoran and Emika invoke Nedra Reynolds on the importance of place in the teaching of writing, and they consider writing centers’ relationship to Edward Soja’s “thirdspace,” which meshes the concrete aspects of space with their “imagined geographies,” as well as Melvin Webber and Marc Augé’s concept of the “nonplace” (I return to their discussion of the latter in due course). Like Grutsch McKinney in particular, Singh-Corcoran and Emika urge us to get beyond our own lenses as writing center insiders, arguing that “seeing the writing center through the eyes of a passerby adds new layers of dimension to our conceptions of what is real and what is possible within the center.”

While some scholarship contemporaneous with Peripheral Visions continued to explore writing center spaces in the context of postmodern geography (Burns) and articulate considerations for new, groundbreaking spaces and renovations of old ones with multimodality in mind (Carpenter et al.; Lee et al.), discussions of space have been largely limited to the occasional article and blog post for much of the last eight years (De Herder; Gardiner). Recently, however, Alicia Brazeau and Tessa Hall have connected conversations about space to ideas of museum creation, and Lindsay Sabatino and Maggie Herb shared insights from a study of writing centers located in shared spaces (“Turf Wars”). Kjesrud’s recently-published chapter, “Placemaking through Learner-based Design,” reinvigorates the conversation in particularly significant ways, as she argues for transforming how we talk about and design our spaces. In particular, she underlines the need for creating equitable and recursive design processes that foreground student learning above aesthetic concerns.

Readers wishing to know more about how discussions of space and learning have developed in Writing Studio Studies and Library Studies should review Kjesrud’s work; I will only touch on highlights from those associated fields here. The early 2010s saw a push for empirical research on connections between space and learning; the Journal of Learning Spaces, founded in 2011, houses a growing number of such studies (and featured Nova Southeastern University’s Write from the Start Writing and Communication Center in 2019—as a “spotlight,” however, not as the subject of a study). In several empirical studies of active learning classrooms, D. Christopher Brooks found that space can, in fact, enhance student learning and influence instructor pedagogy. Broadly speaking, the concept and practices of the “studio,” in which artists, architects, and other practitioners engage actively in their creative work, often take center stage in the study of space and learning (e.g., Taylor, Crowther, Marshalsey). Given the overlap between writing center pedagogy and studio pedagogy more broadly—many writing centers frame themselves as “writing studios,” after all—ongoing and increasingly empirical studies of studio spaces offer useful information for writing center professionals looking to learn how design choices can foster student engagement.

Furthermore, not only are writing centers often housed within libraries (Sabatino and Herb), but they share affinities as non-classroom learning spaces. A turn toward empirical research has also emerged in Library Studies (e.g., Applegate; Kim, Bosch, and Lee). Yet, generally speaking, student usage of library space tends to be less structured than their use of writing center spaces, unless the center follows the Western Washington model of a wall-less, boundary-less center (Kjesrud). And as writing center scholars have argued for decades, writing centers are not classrooms—though with the advent of active learning classrooms specifically designed to have a café feel, that gap may be narrower than ever (Morrone et al.). And while centers may take theoretical and practical models for space design and pedagogy from studios, student practices in art, design, or architecture studios often do not correspond directly to the largely textual, usually one-to-one work that remains central in many writing centers. There is ample room, then, for empirical studies designed to explore the relationship between space and the work that goes on specifically in writing centers. What I discuss below represents one such investigation.

What We Did and Why

Before going into study particulars, however, I will briefly describe the renovation process, resulting changes, and a few theoretical foundations for our choices. While I strove to ground our renovation plans in space design research, the process also necessarily involved improvisation, in true writing center fashion. In Spring 2015, the graduate student Assistant Director and I collected informal feedback during a staff meeting about what consultants wanted/needed. Better tables (we had mystifying trapezoidal ones), comfortable and moveable furniture (the chairs were huge, difficult to move, and the arms prevented us from pushing them in), a dedicated space for staff, and outlets to plug in laptops were all priorities. Formal data collection during the study period uncovered similar desires for a more usable, easier to understand, and quieter space.

