Rosa Attali           Claudia A. Dixon Robert Kaplan Jennifer Lemberg Rachel Snow Leanne Zalewski

Rosa Attali

I am a doctoral student in the French Program at the Graduate Center and I am presently writing my dissertation, titled Martyrs and Moneylenders: Retrieving the Memory of Jewish Women in Medieval Northern France (XI-XIV centuries). For the five past years I have taught language and civilization in the French and Spanish Departments at Hunter College.

As a Writing Fellow, my assignment was to work with professor Monica Calabritto in the Romance Languages Department. In collaboration with her, I have helped students with the critical readings, the project for in-class presentation, and the research paper in Ital. 365.60 (Italian American Women Writers and Artists) and Ital. 361.40/Comp. Lit. 351.55 (The Petrarchist Tradition in Italy and Europe). On an individual basis, I have met with students regularly to provide guidance and advice during the drafting process to produce better final papers. During my second semester, in addition to assisting Professor Calabritto, I have started to work with professor Julia Przybos in the French Department. This initiative is an experimental project to try to incorporate WAC pedagogy and techniques in second language classes.

My experience during these two semesters has taught me that writing effectively enhances the learning process. I have noticed that multiple assignments, low stakes and high stakes, are excellent working tools for both the students and the professor. Diversified and meaningful writing exercises enable students to become active learners, stimulating their interest for the course material and increasing their class participation. Students' writings are also for the teacher an excellent way to detect and address problems early in the semester in order to teach course content more effectively. Overall, I have seen that intensive writing promotes collaboration in the classroom.

Claudia A. Dixon

I am a graduate student in the English Ph.D. Program at the City University of New York, and I came to the Writing Fellows Program with four years experience teaching Freshman Composition and Expository Writing.

In my two years as a Fellow, I worked with the Psychology Dept. I assisted both teachers and students, helping teachers create writing assignments and helping students to fulfill those assignments. I attended class lectures and was available to answer student questions and to tutor students individually. I also conducted workshops for students to help them develop their term papers. In addition I talked with the faculty at department meetings on the CPE requirements and suggested ways preparation for this important exam can be incorporated into course curricula.

This Writing Fellowship has given me a great opportunity as a once and future teacher to see what students continue to struggle with across the curriculum after they pass their required Freshman Composition course. It is clear that writing an informed, persuasive, and fluent college essay is not a skill that can be mastered in one semester. It must be taught over and over again in all the disciplines.

Robert Kaplan

I am a Ph.D. candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center and am currently writing a dissertation in which I argue that questions of national identity in post-Revolutionary America were often framed through textual representations of various forms of male-male relations. Prior to becoming a Writing Fellow, I taught Composition for seven years at both Hunter and at the University of Arizona; I also taught Colonial American literature and Queer Nineteenth-century American Literature. I was excited to become a Writing Fellow because I had already used many writing-to-learn techniques in my literature classes, and had seen first-hand how those techniques enabled students to become better writers and readers. Now, having spent the last two years helping faculty learn how to use those same techniques with students who are not in an English Department, I am more convinced than ever of the ways in which all students, as they become better writers, become better students.

As a Writing Fellow with the Department of Nutrition and Public Health in the School of Health Sciences, I've worked closely with the department's Community Health Education program. I've helped COMHE faculty redesign their courses to include many different types of low-stakes writing assignments, e.g., responses to readings, weekly letters, article summaries/analyses, and reading logs. COMHE faculty have also redesigned their paper assignments to include multiple drafts and peer critiquing, as well as library workshops to help students develop their information literacy skills. Additionally, I've led numerous workshops for the entire NPH faculty on how to incorporate writing as a tool for learning in the classroom, and have helped individual NPH professors re-conceptualize their undergraduate and graduate courses. I've also worked closely with students in many COMHE classes, conducting in-class workshops on various aspects of the writing process, holding weekly office hours for one-on-one tutoring, and commenting on many different types of student writing.

Of course, working with faculty who believe quite strongly in the importance of writing has been an extremely positive experience. But what has been especially illuminating for me has been to see how bringing writing into the classroom requires faculty to completely rethink their pedagogy and curricula. In addition, working closely with students who are not English majors and who are not in English classes has helped me to better understand how many of them view writing. Watching them begin to change their approaches to both writing and reading and, consequently, begin to engage with material in new ways, yet simultaneously continue to repeat certain old habits, has reinforced for me that writing, reading, and thinking are all critically interrelated skills that require many semesters of practice in many different disciplines.

Jennifer Lemberg

I am a PhD candidate in the English Program at The Graduate Center, CUNY, specializing in twentieth-century American Literature, Women's Studies, and Trauma Theory; I received my M.A. from Hunter. My dissertation topic is Missing Women: Trauma, Absence, and Identity in Contemporary American Literature. I've taught composition at John Jay College, and at Hunter I've taught English 201, 120, and 220, as well as upper level courses in 19th-century American Women Writers and Native American Literature. This is my first year as a Writing Fellow.

