Mentors
Our mentors for the 2017 Workshop offered to undergraduate researchers the following areas of expertise. This information was provided to undergraduate researchers, allowing them to seek out the “just-in-time” support that they needed:
Naylor Workshop 2017: Mentor Information for Just-in-time Consultations
Rebecca Babcock
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Archival research
Research Statement: My main interest is in meta research which is research about research. With co-author Terese Thonus I published _Researching the Writing Center_ which looks at research from a broad perspective. With co-authors Kellye Manning and Travis Rogers I published _A Synthesis of Qualitative Studies of Writing Centers, 1983-2006_ which also gives a broad view of the research that's out there. My dissertation was on tutoring deaf students in the writing center which I studied using qualitative methods and grounded theory. Most recently I have a book coming out on disabilities in the writing center. I also published a chapter in _Tutoring Second Language Writers_ on "Designing a Research Study." I have mentored undergraduate researchers on topics such as the research paper, writing fellow programs, texting, and graphic novels to name a few. In addition to writing studies, I have also mentored undergraduates on projects to do with linguistics and rhetoric.
Kim Ballard
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Centers
Research Statement: I've been involved with writing centers for nearly 30 years, having served in high school, community college, and university centers. My most recent work involves writing center assessment, genre studies, and threshold concepts in writing development. As a co-editor of the WLN: A Writing Center Journal, I've had the opportunity to help scholars, including undergraduates, develop their work for publication.
Noel Holton Brathwaite
Area of Expertise/Consultation: First-year writing pedagogy
Research Statement: I am interested in how reading creates strong writers. I, along with many other educators, have noticed the link between students who are avid readers and their relative clarity and control when composing their ideas in print. However, there is a dearth of information about what exactly accounts for the connection between reading and writing. Why is it that students who dislike and avoid reading often struggle with writing? I am currently looking for answers to this question via qualitative research in my own composition classroom.
Nikki Caswell
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Centers, emotion/affect, queer studies
Research Statement: My research considers the role of emotion/affect in various writing studies sites. How do we understand and reflect on our emotions in ways that helps us be better teachers, writers, and administrators. I've looked at the ways new writing center directors navigate emotional labor, and I've looked at how emotions mediate teachers' responses to student writing. To do this work, I use an empirical qualitative framework. I've done longitudinal interviews, focus groups, think-aloud protocols, and surveys.
Katherine Cottle
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Archival research, discourse analysis
Research Statement: "Digging" describes the bulk of my research work and interests. I am interested in pushing the lines of connection in research to include parallels between academic fields, historical time frames, popular and private figures, language usage and forms, and creative expression. I use a mixture of scholarly and non-scholarly lenses and methods to uncover lost or neglected material and routes, including archival research, genealogy, historical influence, and identity frameworks. Some of my published essays include "Port of Entry: Secret Correspondence by Frederick Douglass to his Fiance, Anna Murray (Douglass)" (Critical Insights/Salem Press) and "Baltimore's Hidden Communication: (Un)written Words by Harriet Tubman and Eleanor Roosevelt and her Journalist, Lorena Hickok" (Popular Culture Review).
Cindy Crimmins
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Center administration, online learning
Research Statement: My over-arching inquiry is how can we improve teaching and learning in higher education. For over 30 years, I've taught writing at all levels in both secondary and higher education. For 20 of those years, I directed tutoring programs and writing centers. Recently, I've focused on connecting learning outcomes assessment findings and faculty development programming, as well as consulted with a variety of institutions who want to use evidence to inform improved student learning initiatives. The most recent turn my work has taken is to advance High Impact Practices at my institution -- including Undergraduate Research! My research methods are primarily qualitative: searching for correlations from surveys, interviews, artifact analysis, focus group data, and coding from observations. It will be my privilege to work with student researchers in any ways they find useful.
Gabriel Cutrufello
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Archival Research, History of Science
Research Statement: Gabe’s interests include archival research, the history of science, first-year writing, and writing program administration. He has also done work in General Education.
Jenn Fishman
Area of Expertise/Consultation: First-Year writing, undergraduate research, feminist research
Research Statement: To date, Jenn Fishman has been involved in 3 multi-year studies of college writing, including (most recently) Kenyon Writes. She writes about those projects as well as performance, intellectual property, and mentoring. She's the founding editor of the Research Exchange Index, a database for writing researchers, and she has edited watershed issues of 2 online journals: CCC Online (2012) and, with Jess Enoch, Peitho 18.1 (Fall/Winter 2015). Currently, she is working on the Undergraduate Research Impact Project with Jane Greer and Dominic DelliCarpini while serving as the Immediate Past President of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, Co-Chair of the CCCC Committee on Undergraduate Research, and Director of Marquette's First-Year English Program.
