Samantha Berthod           Jordan Cohen Laura Rita Feola Faye Haun Erika Mazzer Adam McMahon Sean Molloy Ky Woltering Beril Yaffe Luca Zamparini

Samantha Berthod

During the 2015-2016 academic year as a WAC Fellow at Hunter College, I had the pleasure to work with the Psychology Department with a focus on two primary goals. The first goal was to create a series of workshops designed to develop student-friendly strategies for thinking about and writing each section of a research paper. I wanted to show students how different areas of a research paper are tightly connected and complementary. In addition, I wanted to help students build on and use the writing skills they already possess by helping them to understand both the commonalities and key differences between developing a strong research-based question and writing a thesis-centered paper in another discipline. The second goal was to develop methods to assist Teaching Assistants in professional development.

I earned my B.A. in Psychology and Biology from Bucknell University in 2004 and my M.A. in Clinical Psychology from Towson University in 2007. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student at the Graduate Center (CUNY) in the Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience program. My research interests include attention-emotion interactions and identifying biological markers associated with emotion dysregulation in anxiety and mood disorders. In particular, I am interested in how pathological anxiety influences the processing of emotional stimuli and the underlying attentional control processes associated with the development and maintenance of maladaptive cognitive biases.

Jordan Cohen

The biggest and perhaps most rewarding project I took on as a WAC Fellow in the Hunter Theatre Department was the creation and implementation of a three-part in-class Research Paper Writing workshop. I presented on the process of writing a research paper, facilitated discussion, and led each class through partner and group activities to develop ideas, sharpen thesis statements, and interrogate sources. Conducting in-class workshops, where I could meet students face-to-face, and then offering private tutoring sessions proved to be an excellent model — students felt as though they were provided with comprehensive support. The sessions addressed a variety of needs, from idea/thesis development and analyzing vs. summarizing text, to incorporating evidence and using appropriate and clear grammar and diction.

I also worked with two professors to revise the internship report guidelines for students in the department. After researching these guidelines at other universities, I developed specific and comprehensive documents students can use to: 1) track/reflect on their activities on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, and 2) guide them as they craft their final internship reports. In semester two, I began work on a New Faculty Handbook with a former WAC fellow for incoming TAs and adjuncts in the department. We gathered assignment sheets, syllabi, exams, and other materials used to teach Intro to Theatre and the three World Theater classes, created appendices with supplementary tip sheets, and wrote introductions to several of the sections with some general teaching guidelines. The project is ongoing.

Jordan is a doctoral candidate in Theatre at the Graduate Center, CUNY. His research interests include modernist and avant-garde performance, theatre and national cultures, and the intersections of theatre, politics, and economics. He is a Communication Fellow at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute and an adjunct professor, both at Baruch College. Jordan also writes online reviews and feature pieces on theatre, music, and cabaret in New York City.

Laura Rita Feola

During my year as a WAC Fellow, I assisted Professors Maria Cornelio and Adrian Izquierdo from the Romance Languages Department at Hunter College with the development of the Spanish Translation program. I conducted bibliographic research on Spanish translation and stylistics, and abstracted figures from data and statistics regarding Spanish translation services in New York City. I also contacted universities across the US that offer programs, certificates and/or Spanish/English translation classes in order to gather enrollment and other information.

For the Italian Program in the Romance Languages Department, I edited students’ poetry translations from Italian to English for the Department’s translation website, www.proteo-translation.org.

During my WAC assignment I was able to finish and submit the first two chapters of my dissertation on Italian Women Writers and start researching for the penultimate chapter. I was also able to organize an event for a chartered student organization I co-chair at the CUNY Graduate Center, and prepare and conduct an interview with the Italian novelist who is the subject of the first chapter of my dissertation. ​​

Faye Haun

Faye Haun provided workshops and individual tutoring for students in the History Department, in courses from the required 100-level to the 300-level and capstone courses. Ms. Haun also met with the Acting Director of the Hunter College Office of Assessment to consult on the results of and possible improvements to the History Department’s pilot exit survey of graduating history majors.

Ms. Haun is a doctoral student in the History of Modern Europe at the Graduate Center of CUNY. 

Erika Mazzer

As a WAC Fellow, Erika Mazzer served in the Romance Languages Department at Hunter College promoting new strategies to help students in their writing process, creating workshops, offering tutoring services, and consulting with faculty on student writing issues. She has also been co-editor for the poetry in translation website of the Romance Languages Department, http://www.proteo-translation.org.

Erika Mazzer is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Comparative Literature Department (Italian Specialization) at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She earned her M.A. in Italian Studies at New York University, majoring in Renaissance Studies. Her research interests include Renaissance Studies with a special focus on Heresy and Heterodoxy in Early Modern Italy, Cultural History, and Translation Studies. She is currently writing her dissertation on Magic in the Early Modern Theatre.

