Strategic Plan for Meijer Center for Writing & Michigan Authors
Strategic Plan for Meijer Center for Writing & Michigan Authors
Context For Planning
The Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors is an open-door
student service that provides composition support to all students,
staff, and faculty at Grand Valley State University.
Mission
Through peer mentorship, the Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan
Authors provides a safe space for analytical dialogue, wherein writers
develop strategies and skills for building awareness of and confidence
in, their own writing process.
Vision
We view Grand Valley as a community of writers, all with their own
writing processes, purposes, and goals. The center should enable
students, faculty, and staff to achieve their writing goals as they
learn to participate in our campus community as well as in larger
academic, professional, and global contexts.
Value Statement
The Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors is founded on
the principle that writing is a social act and that a writers
peers whether undergraduate, graduate, or faculty/staff
can, with proper training and support, provide a writer with valuable
writing assistance. Therefore, we value:
1. Process
Just as Grand Valley strives for excellence, the Writing Center
values time and space for writers to practice the writing process;
we believe this perspective is essential to a writers
confidence and personal success in writing. We train our writing
consultants, therefore, with the skills and knowledge necessary to
approach writing from a process-oriented mindset so as to pass that
perspective on to other writers and fellow thinkers. Through this
value, The Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors hopes
to be an instrumental resource for our clients to become more
intentional writers.
2. Dignity
The Writing Center greatly values the dignity of all who enter
our space, use our services, and/or work for our center. We aim to
not only respect the dignity of others, but also promote and nurture
the dignity that may yet be acknowledged in an individual. By
valuing dignity, we hope to maintain the integrity of writers, their
peers, and their sources of expert perspective (i.e. academic
citations, formatting, and audience expectations). Our writing
consultants, therefore, are trained to embody the liberal education
components of dialogue and collaboration, which require empathy,
constructive positive feedback, and respect toward the writer and
their identified needs and goals. By aligning ourselves with this
desired framework, it is essential that the Writing Center stay
grounded in this value of dignity, wherein we become a part of a
writers process of building confidence, ability, and identity.
3. Curiosity
The Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors aims to
create a safe environment for the free exchange of ideas. We ground
much of our consulting work not only in theory, research, and the
fields best practices, but also in curiosity, inquiry, and
critical thinking. We ask that our consultants learn respectful
strategies for supporting writers in their quest for new knowledge.
We take on the responsibility to support writers in their
acquisition of descriptive, declarative, and procedural knowledge;
therefore, we promote active and engaged curiosity at all levels of
the writing process for consultants and authors.
4. Inclusiveness
The Writing Center aligns itself with Grand Valley in valuing all
identities, perspectives, and backgrounds and aims to create a safe
and inclusive environment for everyone who enters. We employ
students from multiple disciplines, language backgrounds,
educational experiences, and personal cultures not only for
the purposes of supporting the interdisciplinary nature of writing,
but also to promote and grow an inclusive and diverse community of
writers, thinkers, and members.
5. Community
In the same way that we aim for inclusiveness, the Writing Center
actively promotes community in all aspects of our work
community in an individualized consultation, community at our
locations, community online, and collaborative communities on
campus. At the university level, the Writing Center functions as a
intellectual contact zone, where students can discuss, challenge,
and respond to feedback from trained peer consultants. By creating a
space where all writers are encouraged to engage with their peers,
the Writing Center champions creating communities on local and
global scales. One of the essential features to building community
is empathy, which includes an attention to listening, judgment free
consulting styles, adaptable strategies and practices, and awareness
and acknowledgement of ones personal and subjective biases.
Through empathy, the Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan
Authors aims to build a healthy community full of independent,
active thinkers with the drive to promote the love of writing beyond
our physical spaces.
6. Empowerment
The Fred Meijer Center for Writing and Michigan Authors considers
power to be an instrumental feature in ones belief of their
own capacity to approach, complete, and succeed in any writing
project; therefore, the Writing Center values our role in the
empowerment of emerging, practiced, or expert writers. Through our
pedagogically sound consulting techniques, consultants provide
writers with the time and space to celebrate success, identify
concerns, develop helpful strategies, and grow a personalized voice
and style so as to continue the writing process beyond the walls of
the Writing Center. We make it our mission to be a supportive place
and service for writers, who want or need to acknowledge and grow
their own agency over any writing project or future writing goal.
7. Adaptability
Through our innovative collaborative efforts and our critical
awareness of our clients needs, the Writing Center hopes to
pin adaptability at the forefront of our mission and of our daily
work. Not only do we orient every individual consultation toward
each writers own specific needs and goals, we focus on
adapting our training, practices, and services to the constant
evolving qualities and identities of our clients. Additionally, we
aim to adapt to changing technology needs, student expectations, and
evolving university goals. The Writing Center offers multiple
avenues of writing support to serve the campus community, which
include face-to-face consultations, online consultations, group
consultations, classroom support, electronic resources, and multiple
locations at our various GVSU campuses.
Strategic Priorities, outcomes, and key objectives
Strategic Priority Area 1: Actively engage learners at all levels.
Outcome A: Grand Valley's learning environment is personal, challenging, and transformational, supporting excellent academic programs and co-curricular opportunities.
Outcome B: Grand Valley is diverse and inclusive.
Outcome C: Grand Valley has mutually beneficial relationships, partnerships, collaborations, and connections with local, state, national, and world communities.
Outcome D: Grand Valley supports innovative teaching, learning, integrative scholarly and creative activity, and the use of new technologies.
Strategic Priority Area 2: Further develop exceptional personnel.
Outcome A: Grand Valley's learning environment is personal, challenging, and transformational, supporting excellent academic programs and co-curricular opportunities.
Outcome B: Grand Valley is diverse and inclusive.
Strategic Priority Area 3: Ensure the alignment of institutional structures and functions.
Outcome E: Grand Valley strategically allocates its fiscal, human, and other institutional resources.
Strategic Priority Area 4: Enhance the institution's image and reputation.
Outcome A: Grand Valley's learning environment is personal, challenging, and transformational, supporting excellent academic programs and co-curricular opportunities.
Outcome B: Grand Valley is diverse and inclusive.
Outcome C: Grand Valley has mutually beneficial relationships, partnerships, collaborations, and connections with local, state, national, and world communities.
Outcome D: Grand Valley supports innovative teaching, learning, integrative scholarly and creative activity, and the use of new technologies.