Bill Fitzgerald
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Community literacy
Research Statement: I work primarily in the rhetoric of religion and spirituality but I have broad interests in teaching professional writing, assessment, effective research at the undergraduate level, and ethnography. I teach at Rutgers University-Camden, where I currently direct the Writing Program and oversee our innovative Writing and Design Lab. I am co-author of The Craft of Research, 4th edition (2016) and other guides to writing research-based papers.
Angela Glotfelter
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Community-based research
Research Statement: My research interests are based broadly in Professional and Technical Communication (PTC), a part of the field that is also often called Professional Writing (PW). One of the most exciting things about this area of research to me is that it's inherently concerned with problem solving. As an example, in my current research project, I'm partnering with two small nonprofits to study their use of social media. Part of this project has also been working with these organizations to develop sustainable, appropriate social media strategies. Broadly, I'm interested in community based research projects, digital communication, and problem solving methodologies.
Mara Lee Grayson
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Social Activism, mindfulness, creative writing
Research Statement: Much of my research explores racial literacy, a framework for interrogating the role of race, racism, and racialism in society and individuals’ lives, as a paradigm for writing instruction. My additional work focuses on memoir writing as self-reflection; positionality and ethics of representation in writing and research; and the connections between writing, meditation, and yoga. I hold a PhD in English Education from Columbia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from The City College of New York. I am currently a full-time lecturer of English at Pace University in New York City. My scholarship and creative work can be found in Teaching English in the Two-Year College, Columbia Journal, and Fiction, among other publications, and my book on racial literacy in composition instruction is forthcoming in 2018. Like my background, much of my work is interdisciplinary, and I am especially interested in research that blurs disciplinary boundaries to provide a holistic perspective on literacy, rhetoric, and writing instruction.
Jane Greer
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Archival research, feminist rhetorics
Research Statement: My research centers on the literacy practices & rhetorical performances of girls and women in the U.S. from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. I love being in the archives and working with texts by women and girls that have received very little attention from other scholars.
Laurie Grobman
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Centers, undergraduate research
Research Statement: Plenary Speaker: Dr. Laurie Grobman is a Professor of English and Women's Studies at Penn State Berks. Grobman's teaching, research, and service interests center on service learning and community-based research, bringing together students and community organizations to produce meaningful work while enriching students' learning experiences. Grobman has published five books: Service Learning and Literary Studies in English (2015, co-edited with Roberta Rosenberg), Undergraduate Research in English Studies (2010, co-edited with Joyce Kinkead), Multicultural Hybridity: Transforming American Literary Scholarship and Pedagogy (2007), Teaching at the Crossroads: Cultures and Critical Perspectives in Literature by Women of Color (2001), and On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom-Based Writing Tutoring (2005) (co-edited with the late Candace Spigelman). Grobman has published more than 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and books. Pedagogies of Public Memory: Teaching Writing and Rhetoric at Museums, Archives, and Memorials (co-edited with Jane Greer) is forthcoming from Routledge. Grobman is the 2014 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Outstanding Baccalaureate Colleges Professor of the Year and was the recipient of the Penn State University President’s Award for Excellence in Academic Integration in 2012. She is the first recipient of the award from a Penn State campus outside University Park.
David Halliwell
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Tutoring, public advocacy
Research Statement: As a previous undergraduate participant of the first Naylor workshop, I can attest to how helpful an experience it is. I finished my B.A. in Professional Writing at York College of Pennsylvania and am now working on an M.A. in Composition and Rhetoric from Miami University in Ohio. As an undergraduate, my research was on the commenting practices of tutors and teachers responding to fallacies in student writing. My graduate research interests are focusing on community writing and studying and creating a model of community-based writing centers. As a teacher and tutor, I LOVE working with writers and researchers one-one or in small groups. Broadly, my research interests include pedagogy, writing center work, public writing and literacy, and feminist/antiracist work (which should be a part of all of the rest!).
Alexis Hart
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Public advocacy, civic engagement, veteran’s issues
Research Statement: Professor Alexis Hart is Director of Writing and Associate Professor of English at Allegheny College, where she teaches community-engaged first-year seminars, digital communication first-year seminars, and professional communication; she also trains and supervises the undergraduate writing consultants, who work alongside speaking consultants and subject matter tutors in a Learning Commons. Professor Hart conducts research on student veterans and women in the military, civic rhetoric and community-engaged pedagogies, and the teaching and tutoring of undergraduate writers. Her research methods include interviews, surveys, artifact analysis, and literature reviews. Professor Hart also serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including The Peer Review and Kairos.
