ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a narrative of the development of the Freiburg Writing Center at the Freiburg University of Education in Germany since its foundation in 2001. The chapter further analyzes how the writing center over the last five years became a pawn in the hand of the college administration’s changing agenda. After a long period of institutional denial, the writing center finally became a stakeholder in a successful transition of students from high school to college and into the professions. Since the writing center obviously didn’t manage to change the administration’s general attitude toward writing, it didn’t come as a surprise that when a newly developed project of the writing center fell through, nothing changed. The chapter ends with concrete strategies in order to avoid the status of a “fixit shop” and to really make an impact on institutional development to the advantage of students’ successful growth as writers.