I have been working directly with Dennis Paoli, the Coordinator of the Reading and Writing Center (RWC) and the Co-coordinator of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC). My work has consisted of implementing WAC principles among students and faculty. In the fall of 2002, I completed a study of the visibility of WAC issues on the websites of Hunter's undergraduate departments and programs. I also surveyed a number of English faculty participating in the Block Program in order to measure the role of WAC within the program. I have run Freshman Orientation Seminars designed to introduce first-year students to the challenges and requirements of writing at Hunter, and I have also taught three workshop series for students needing to retake the CUNY Proficiency Exam (CPE). In addition, I have been part of an ongoing initiative by the RWC designed to increase awareness of WAC techniques among faculty teaching designated Significant Writing courses.

Since I received my M.A. from Hunter and also taught here, I came to my position as a Fellow with some knowledge of how writing is practiced at the college. However, in the past year I have been engaged with diverse members of the Hunter community, from entering freshmen to senior faculty. I have learned a great deal about the broad range of student and faculty concerns about writing. I have also become familiar with the benefits and the difficulties of effecting changes to the college curriculum as a whole. My most rewarding experience has been the workshops I do with small groups of students, where I am able to see improvements in their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. I look forward to utilizing my unique situation as a Fellow to continue to bring about positive changes in the writing practices of individual students and the wider college community.

Rachel Snow

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Art History at the City University of New York Graduate Center. In addition to working as a Writing Fellow in the Film and Media Department at Hunter College, I am currently writing my dissertation Incidental Tourists: Issues of Identity in Vernacular Photo-Travel Books 1880-1930. My teaching experience includes three years at Hunter College as a section leader for Stuart Ewen's Media 180 class, two years at NYU teaching a course entitled Reading Visual Images, and one year teaching a pre-college Art History course at Pratt.

During my first year as a Writing Fellow at Hunter, I worked in the Film and Media Department with Professor Greg Morris and Professor Stuart Ewen. I continue to implement WAC principles with the help of Professor Ewen and the five section leaders for his Media 180 course. As a Writing Fellow I consult with the instructors on how to conduct brief ungraded in-class writing assignments and various other techniques to encourage thinking and discussion through writing. In addition to advising the instructors, I hold several workshops for students on how to write and revise their papers and how to use writing to think through the two visual assignments they are given during the semester.

My experience as a Writing Fellow has deepened my commitment to using writing in my own teaching, not just as a way to measure the students' learning, but more importantly, as a way to encourage creative and critical thinking skills and discussion among student peers. I have also revised my grading strategies according to the principles of WAC. Now, instead of trying to correct every grammatical error, I read for ideas and prioritize my feedback, only giving the student one or two suggestions for improvement. In the past I have been reluctant to allow student to re-write papers since I felt it created too much of a burden to have to read and reread students' work. Now, with these new grading strategies I am able to comment more quickly and effectively on students' work and encourage students to turn in multiple drafts before the paper is due, requiring re-writes when I feel that it will benefit the student. The skills I have learned (and am still learning) as a Writing Fellow have given me pedagogical tools to help students improve their writing and clarify their thinking, so that with practice and time, writing can become a powerful tool in their personal and professional lives.

Leanne Zalewski

After receiving my teaching certificate in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and teaching beginning, intermediate, and advanced ESL classes, I entered the Ph.D. program in Art History at the Graduate Center. I continued teaching ESL on and off up until Fall 2001. I have recently completed my coursework at the Graduate Center and will begin writing my dissertation in the field of late nineteenth-century European academic painting.

Currently, I am a Writing Fellow in the Department of Art at Hunter College working primarily with Prof. Ülkü Bates and the TAs and students of the Introduction to Art History course. For the TAs, I make suggestions for ungraded writing-to-learn assignments, create handouts, and streamline paper assignments. Periodically, I sit in on discussion sections to address issues specific to a class. For the students, I lead various writing workshops that coincide with the paper assignments and exams given in the course. In addition, I hold regular office hours for students and tutor on a one-on-one basis, focusing on the content and organization of the students' papers. During the Fall 2002 semester, I also tutored students in Prof. Bates' Chinese and Japanese Art course. For Prof. Jane Roos' course on Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, I worked with the students on a tutoring basis, and in the Spring semester (2003), I worked with the students on a draft process. In this way, the writing process was expanded over a period of three weeks, giving the students a chance to improve their papers before receiving final grades.

Involvement in the Writing Across the Curriculum movement is a win-win-win-win situation. CUNY wins because it is getting a valuable service in return for its fellowship dollars; the students win because fellows are able to assist them with their writing and learning; the teachers win because fellows are working with them side-by-side to develop ways to help their students grasp material; and the CUNY Writing Fellow wins, because he or she is not only receiving valuable financial support, but is also focusing on pedagogy, which, in turn, will improve the CWF's future teaching. If it weren't for this program, for example, I wouldn't be reading John Bean and Peter Elbow. I can't wait to implement some of my own suggestions!