After gathering information from staff and visitors about what they would like to see from the space, I turned to the literature to help guide my decision-making process. My vision for the space was heavily informed by James A. Inman’s “zoning approach” for multiliteracy centers, in which anticipated uses of space guide the design. Inman argues against purely fluid spaces with open-ended uses in favor of “zones”: dedicated spaces for particular uses that exist in relation to one another. Although we did not and still do not explicitly cast ourselves as a multiliteracy center, we wanted to build in enough flexibility for future consulting needs, be they in person or virtual. Following Kjesrud, I was also influenced by educational theorist William Purkey’s notion of “Invitational Education,” in which space plays a key part: “The physical environment of the school offers an excellent starting point for moving from theory into practice, because places are so visible” (7). I sought to create a space that would be “intentionally inviting”—that is, one that would not only avoid disinviting signals, but would send inviting ones with intention rather than as happenstance (Purkey calls the latter “unintentionally inviting”). Many of my choices were also guided by a handout from Bradley Hughes, particularly his recommendations for “A very welcoming entrance, with lots of glass on the outside which allows students and faculty to see and sample what’s going on and reassures them before they enter,” a café-like feel, and a reception desk “that isn’t too high or forbidding looking, not the command center for the starship enterprise” (1). This advice seemed likely to ensure the space felt collaborative and student-centered.

Arguably, who makes these decisions and how is as important as the decisions themselves. Kjesrud incisively points to the need to build equitable, decolonial principles into design practices. We were fortunate that the primary decision makers in our own renovation happened to be a person of color (me) and a person with a disability (Nicole Green, then the Assistant Director, who is blind), providing some diversity of perspective even in our small team of two. This, however, was happenstance, and a genuinely inclusive approach can’t be accomplished by just two individuals who are both writing center insiders. Still, that we embodied more than one form of difference undoubtedly helped us improve the space design, not only in the writing center, but throughout the first floor, which was also being renovated. As Inman points out, accessibility is vital to keep in mind when designing zoned multiliteracy spaces; while the architecture/design firm was prepared to follow ADA requirements, Nicole offered key guidance on choices that went beyond mere compliance. For instance, she recommended altering the tile pattern near the walls to make the main corridor easier for visual impaired members of the university community to navigate. Nicole’s invaluable feedback thus improved spaces both within and beyond the center, powerfully illustrating the necessity of inclusive renovation teams.

The iterative nature of the process ensured we were able to incorporate recommendations such as Nicole’s as we worked toward a design that reflected our vision. When I initially began meeting with the architects/interior designers, they already had a preliminary plan drawn up. Unsurprisingly, I had to spend significant time educating these professionals about what we actually do in writing centers and why: as one example, I had to talk the designer out of parking multiple consultant/writer pairs at each table separated by dividers, a scheme they had devised in an effort to maximize efficiency. Throughout the summer, the architects/designers would present possible plans for the Writing Center and the rest of the first floor; we’d discuss how to improve them to better serve our actual (rather than imagined) needs; they would revise and bring updated plans to the next meeting. This process continued for several months. The extended nature of the design process thus gave us opportunities to reflect deeply about what needed to happen in each space being renovated and ensure the design would meet those needs.

Once we finally settled on a design, actual renovations could begin. Throughout 2015-16, while renovations were happening, our center relocated to the main university library. By Fall 2016, we had a new space with four round tables for consultations; a longer table with computers and outlets; a seating area for reading or informal consultations; a low reception desk with storage cabinets behind; a centrally located waiting area with a writable table; a workspace with computers and stools for post-session notes; a separate staff room with exterior and interior windows; and a smaller enclosed room for video chat consultations (Figs. 1 and 2). The consulting chairs had flexible backs, some with arms, some armless, to accommodate consultants of various sizes. Each consulting table was placed near a window and by an outlet, so laptops could be plugged in. While a center’s location on campus is key (Nicolas), that is beyond the scope of the present study. I will, however, note that we moved from one end of the English building to the other, placing us a stone’s throw from the main library’s newly renovated Learning Commons, a popular informal study space.

I cannot pretend to be unbiased, but I find our space both pleasant and welcoming. But did these changes actually affect what happens in the space or how consultants and writers feel about their time there?

Methods

To answer these questions, I employed surveys and semi-structured interviews to compare student and consultant perceptions of the space before and after renovation.³ In Spring 2015, I distributed a survey with Likert-scale and open-ended questions to consultants and students who had used the Writing Center that year, and I conducted follow-up interviews with those who agreed in the survey. I repeated this process in Fall 2016, after we’d spent a semester in the new space.

