ABSTRACT
It is getting easier to cite reasons why more and more educational institutions are investing so much money in technology. A headline in The New York Times (1995) reading “Connecting Every Pupil to the World” tells us that computer access and Internet connections have achieved dramatic results for inner-city, at-risk students (p. A14). President Clinton urges us to let technology whisk us into the 21st century on Internet II. In higher education, we hear that state-of-the-art computer facilities are valuable selling points in student (and faculty) recruitment efforts, and we recognize that basic computer literacy is essential for students’ professional development and workplace preparation. We hear more ominous claims, too, about the “inevitable, irreversible, and unpredictable” nature of this technological transformation (Gilbert, 1996, p. 58), and we hear barely veiled threats from proponents of online universities that “if the [traditional] universities do not reform quickly, they will decline into irrelevance” (Pelton, 1996, p. 17). But how do these plans and predictions for the future affect writing centers? Writing centers are often not included in statements about “the University”; they are more likely to be left out of planning meetings than, say, athletic departments, and they are not typically included in mission statements that describe the university’s goals.