Adam McMahon

For the Fall 2015-Spring 2016 academic year, I was a Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow for the Department of Political Science at Hunter College. Throughout the year I assisted students in improving their writing by providing one-on-one tutoring during drop-in hours and by appointment. Throughout the academic year I also provided writing workshops, both outside of class and in-class for faculty upon request. These workshops were developed to help students improve their theses and develop their arguments, find sources and choose topics for research assignments, and prepare for examinations. I also consulted with faculty of introductory as well as upper-level courses in Political Science on student writing issues.

Currently I am a Political Science doctoral candidate at The Graduate Center, CUNY. My research areas include American political development, American political institutions, presidential decision-making, and the defense budget. My dissertation is entitled “Unbuilding the American National Security State, 1952-2016.”

Sean Molloy

As a WAC fellow at Hunter College in the 2015-2016 academic year, I worked with the English Department, especially ENGL 120, Expository Writing, the college’s required Freshman Composition course. My most exciting WAC project was launching a peer-to-peer, adjunct teaching circle that we called the Digital Teaching Initiative (DTI). Each DTI teacher agreed to add a video component to their ENGL120 course and to collaborate as they shaped and executed those projects. With support and encouragement from the Coordinators of English 120 and the WAC Program, seven teachers joined DTI and began to develop video and audio projects for their writing courses. Our collaboration was flexible and informal, including face-to-face meetings, emails, texts, Google hangouts, a Google group, and a shared Google Docs folder.

Although we were a small peer-to-peer group of adjunct teachers and grad students, DTI had some long-term impacts at Hunter and other colleges: 1) Some of us teach at other colleges, so the DTI work is already rippling outward to those writing courses and curricula; 2) several DTI teachers presented this work at Hunter, in college-wide forums organized by the college Assessment Office, the WAC Program, and ACERT, Hunter’s faculty development program, and at least one other college; 3) we (especially Nancy Hightower) helped to shape assessment of digital writing projects at Hunter; and 4) the DTI helped lead to the creation of college-wide digital composing awards for students and digital pedagogy prizes for faculty, supported by ACERT and the Provost’s Office.

In the 2015-2016 academic year I was a fifth year Ph.D. student in the English Department, focused on Composition and Rhetoric. In the fall, I’ll join the English Department at William Paterson University.

Ky Woltering

During the Spring Semester of 2016 I served as a WAC Fellow at Hunter College, working closely with the faculty development program ACERT. Specifically, I assisted in administering and judging prizes for student digital writing and faculty digital course assignments for the first ever Day of Digital Pedagogy at Hunter (May 3rd, 2016). The awards specifically promote assignments that were published and made available online. See for example, the video of the second place winner:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4uCxzE3Y5s

My research toward my doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center concerns the relationship between American and German Protestantism after the Second World War, specifically addressing the relationship between Christianity, national identity, and democratization in occupied Germany. I am particularly interested in the evolution of the Marshall Plan in light of American Christian aid programs to German citizens during occupation, the concept of the “Christian nation” in relation to the Cold War and, using the German Protestant Church as a case study, the evolution of democracy in postwar Germany.  

Beril Yaffe

I served as the WAC fellow for the Thomas Hunter Honors Program (THHP) for the 2015-2016 academic year. My responsibilities primarily involved tutoring students with their writing assignments and assisting professors by addressing specific difficulties their students were experiencing with the writing ​process. At the beginning of each semester, I contacted the colloquia professors with an introduction of my services and in Spring 2016 attended the program orientation. Each semester I held office hours, participated in WAC Fellowship meetings, and provided feedback to students with their writing assignments via email. I worked with students on their colloquia essays, CVs, graduate school application essays, and personal statements. As my signature project as a WAC fellow, I reviewed the writing samples of incoming sophomore students who had applied and been accepted to the THHP and identified the common writing issues encountered to allow both the department and any future WAC Fellow in the position to target these issues early in the term, which in turn will provide students with tools they can use when they begin writing their colloquia papers.

Faculty members frequently dropped by during my office hours to ask questions about student writing concerns. Discussions with the faculty helped me understand their expectations in specific assignments so that I could better guide students to meet them. In the second semester, I also worked with a professor in the Biology Department, the instructor of the only writing intensive course in that department, and my tutorial services were made available to her class.

I am a doctoral student in the Psychology Department at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Luca Zamparini

Luca Zamparini led workshops in key concepts and writing issues in the Italian specialization in the college’s Romance Languages Department. He met with faculty members to collaborate on workshop design and content. He also provided on-site tutorial hours and e-tutoring services. He consulted on course design for current and proposed courses in the department’s Italian specialization.

Mr. Zamparini is a doctoral student in the Romance Languages Department at the CUNY Graduate Center; his dissertation concerns the history and politics of the Venice Film Festival.