84 students and 13 consultants responded to the pre-renovation survey; post-renovation, 65 students and 10 consultants responded. We typically have 20-25 undergraduate and graduate consultants on staff, so roughly half the consulting staff responded each round. Surveys asked students and consultants to rate their ability to work in the space, to indicate what they used it for, and to give their impression on several sliding scales: uninviting to inviting, studious to casual, friendly to unfriendly, stimulating to relaxing, and fixed to flexible. I also asked both groups what would make the space better for the work they do. Post-renovation, both surveys included a Likert-scale question about whether they found the new space better or worse.

In follow-up interviews, I sought a deeper understanding of subjective student and consultant attitudes toward the physical space than could be captured on a Likert scale. Pre-renovation, 10 students and 8 consultants agreed to follow-up interviews; post-renovation, 8 students and 7 consultants participated. I asked students to describe their experiences, what they liked/disliked about the space, and what we could do to improve the space and/or services. Post-renovation, I asked what they thought of the changes, if they’d used the center before. I asked consultants more specific questions about how they used the space and what they liked/disliked. Post-renovation, I also asked if they found themselves working differently in the new space. During interviews, I asked for participants’ input on the pseudonyms I employ. I transcribed all interviews myself.

One limitation involves the staff/student visitor turnover endemic to writing centers, which renders a true before-and-after comparison virtually impossible. Our renovations took long enough that only one consultant I interviewed (Louise) had worked in both old and new spaces, though several had worked in the library during the renovation year. The question of how space shapes consultant practices thus was virtually impossible to answer. That said, soliciting feedback directly from writing center stakeholders yielded important data about what students and consultants want from and how they feel about writing center space—findings that can help guide decision-making around space design.

To analyze the quantitative data, I contracted with UNL’s Bureau of Sociological Research, which used Mann-Whitney U tests to look for significant differences among student responses pre- and post-renovation, consultant responses pre- and post-renovation, as well as differences between the two groups of respondents. I analyzed the qualitative data from both surveys and interviews in Dedoose using a mix of in vivo and latent coding, then reduced the codes, identifying apparent trends in responses in the process (Saldaña). I focus below on areas where either differences pre- and post-renovation were measurable or where the data led to meaningful takeaways about how students and consultants relate to center space.

Results and Discussion

I break down my findings into two major categories: concrete aspects of space design and usage, and affective considerations around the space.

Space Design and Usage

One of the only statistically significant differences pre- to post-renovation emerged in response to the question, “How effective is the design of the current Writing Center space for the work you do?” Post-renovation survey respondents reported a significantly higher average score for effectiveness, which held true for both student users (U = 1244, z = -2.929, p = .003) and consultants (U = 24, z = -2.427, p = .021). Furthermore, as shown in figure 3, 63.6% of students who had used the old space rated the new one “much better” (though one did rate it “a little worse”). All 4 consultants who had used the previous space rated the new one “much better.” While the samples sizes for respondents who could make direct comparisons were small, their responses together with the overall effectiveness ratings suggest renovations did indeed have a measurable and positive effect.

What led to this increase in perceived effectiveness? Creating differentiated, legible spaces following Inman’s zoning approach likely contributed, according to the qualitative data. Both students and consultants had complained about the lack of waiting area pre-renovation (7 instances); this concern was absent from post-renovation surveys and interviews. Another zone improved by renovations was the front desk, which had been oddly walled off with glass panels, making entering the space confusing. Lack of clarity when arriving can be off-putting and effectively disinviting: as May, a student visitor, put it in a pre-renovation interview, “it’s just so much easier when you walk into a place and, like, you see the person that you’re supposed to talk to, and they’re right there to help you. It just puts everything at ease.” Moreover, Louise, the graduate consultant who had worked in both spaces, commented on how the clearly legible front desk made it easier for her to focus on her actual consultant role post-renovation:

I really appreciate the visibility of the desk workers in this space, like I think often before, even when we had desk workers working, writers would be confused when they came in, and so I would often end up greeting writers that weren’t mine . . . or like, seeing lost people wandering in and trying to direct them, and so I think here I can focus more on consulting and worry less about seeing what’s going on around me.

Louise’s remarks highlight how space design isn’t important merely for its own sake; rather, as Brooks and others have found, space design can affect the kind of pedagogical work that happens in a given space. For Louise, an easier-to-read space enabled her to devote mental energy to consulting rather than the practical matter of guiding students through the space.

