When the Center for the Writing Arts moves into an addition to Kresge Centennial Hall in 2003, it will lose the familiar space it now inhabits but will gain better access to students and other Northwestern departments, members of the center’s faculty said Thursday.
The center, currently at 627 Dartmouth Place and not administered by any of NU’s six undergraduate schools, has offered courses for students from a list of distinguished lecturers since it opened in 1994. That list has included authors such as U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky and award-winning author Richard Ford, Asst. Director Kathe Marshall said.
News of the move came as a surprise last year to the center’s faculty, but Marshall said it will be for the best.
“We’ll be much closer to our constituency, to our students and our faculty,” said Marshall, who has been with the center for six years. “I would certainly love to be more able to reach as many students as possible.”
The move to South Campus will make the center closer to the literature departments. Center Director Kenneth Seeskin said that as of now, however, the center has no plans to expand its programs.
Medill Prof. George HarMonday, who has been working with the center for about five years, said the center’s current location, just northwest of the Vandy Christie Tennis Center on Sheridan Road, is out of the way for most of NU’s student “foot traffic.”
“You wouldn’t know it was there unless someone told you,” Harmon said.
Despite the location, extensive publicity has generated as many as 70 applications for courses with only 15 seats, Marshall said.
“We’ve done everything but have me walk around in a sandwich board to publicize these courses,” she said. “And if that’s what it took, I would do it.”
In fact, faculty at the center did not mind the current location and had not even asked for a move to South Campus, Marshall said. But Weinberg Dean Eric Sundquist thought move would be for the best, she said.
The addition to Kresge will bring the center to a more central location together with NU’s other humanities departments, Weinberg Director of Development Matt TerMolen said last week.
Students who utilize the center say the move will be a positive one, especially since — despite the center’s marketing efforts — they often have trouble locating the center.
Medill junior Becky Meiser found out about a course the center offered during her freshman year when she received a flier in her mailbox in Fisk Hall. After taking that course with fiction writer Rosellen Brown, Meiser began receiving e-mails from the center and took another writing course, with Writer-in-Residence Alex Kotlowitz, her sophomore year.
“A lot of people didn’t know this place existed,” Meiser said. “I didn’t know where Dartmouth Place was. I had to ask people about it.”
Jackie Goldberg, who took a two-quarter freshman seminar offered by the center last year, said she was unaware of the center’s location.
“I’ve never actually been there,” said Goldberg, a Weinberg sophomore. “And I’m a pretty average NU student. I don’t think many people doing English know about it.”
Although the overall change will be good, Marshall said she will miss the atmosphere of the house on Dartmouth Place and will work hard to create the same atmosphere in the Kresge addition rooms.
“I wish I could move the configuration of space we have here,” Marshall said. “I think an old house lends itself well to what we do.”
