When people ask me why I enjoy my job so much, I say, "Well, that's easy; it's because I get to work in the center, where all the action is." There can be no question that the Plangere Writing Center is where the action is. With the addition of the Plangere Annex, the Center is now large enough to accommodate the undergraduate demand for help with writing. The Plangere Annex has also provided the department with a center where the faculty can meet--a place where we can host workshops, talks by guest lecturers, and daylong conferences. The energy that radiates from the center is palpable.

Looking back on how much the center has changed over the past five years and taking into account the ambitions of the many students, staff members, faculty, and administrators share my commitment to the center, the one thing I can say with confidence is that the next five years promise to be as full of unexpected discoveries and surprises as the first five have been. The interest in student writing, which the Plangere endowment secured, has had a ripple effect, reenergizing the local effort to provide more opportunities for undergraduates to take elective upper-level writing courses of all kinds at Rutgers: advanced creative writing, grant writing, screen writing, web design, documentary film, nature writing, creative nonfiction. In this newly supportive environment, the idea for a Writers House emerged and is now being realized just three floors below the Plangere Writing Center. And other plans are in the early stages for a Digital Humanities Center, plans that trace their roots back to the core commitment of the Plangere Writing Center, which is to prepare our students for future success in a world where the very nature of communication is being transformed.

In the midst of all this activity, the Plangere Writing Center is the hub. It is, to borrow from Dylan Thomas, "the force that through the green fuse drives the flower."

Richard E. Miller
Executive Director
Plangere Writing Center