Unsurprisingly, adding a staff room was popular with consultants, as it created a “zone” for socializing and peer support. Several consultants commented on how positive the staff room was for building community post-renovation; Piper, an undergraduate consultant, said in an interview:

I really like the staff room a lot this semester, cause it creates a nice space for all of the consultants to, like, hang out . . . I really like the staff, I think it’s fun working here, and I think the space can enhance that, especially when I’m like in between classes, like if we’re not on the schedule at the same time, like, ‘hey, I don't really see you, how’s it going?’ Stuff like that. That’s really nice.

Furthermore, having a designated space for consultants to socialize does not solely benefit staff. Pre-renovation, students often complained about the omnipresence of consultant socializing: in the survey alone, 5 students commented specifically on how distracting consultant conversation was: “Less talking amongst the consultants, especially when there are clients”; “other consultants who are free might want to keep their chatting voice down”; and, perhaps most damningly, “sometimes I feel like the writing center is a place for those assistant students to talk.” Consultants talking among themselves was thus not only annoying, but also disinviting for students. I will discuss general noisiness further below; I will simply note here that containing consultant conversation in a separate space made an evident impact, as no student writers shared similar complaints either in post-renovation surveys or interviews.

While there is assuredly more one could say about furniture, I will only discuss the most striking—and unintentional—finding. Although round tables to encourage collaboration in learning environments are a commonplace in the literature (e.g., Cornell; Baepler and Walker; Taylor), two consultants who had worked in our temporary home in the library actually stated they preferred rectangular tables they’d used at the library. Consultant Ellen went so far as to frame circular tables as less collaborative, rather than more so: “one thing I did like about the library was, like, the tables were rectangular, and I feel like sometimes here, I have to chase the writer around the table to sit close to them so I can see. But I felt like when the tables were rectangular you were more, like, co-working together, I guess?” As Grutsch McKinney, Kjesrud, and others exhort us, we ought to question whether design elements we assume to be equalizing or collaborative function that way in practice. While round tables may indeed lead to greater levels of collaboration when more than two people are involved, they may not serve one-to-one consultations—the bread-and-butter of much writing center work—nearly as well.

But did these changes to furniture and layout affect what happened in the space? While changes in reported uses were not dramatic, the data showed a few shifts pre- to post-renovation. According to surveys, student use of the space was nearly identical before and after, although while a small number of students reported “relaxing” in the space pre-renovation (2.9%), none reported doing so post-renovation. The percentage of students who reported staying in the space before or after a consultation also went down, but only slightly, from 33.8% to 29.4% (Fig. 4). Consultant space usage showed greater changes: post-renovation, a higher percentage reported using the space for “relaxing,” “meeting with other consultants,” and “writing/revising,” while the percentage using the space for reading decreased (Fig. 5). Among consultants, renovations thus sparked a shift away from the solitary activity of reading toward greater collaboration.

Taken together, these results are somewhat concerning, since casual use of the space increased for consultants but declined for students—though this decline is minimal, since so few students ever relaxed in the space at all. Regardless, that usage changed more for consultants than students invites hard questions about whom changes to the space actually serve and whose needs get prioritized in space design. The relative consistency in reported student uses of the space before and after renovations may also indicate that changes were not dramatic enough to alter how they interacted with the space. Perhaps only reimagining the space entirely rather than just improving it would truly change how students use it.

Furthermore, not every “zone” of the space functioned as intended. Both in the surveys and informally, the tall stools at the notetaking station garnered complaints from consultants post-renovation, and that area has ended up being rarely used at all. The small, enclosed room that we had intended for video consultations, however, is a different story. This room has almost never been used for that purpose; it was initially used almost exclusively for small meetings (not consultations). But it never needed to be limited to just one or two uses, and it became clear that, despite having a multipurpose zone available, both consultants and students needed education on how to use it. We ultimately re-branded this room the “Low Distraction Room,” or LDR, to be used for consultations where more privacy was desired or necessary. Students can indicate a preference for this room when requesting an appointment, and we have repeatedly encouraged consultants to offer it as an option.

