Stephanie M. Anderson          Edwin Demper Laura Di Bianco Tina Mathew Josh Schneiderman Vanessa Weller

Stephanie M. Anderson

During the 2011-2012 academic year, I worked with faculty and students in the Political Science Department. My efforts primarily focused on providing workshops for the POLS110 course and students writing their honors theses. For the POLS110 course, I created presentations and handouts on reading and writing essay responses and taking essay exams, while my work with honors thesis writing emphasized the importance of topic development and peer review, in addition to providing support for students throughout the writing process. I also provided consultation to department faculty and TAs on assignment design and assessment as well as one-on-one tutoring to students on a variety of writing issues.

I am a PhD Candidate in Social Personality Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. My dissertation examines constructions of gender and sexuality within gay-identified sport.

Edwin Demper

During the 2011-2012 school year, I was the WAC Fellow attached to freshman composition, English 120, at Hunter. I worked closely with supervisors, faculty, and students involved in the course. In addition, I worked closely with the WAC Fellow attached to the Introduction to Literature course (English 220) in an effort to more closely connect core content of the two courses.

As the WAC Fellow, I would make myself available to be invited into classes on request to deliver workshops on common writing issues. In addition, I would be available for consultation with individual students, and for questions from (new) faculty.

For the integration of English 120 and 220, I worked closely with the writing fellow for the latter course to develop a series of workshops addressing a variety of issues. Together, we developed content and presented it in 6 workshops over the course of the semester. The cooperation showed us ways in which to emphasize the similarity and continuity between the two courses, which should prove extremely valuable in light of impending changes to these courses.

As a WAC Fellow, I learned a great deal about teaching, cross-curricular concerns, and the challenges and opportunities inherent in both. The experience was invaluable in a professional sense, and very gratifying in a personal sense as my colleagues and coordinators were a joy to work and meet with. The only real regret is that there isn't another year to put what we've learned to use!

Laura Di Bianco

Laura Di Bianco is a PhD candidate at the Graduate Center, in the department of Comparative Literature, Italian Specialization. Her research focuses on Italian cinema, particularly on Italian Women Filmmakers and their representation of urban space. During the academic year 2011-2012, she served as WAC Fellow in the departments of Romance Languages and Film and Media Studies.

She collaborated with faculty members in Romance Languages, working on course development and designing syllabi incorporating the study of literature and film. Ms. Di Bianco offered a variety of workshops to help students develop a critical approach to film adaptations. These workshops encouraged students to reflect on the process of writing on different media, such as cinema, while building specific cinematic vocabulary. She also designed writing activities for practical film analysis and offered workshops in classes taught in English as well as in classes for students majoring in Italian studies.

In the Film and Media Studies Department, she offered individual and small group tutorial services, assisting students with written assignments requiring practical film and television analysis. She particularly supported ESL students, helping them develop reading strategies, discuss paper topics, research secondary sources, shape their theses and edit their papers.

Tina Mathew

Tina Mathew served as the Writing Across the Curriculum Fellow in the Psychology Department for the Fall 2011-Spring 2012 academic year. It was a great educational experience as she gained insight into curriculum development and course modeling with regards to Psych 250 (General Experimental Psychology). The art of precise communication via writing is a critical skill in the scientific community, because it is through the dissemination of current research findings that investigators can conceive of new research questions and therefore continue to expand our scientific knowledge.

In an effort to better equip our Psychology students with this essential skill, Ms. Mathew met regularly with Bryan Dowling, a seasoned Psych 250 instructor, to design a Psych 250 handbook as well as scientific reading and writing workshops. The Psych 250 handbook was created to foster greater uniformity and structure across the many sections of this course and to serve as a guide for new instructors. The reading and writing workshops help students build fundamental scientific reading and writing skills that will ease their transition between English 120 writing and Psych 250 writing.

Ms. Mathew is a Ph.D. Candidate in Molecular Neuroendocrinology at Hunter College. She is investigating the anti-inflammatory effects of estrogen, which has a translational application to the field of hormone replacement therapy. Serving as a Writing Fellow has greatly encouraged her to make progress in writing her own dissertation. Ms. Mathew is interested in pursuing a career as a regulatory professional in the healthcare industry who facilitates communication between pharmaceutical companies, lawmakers, and consumers in the development of drugs from the lab bench to the patient's bedside.

Josh Schneiderman

As the WAC Fellow for both the Thomas Hunter Honors Program and the English 220 course, Introduction to Literature, I served in a of number administrative and curricular design roles. For the Honors College, I supported student writing by offering writing workshops and opening my office hours to THHP students in need of help with writing. I most often found myself consulting with students on graduate school applications, helping them to develop and polish statements of purpose and writing samples. In addition, I evaluated the writing samples of all incoming THHP students.

My support of the English 220 course came mainly in the form of faculty and curricular development. I assisted 220 instructors, many of whom were first-year teachers, with various aspects of pedagogy and course design, and I supplemented their teaching with in-class writing workshops. But the most important work I did as a WAC Fellow related to the redesign of 220 into a more writing-intensive course. With Edwin Demper (the WAC Fellow for English 120), I developed a series of workshops designed to address writing issues common to both 120 (Freshman Composition) and 220. The workshops were open to all 120 and 220 students, and this collaboration with Edwin informed my work in integrating a research-paper unit into 220. I developed materials on working with primary and secondary sources that will be used by future WAC Fellows and 220 instructors.

My graduate work focuses on postwar American literature, and my dissertation is on the media ecology of Cold War poetry.

Vanessa Weller

I am a doctoral candidate in American History, focusing on the history of American medicine and public health, and my dissertation is on the medicalization of stress. Having majored in History at Hunter College and since taught American History classes at Hunter as an adjunct, I am particularly grateful to have had the opportunity to work closely with Hunter History students and faculty to help improve the quality of students' writing. As a WAC Fellow for the History Department, I collaborated with faculty in developing writing assignments and grading criteria, and in designing in-class workshops to develop specific writing skills to help students perform well on major course assignments. I also conducted a series of departmental group workshops, and met with students privately during office hours to address their writing and study concerns. I created a writing forum on Blackboard for the History Department faculty to access materials that I developed to support their students' writing, such as handouts on composition, thesis development, source evaluation, research and study skills, as well as grading rubrics, writing assignments, and sample syllabi.