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THE WRITING CENTER AT TEXAS A&M-COMMERCE has been around, in one form or another, for more than thirty years. Think about it. In 1970, when first-year composition teachers at what was then called East Texas State University (ETSU) created the earliest version of our writing center (Moseley 32), composition studies as a discipline was just getting started. A few years later, when Lil Brannon and Jeanette Harris finished transforming this informal learning space into a full-fledged writing center, places like Purdue University had only begun establishing their own writing centers. That means our writing center pre-dates many of the same places that have gone on to become the most significant writing centers in the country directed by some of the most important scholars in the writing center community. Our very own Ann Moseley, Richard Tuerk, and Jon Jonz directed the Communication Skills Center here at a time when Muriel Harris—now the most ubiquitous and revered name in the writing center community—was just another new administrator with an up-start writing center.

Writing center work is not new. In fact, a version of the modern writing center may have sprung into existence more than 125 years ago— about the same time composition became a required course in American colleges and universities. However, most agree that the individualized, process-based pedagogies that drive contemporary writing center work came about in the 1970s. Thus, the TAMU-Commerce writing center existed in beginning, making significant contributions to the writing center community in general and our own institutional history in particular.

From 1970-1977, the Communication Skills Center was a rather informal enterprise. However, in 1977, Lil Brannon and Jeannette Harris made it "official"--when they were graduate students in our doctoral program and before they went on to win national reputations as composition scholars. The new "official" Communication Skills Center developed into two separate but deeply-related learning spaces: (1) the Writing Center, coordinated by Lil Brannon, and (2) the Reading Center, which was first coordinated by our Ann Moseley. The director of the newly-formed "Communication Skills Center": Dr. Richard Tuerk! Right away, Drs. Harris and Moseley begin to see the close connections between reading and writing, and these connections continue to shape aspects of the philosophy guiding our current Basic Writing Program. Over the years, they have continued to collaborate, publishing several popular textbooks for basic writing courses across the nation.

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1978-79: A national search brought Dr. Jon Jonz in as Director of the CSC, Jeanette Harris continued as Supervisor of the Writing Center, and Cynthia Setchel as Supervisor of the Reading Center.

1982: Dr. Harris left to take a position at Texas Tech University, Dr. Glenna Howell, who had been hired to supervise developmental reading courses, was made Director of the Reading Center, and Dr. Moseley became the Director of the Writing Center.

1983: Dr. Jonz resigned as CSC Director to devote his time to teaching and research, and Drs. Howell and Moseley became co-directors.

1985-89: A lack of funding forced the Reading Center to close and remain closed until 1989.

1989: Renewed, statewide interest in developmental education generated by the new high-stakes, state-mandated test the Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP), the Reading Center was reopened for the fall of 1989 with Dr. Liz Buckley as supervisor.

1990: Dr. Moseley resigned to go into full-time teaching, and Dr. Buckley took her place as Director.

In 1989, the State of Texas forced all Texas State colleges and universities to rework their writing centers and basic writing programs in ways few of us could have anticipated and even fewer desired. The "TASP Law," passed in 1989, required any student planning to attend a Texas State college or university to take and pass the Texas Academic Skills Program (TASP Test) before they could be fully admitted. TASP (now THEA) includes three sections, one tests "Reading" through a series of short, unrelated passages followed by multiple-choice questions, another tests "Writing" via a timed writing sample (a pro/con response to a short prompt) and multiple-choice questions on usage and grammar, and a third tests "Math." From 1989 until just last year when the law was repealed by SB 286, TASP Law required all students failing any section of this skills-based test to receive some sort of "remediation" until they did (Lile, "Texas Success Initiative Replaces TASP") . Working from the conceptual framework that as determined by this Test, such students "were not ready for college-level work"--as one staff member of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board put it--TASP Law did not allow Texas State colleges and universities to offer credit for these remediation programs.

Since writing centers and basic writing programs are often places generating no college credit, such places were thus confirmed as the institutional "home" on many Texas campus for writers with nonstandard ways of knowing and communicating. These writing centers and basic writing programs were thus charged with changing these non-mainstream writers in ways that mimic institutional standards--a change no longer required "simply" by institutional mandate but Texas law. In many ways, TASP Law demanded that writing centers in Texas State schools reinforce institutional norms by shaping writers who failed TASP into writers who conform to the norms of the academy. Why? Because until these students passed all three sections of this skills-based test, they could not take any upper-level college courses at any public university or college in Texas, and they had to continue in some form of non-credit bearing "remediation" until they were able to pass TASP in its entirely.

In truth, TASP may have actually been a mixed blessing for Texas writing centers and basic writing programs. Though in many ways decisions like the TASP Law confirm the marginalized status of our programs by further identifying these learning spaces as places where students can learn to behave and communicate in ways the dominant social order will recognize, value, and accept (a necessarily service capacity), the law itself also composed these learning spaces as vital. In doing so, the same law many of us challenge as unethical and inadequate forced nay-sayers to recognize the importance of literacy education. The greatest benefit of TASP for writing centers and basic writing programs across the State: it all but guaranteed funding and support for these non-mainstream students because though any one of our State colleges and universities could deny admittance to these students by some other gate-keeping measure (other placement tests, incoming grade point average, etc.), the law required us to have some sort of support system in place for these students we do admit but who, for whatever reason, do not do well on the TASP.