What our LDR reminds us, however, is that flexibility, even when deliberately designed into the space, doesn’t always pan out as we hope. Flexibility is often identified as a desirable aspect of learning spaces (Cornell; Gee; Lee et al; Kjesrud and Helms). In our case, despite wheeled chairs alone making the renovated space far more configurable—in fact, we rearrange the room before and after every staff meeting!—there was no significant difference pre- to post-renovation on the fixed-to-flexible ratings given by either students or consultants. Communication scholar Torin Monahan’s breakdown of flexibility into five “properties”—“fluidity, versatility, convertibility, scaleability, and modifiability” (emphasis in original)— may explain why post-renovation respondents did not actually rate the space as more flexible. As Monahan writes, “Some designers might respond that the creation of flexible spaces does not guarantee flexible practices. This is where the imaginative challenge of my final attribute of flexibility comes into play. Modifiability implies a space that invites alteration and appropriation by design.” While the furniture embodied certain aspects of flexibility, its placement in fairly conventional arrangements (pairs of chairs at tables, waiting area with seating ganged together, etc.) likely did not communicate modifiability.

Similarly, we populated the center with writable and other interactive surfaces throughout, yet they rarely serve their intended purpose of engaging student visitors. In post-renovation interviews, 4 students noted these surfaces, yet none talked about actually using them. As Kelly put it, “I like the ability to draw on everything, you guys have those cubes that you can write on, or the encouraging ‘Poet-tree’ in the back there, I really like it.” When I asked if she’d contributed any poems, she laughed, said “no,” and added, “I just like seeing other people's work.” In some ways, resistance to changing one’s environment might be entirely psychologically predictable. As one example, psychology professor Robert Gifford relates the results of a 1970s study in which individuals contorted themselves repeatedly in a laboratory rather than moving furniture out of their way: “The tables came to seem magically immobile; one knew they required only a tiny amount of effort to move, yet they withstood over 238 carefully maneuvered people-passages” (7). The question of flexibility, and whether this flexibility is perceived or utilized, thus manifests in several ways. On one hand, consultants in particular made use of the space’s flexibility without consciously noting it; on the other, consultants and students at times did recognize and express appreciation for areas that could be manipulated, but without actually changing them. We should think further, then, about what modifiability looks like in writing center spaces, and how we might design more intentionally around conferring authority (Fulton), especially to students, so they will go ahead and alter our spaces to meet their needs.

Affective Dimensions of the Space

That writable surfaces were appreciated but largely unused by writers raises a key question: is a felt sense of modifiability enough to render a space invitational? What impact does the “feel” of a center have on the people who work there and who visit? While more research is needed to answer these questions satisfactorily, this study reveals the value of listening, particularly to students, about their attitudes toward writing center space. Responses from both students and consultants coalesced around 3 affective topics: clutter and associated questions of who “owns” the space, noisiness and distractions, and a desire for privacy.

While students and consultants gave a variety of responses connected to hominess, my findings confirm critiques of the “cozy home” idea are indeed merited. As Grutsch McKinney frames it, “one problem is the fact that homes are culturally marked. If a writing center is a home, whose home is it? Mine? Yours? For whom is it comfortable?” (25). Romeo García and Eric Camarillo have issued even more direct challenges to this idea’s implicit and explicit whiteness and how it thereby serves to exclude. While the ways culture and identity shape students’ and consultants’ ideas of home did not surface directly in the present study, my findings point to the very real existence of tensions around who belongs and feels they can belong in a space. Take, for example, this pre-renovation comment from consultant Anna:

Because I’ve always been really comfortable in the Writing Center, I kinda treat it like my own...space. . . . I just feel really comfortable so, I don't feel like my behavior’s any different. And maybe it should be, maybe I should be a little more professional when I’m there, as a consultant, but—I don’t know. I just feel really comfortable, and so I treat the whole space kind of like I would my home space, or a friend’s house, just any place where I feel comfortable.

Even Anna is aware that she is, perhaps, too comfortable in the space; one might wonder what this means for someone whose home did not look or feel like our pre-renovation center, or for students who might feel they are intruding into the consultants’ home—a disinviting outcome, indeed. Some consultants, such as Randall, explicitly worried that renovations would change the center’s hominess: “I like the homey feel of it, you know? I'm not sure if I can quantify that in, you know, cause I—cause I do worry that it might become too cold and—and, you know, efficient.” The idea of the writing center as cozy home and anxieties about departing from it appeared very much at play, especially among consultants pre-renovation.

