Kelly Aliano          John Blanton Geoff Burrows Hai Na Dan McCool Sara Rutkowski

Kelly Aliano

As a Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow, I was appointed to both the Theatre Department and the Thomas Hunter Honors Program. For both departments, I offered both student and faculty support. I held open office hours for students in both departments, offering tutoring on a wide range of writing-related topics. I also gave workshops on topics ranging from beginning research to advanced thesis development to discipline-specific topics, like writing theatre reviews. For faculty, I provided one-on-one guidance regarding syllabi and assignment design, as well as grading/assessment techniques. For the Theatre Department, I created an archive of Introduction to Theatre teaching materials on the CUNY Academic Commons after consultation with current instructors of the course. Finally, for the THHP, I participated in both semesters' Sophomore Interview process, reading and assessing each accepted student's writing sample, as part of an ongoing programmatic writing assessment.

John Blanton

The bulk of my service as a WAC Fellow this term was spent assisting in the design of a departmental writing assessment for all sections of Experimental Psychology (PSYCH 250) in consultation with Experimental Psychology Coordinator Bryan Dowling and the Psychology Department Assessment Committee. This assessment is intended to establish baseline data on student writing in the Psychology Department to guide future departmental assessments and to foster further collaboration with the WAC program. The goal of this assessment is to identify current strengths and possible areas for future faculty development and student intervention. I believe this assessment will be an invaluable step toward further integrating WAC principles into Psychology Department pedagogy. The results of this assessment will help faculty and future WAC Fellows more effectively identify and address specific issues common across PSYCH 250 sections. I also hope that the preparatory workshops “Responding to Student Writing” and “Norming Student Essays” (to be conducted in early June) will help further introduce Psychology Department faculty to WAC principles and practices, opening up further dialogue between faculty and WAC Fellows.

WAC practices have also had a profound influence on my own teaching practice. This term, I put particular emphasis on collaborative peer review, building a number of peer critique sessions into my course. I also emphasized the drafting and revision process with my students, requiring submission of drafts for the first two writing assignments in the term, and used minimal marking techniques and focused critiques to guide student revision. I have seen these techniques bear fruit in my own classes — the quality of finished papers has increased substantially, and I have seen individual students grow as writers and thinkers over the course of the term.

Geoff Burrows

There were three primary and interrelated aspects to my time as the Hunter College History department WAC Fellow during 2012-2013: preparing and conducting in-class workshops, student tutoring, and developing a student writing guide designed to benefit all students in the History department—from non-majors in writing intensive sections of History 151 and History 152 to upper division History majors embarking on their capstone projects.

As the WAC Fellow, I worked closely with full-time and part-time faculty to design and conduct a variety of in-class writing workshops, including: analysis of primary documents; critical reading skills; placing material in broader historical context; thesis development; writing clear and concise introductions and conclusions; asking historical questions; finding external sources; using Chicago Style citations; and writing scholarly book reviews. These workshops introduced me to hundreds of students, many of whom came to see me during office hours to discuss their writing projects in History classes. As the History faculty, on the whole, assign essays and term papers that are engaging and challenging for the students (for example, short essay assignments that ask students to critically analyze, summarize, and compare primary documents), the tasks covered in the in-class workshops formed the basis of a common language between myself and the students. In addition, the workshops and tutoring both informed the writing and editing of a Student Guide for Writing About History that was designed to cover the introductory topics of historical methodology, primary and secondary sources, quoting and paraphrasing, and using Chicago Style 16th edition citations. A work in progress, I hope that the guide will expand to meet future needs of the department and will be viewed as a collaborative project between myself, History department faculty, and future WAC fellows.

Hai Na

Hai Na is pursuing a Ph.D. in English and plans, upon receiving his degree, to teach at the university level in China. As a WAC Fellow, he led workshops for students in Hunter College English courses and participated in Fellows meetings.

Dan McCool

A Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, Dan McCool, in his service as a Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow to Hunter’s Political Science department, provided faculty consultation on seminar planning, assignment design, and writing assessment; workshops for students in Thesis Development, Writing Exam Essays, and Quoting and Paraphrasing; and individual tutorials with students from a number of the department’s courses at several levels. He has incorporated process-oriented WAC principles into his own pedagogy, and looks forward to being a WAC practitioner in his teaching career.

Sara Rutkowski

The Writing Across the Curriculum Fellowship afforded me the unique opportunity to meet regularly with graduate students/instructors from other disciplines to discuss both practical and theoretical issues surrounding teaching college-level courses. I felt these weekly meetings anchored the fellowship and certainly helped to inform the other work I completed throughout the school year. Overall, I prepared and conducted five writing workshops aimed at guiding students in composition (English 120) and literature (English 220) through the process of developing an argument, building evidence of support, and organizing academic papers. In one such workshop, I collaborated with another writing fellow to specifically address the needs of ESL students. These workshops were generally very well attended, thanks to the instructors who encouraged students to seek the extra help. As a follow-up to these sessions, I corresponded with students and put them in touch with writing tutors. I also visited several classrooms where I conducted similar workshops, with the goal of reinforcing the main principles their instructors had introduced.

During the Spring semester, I began work on a lexicon relevant to students of literature. Under the guidance of the English 220 Coordinator Mark Bobrow, I collected several dozen key terms from instructors and began compiling definitions and examples. Still a work in progress, the project will ultimately provide a central online resource to support the Introduction to Literature curriculum. We hope to make it available for instructors this Fall, 2013.