The fault lines in the idea of the “homey” center become apparent, however, when we turn to clutter, a topic that came up frequently in pre-renovation surveys and interviews (I applied this code 20 times). In writing center scholarship, clutter has been positively associated with hominess: Grutsch McKinney cites Colleen Connolly et al.’s “Erika and the Fish Lamps,” noting how the authors depict the shift away from “funky,” eclectic decor as a loss, despite their acknowledgement that it was consultants, not students, who found the center less appealing once clutter was cleared away. Pre-renovation, our own center was similarly full of punny signs, stuffed animals, and other miscellany. The data I collected, however, underscores these markers are really more for consultants than students—and not even all consultants. In response to the open-ended survey question about what would make the space better for learning, 5 students specifically mentioned the messiness and/or clutter in surveys as something that needed to be addressed. Moreover, newer consultants’ negative perceptions of clutter often paralleled those expressed by students. As Louise put it in an interview,

I just feel like we have inherited a lot of clutter, I feel like there’s a lot of stuff in there that no one really knows what it’s being used for, and some of it has, like, long traditions, but I’m—I’m hoping with getting a new space, we can pare down some of the clutter . . . I’m kind of a minimalist, so like, the amount of stuff that’s in there stresses me out sometimes.

Louise was far from alone in expressing such sentiments. Given the frequent negative attitudes expressed toward the collection of “stuff,” my findings demonstrate that what some perceive as “homey” clutter is, for others, anything but. Centering the needs of both students and newer staff members can serve as a welcome corrective for the tendency to view clutter solely as inviting or an obvious marker of resistance against the homogenizing tendencies of the neoliberal university. Consultants may or may not view clutter as homey or symbolically resonant, but students are even less likely to, as the objects are unlikely to be imbued with historical significance or emotional weight for them.

Yet I also want to make clear that responses about the subjective feel of the center did not break down neatly along student/consultant lines. Pre-renovation, individuals in both groups expressed anxieties about impending changes. One student wrote in a survey, “It shouldn’t become something clinical, though, or severely isolated where I would feel like I was just another manufactured fixture in the wall”; another student said in an interview, “I do like the more informal atmosphere to it, so I guess I wouldn’t want to see something that’s too, like, clinical, or not, like, walking to a doctor’s office for an appointment, but having that kind of ability to have a[n] open and collaborative space.” These fears of a “clinical” outcome largely did not come to pass: in post-renovation interviews, 6 students and 5 consultants commented positively on the aesthetics of the space, with several deeming it “welcoming” and “comfortable.” Perhaps ironically, the only negative comment on aesthetics post-renovation came from a writer, Mei, who proposed more decorations might make the space feel more “homey.” Still, there is arguably substantial middle ground between cold, institutional space and chaotic clutter that is only homey to some.

Given how subjective these questions of the “feel” of the space are, turning back to the quantitative data helps clarify what measurable differences our renovations choices made (or didn’t). For students, there were no statistically significant differences between pre- and post-renovation ratings on any of the sliding scales. If we attempt to map where we landed in Purkey’s matrix of invitational education, however, it is worth noting the percentage of students giving the top rating on the uninviting-to-inviting scale increased from 27.9% pre-renovation to 41.2% post-renovation (Fig. 6). Even more striking are the consultant results, which did show a marginally significant difference, with very slightly more inviting ratings post-renovation (p = .071). Notably, every consultant respondent gave a 4 or 5—top ratings—post-renovation, versus a wider spread pre-renovation (Fig. 7). It is not easy to pinpoint what led to these (admittedly small) differences, given that so many changes occurred (less clutter, somewhat larger space, better window coverings that let in more natural light, more clearly zoned layout, etc.). Nevertheless, even a small increase on the uninviting-to-inviting scale suggests our de-cluttering did not result in a space that students or consultants judged as less inviting.

Implicit in these debates around clutter, hominess, and invitingness is a more basic question: whose space is it, really? As I asked consultants how they guided students through the space, an interesting split emerged around who was in charge of deciding where to sit. Pre-renovation, consultant Sue made a joking reference to “my sacred table”; similarly, Louise discussed her preference for remaining at a single table throughout her shift: “I like to take a table, and, like, stake it out for my shift, and that’s my table, and I prefer to keep it.” Conversely, in a pre-renovation interview, Anna expressed her opposition to the park-oneself-at-one-table-for-the-entire-shift approach:

No, I—I think that—[sigh]. I can understand why some people would do that, but that’s not me, because, to me, that would be like, “I’m more important than you are, so come sit by me”—no. if they have chosen to come sit by me, and I say “okay I’ll be with you in a—you know, 5 minutes, I’ll be with you at 3:30,” and they choose to sit by me, that’s fine. And then, there we are. But if they choose to sit at a different table, then, at our assigned time, I close my laptop and I go over to them, because they’re not more—I’m not more important than they are. And I think that would send the wrong kind of message.

Letting students pick where to sit versus deciding for them does set the tone around whose needs will be privileged, as Anna points out. And while Anna is the consultant who thought she might be too comfortable in the space, her actions were geared toward sharing that comfort. While responses varied from consultant to consultant, they did not change appreciably pre- to post-renovation, suggesting this is more of a common practice question than a space design one per se. Explicitly discussing invitational policies and practices that will help students feel a sense of ownership in the space—how to make best use of the space one already has—may therefore be even more important than the design.

The final cluster of results revolve around the interrelated topics of noisiness/distractions and privacy. Following Beth Boquet, noise is an often-celebrated aspect of writing centers; student participants in this study, however, had many negative things to say about it. The “noisiness/distraction” code was one of the most frequently applied in my data (44 instances), appearing 3 times as often in student responses than consultant responses. Happily, the frequency of this code decreased in the post-renovation data: 70.5% of instances occurred in pre-renovation responses. Often respondents connected noisiness to wishing the space were larger: this would give more room to spread out, making it more difficult to overhear what was going on at a nearby consulting table. Since we did gain a modicum of additional space during our renovations, the extra buffer between tables may well explain the decline in complaints about noise and distractions post-renovation.

Interestingly, concerns about privacy appeared almost as frequently as noisiness/distractions (31 instances). Again, the frequency decreased after renovation, but student writers still made a point of mentioning their desire for more privacy. In a pre-renovation interview, student Ray said, “it would be better, you know, if they have, like, private room for each, so that no one can hear what I wrote, and, like, essay paper, you know. You don’t want to, like, anyone to read my paper, except the teacher.” Post-renovation, a student commented in the survey, “it might be nice to have some space where you can talk with a consultant privately. When I went in the last time, the Writing Center was completely silent and I felt awkward being the only person in the room talking when there were others working.” These comments point to how noise and privacy issues can be linked: too noisy, and focusing is difficult. Too quiet, and one can feel exposed. Herb and Sabatino also document how staff in library-located writing centers wish for privacy, which they interpret as evidence that writing centers need differentiated spaces where writers and consultants feel comfortable making noise (“Sharing Space,” 25). I would argue, however, that because student participants in the present study requested privacy even in a standalone center, the problem may reside more with our fundamental practices than whether noise is permissible in a given writing center space. Soliciting feedback from student writers can thus invite us to question long-held ideas about our work, such as the tendency to prioritize making the writing process visible (and audible) to others regardless of student preferences.

Conclusions and Recommendations

As I began by saying, this study led me to conclude that writing center space both matters and doesn’t. To start with the latter: while the few quantitatively measurable differences suggested the renovated space did serve both student and consultant needs better overall, the “feel” of the space, when assessed via the sliding scales, was not substantially different pre- to post-renovation. Furthermore, another unintended result of this study is telling: in interviews, it was often difficult to persuade students to talk about the physical space at all. Students typically talked at greater length about how they wanted more consulting time, or they asked for more discipline-specific services, or they wished for access to more writing resources. Particularly post-renovation, when pressed, students would comment positively on the aesthetics of the space, but it comes as no surprise that the space itself matters more to people who spend more time there. This meshes with Singh-Corcoran and Emika’s conclusions that “From the student-user perspective, the center then may be more akin to a nonplace”—in other words, somewhere they pass through that is “transient, temporal, and intermediary.”

That said, we need not accept this as the only possible student orientation toward our spaces. What can we do to help students feel greater senses of ownership in the pass-through space of the writing center—to make space matter in a good way, in other words? Because spaces do shape staff and visitors’ experiences on both conscious and unconscious levels, it remains vital to emphasize making writing center spaces genuinely invitational. I offer the following guiding principles as first steps toward this goal.⁴

Zoned space, following Inman’s recommendations, works. Giving consultants their own zone to socialize helped build community among staff and eliminated student complaints about consultant socializing—an effectively disinviting phenomenon. The staff room enabled what many of us missed in 2020 and beyond: community, mentorship, casual interaction. In general, our efforts to create zones appears effective. While our setup has not been 100% used as intended—students still need guidance to use the waiting area, and the post-session note station was a bust—the space is much more legible and usable than in the past. As consultant Airlie put it in a post-renovation interview, “it’s not a confusing place, like people understand, I think, just from the way that the space appears, what it’s for.” Writing center administrators working on new spaces or renovations need a clear idea of what will happen where, or it’s a virtual guarantee that consultants and students won’t.

Strive for intentionally inviting space design, with modifiability in mind. Though increases in how inviting students and consultants perceived the center to be were small, reactions to our renovated space were consistently positive. But it is crucial to keep in mind that significant psychological barriers often prevent all members of the community from taking initiative and manipulating the space. Seeking out expert advice on how to maximize a sense of modifiability may well help create more invitational space.

In any space, staff education is indispensable for effective, invitational space use. Whether a given writing center is in a new, old, or reconfigured space, we can’t assume students and consultants know immediately how to best make use of available zones. For Purkey, the physical environment is just one of the “Five P’s” of invitational education: “People, Places, Policies, Programs and Processes” (4). Using professional development moments to discuss zone use and invitational practices with consultants and front desk staff, including the value of purposefully ceding authority by putting students in charge of where to sit, can help move any space toward being more intentionally inviting.

Listen to consultants and especially to students, and be open to design choices that may conflict with prior understandings of what works in writing centers. My unintentional finding that round tables do not always function as intended was one of the most striking pieces of evidence in the data. If rectangular tables will work better in your space, there seems to be good reason to choose them. Listening carefully to both students and consultants with open minds may lead to new or different design choices that can better serve our pedagogical goals.

The question about how to balance openness and students’ desire for privacy (and quiet) merits serious consideration. Here again we must question received ideas of how writing center space should function. For both students and consultants, noisiness was a consistently voiced concern, and it is connected to—but not synonymous with—a desire for privacy. To what extent do we want to provide options to work in quieter, more private spaces? There are many trade-offs involved. Private spaces might increase the ability of both students and consultants to focus and concentrate; they may lead to greater feelings of safety and willingness to be vulnerable, especially when discussing sensitive subject matter. In her MWCA 2021 keynote, however, Carol Severino called attention to the dominant idea of a writing center as “an aggregation of dyads”—and is this always the best model? Keeping consultant-student pairs cordoned off from each other too strictly can interfere with collaboration beyond the dyad as well as the ability for consultants to support one another, particularly in the context of difficult interactions that may feel unsafe for consultants as well as students. The tension between the desire for privacy and the benefits of visible/audible, communal work are not easy to resolve. Ultimately, we may need to give up some cherished ideas of openness and normalizing sharing writing in progress by letting others overhear in order to provide options that feel more welcoming to student visitors. I will not pretend to have all the answers, but I urge fellow directors to listen to students and take their desires for privacy seriously when working through space design.

As we return to our physical spaces and/or think about improving them, it is well worth considering how to maximize their benefits for all constituents. My findings point to ways writing center professionals should continue to question assumptions around what is considered ideal. Listening to writing center stakeholders about what they need and want is indispensable for determining priorities in our spaces. The wellbeing of staff is important, but keeping student needs firmly in mind can help avoid replicating exclusionary aspects of past “cozy homes.” As we continue to interrogate ways in which power is negotiated, wielded, and shared in our writing centers, attention to the implications of our space designs and how we use them will remain crucial in any quest toward equitable writing center work.

Acknowledgments

My sincere thanks to Nicole Green for being on the renovation journey with me and to Jasmine Kar Tang and Harry Denny for the writing group that kept me on track. Extra thanks to Jasmine for her indispensable feedback.

NOTES

There is far more scholarship on “space” as a concept than I can review here. In particular, “space” is often considered in relationship to “place,” where, in the words of geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, “if we think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause” (6). Whether writing centers function as spaces or places (or both) is a question for an interesting but quite different essay. Here, I define “space” as the physical environment of the center, which is not just a collection of objects, but is suffused with myriad political, social, and cultural layers of meaning.
My deepest gratitude to Roberta Kjesrud, who not only led me to key theoretical principles as I thought about the renovation, but also encouraged me to study it formally, generously granting me access to her research group’s Zotero collection of resources on space.
I also recorded videos of space usage in one-hour increments throughout several weeks of each semester. These data did not yield significant findings, however, so I do not discuss them here.
One caveat: these principles do assume that writing center leaders have control over their own, separate spaces; often not the case, as Sabatino and Herb make abundantly clear (“Turf Wars”).

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