Melissa Ianetta
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Center administration, historical research
Research Statement: I currently focus my research on tutoring work as intellectual labor, but I’ve research many different things using a variety of methods. My published research includes: the relationship of tutoring and teaching using interview and surveys; the history of women’s rhetoric using archival research and a range of historiographical strategies; and rhetorical analyses of the ethical values expressed in writing studies using a variety of theoretical lenses. With Lauren Fitzgerald, I wrote The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research, which introduces historical, qualitative, quantitative and theoretical research methods. With Dr. Fitzgerald, I edited The Writing Center Journal for several years and with Kelly Ritter I’m editing Landmark Essays in Writing Program Administration. I’m also currently editor of College English, a journal that publishes work from across the field of English. So I like to think of myself as a utility player, a generalist scholar who can credibly research in a variety of areas.
Brynn Kairis
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Multi-modal composing
Research Statement: Brynn Kairis recently graduated from Rutgers University-Camden with an MA in English. She currently works at Rutgers as an instructor of First Year Writing and coordinator of Writing Labs. Brynn’s research interests span a range of areas. A past participant of the NAYLOR workshop, Brynn has published research on D/deaf literacy narratives (2015) and using archives to teach undergraduate research (forthcoming). She has presented other work at national and regional conferences, including projects that focus on multimodal composition in both the first year writing classroom and the writing center. In her most recent project, Brynn conducted interviews and analyzed writing samples to complete a master’s thesis focused on writing style pedagogies in the English classroom.
Elizabeth Kleinfeld
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Tutoring methods
Research Statement: I study disability, universal design for learning, linguistic diversity, and anti-racist pedagogy as they relate to both first year writing instruction and writing tutoring. In addition, I am researching how students learn to write from sources. I do qualitiative research, including grounded theory methodology and discourse analysis. I have co-authored a textbook on multimodal composition and published articles on writing center work and student source use. I love working with new researchers and look forward to helping you develop your research project!
Elaine MacDougal
Area of Expertise/Consultation: First-year writing, transfer students, mindfulness in the classroom
Research Statement: I have been teaching college writing for 13 years at both universities and community colleges in the Baltimore, Maryland area. I have directed writing centers run by peers, as well as faculty members, and I have seen the struggle and disinterest many students have with the writing process through my teaching and tutoring experience. In addition, my recent 200hr, and subsequent 500hr, certification as a yoga instructor has strongly influenced my approach to teaching writing, and I would like to explore this possible intersection between mindfulness and writing. If writing is approached as a creative activity used to explore the self, would students be more open to the process? Are students ready for this approach at the undergraduate/freshman level? I also teach a First Year Seminar at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County called "The Search for Truth and Happiness in a Technological World." This course has given me further ideas in the discussions we need to have as our world becomes more immersed in technology, and we begin to lose touch with one another. How can mindfulness and writing be a part of this conversation?
Mike Mattison
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Centers, IRB (Institutional Review Board) proposals
Research Statement: I have spent the last twenty years in writing centers, and my research focuses on the relationships and conversations that occur in that setting. For example, how do tutors learn to be tutors? What is the educational process like for them, and how do they describe the changes they encounter? What role does reflective work play in their growth? Additionally, I’m curious as to how administrators can best serve tutors in their work, and, of course, how tutors can best serve writers in theirs—a lot of this research builds from an analysis of the talk that occurs in a writing center. What do people say and how do they say it? And, at the centers I’ve worked in, the tutors (undergraduate and graduate) treat research as an important component of their mission, and they have given dozens of presentations at regional and national conferences, utilizing a variety of research methods. Most recently, one student examined the uses of space at four different writing centers; another compared tutoring strategies with the captains from Star Trek; and two others studied how a writing center can conduct community outreach.
Steve McGuire
Area of Expertise/Consultation: L2/ESL students, tutoring
Research Statement: For the past several years, I've been working on an ongoing project considering the use of humor in writing tutoring. The project began as a research study in how humor was being used at our writing center. This study was done through two instances of quantitative data collection. This project pivoted into research on pedagogical theory and how ELL interact with writing center tutors. The project further pivoted toward discussing humor theory and how different types of humor affect tutoring English Language Learners.
Craig Medveckey
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Tutoring and tutor-training
Research Statement: As a Writing Center administrator my research has focused on graduate tutor training, especially on understanding the differences between supporting undergraduate writers and graduate writers. I have primarily performed qualitative studies but recently I have also conducted mixed methods research.
Jessie Moore
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Transfer, L2/ESL students, first-year writing
Research Statement: Dr. Jessie L. Moore's current research in writing studies focuses on the writing lives of college students, students' use of writing technologies, and the transfer of writing knowledge and practices across contexts (e.g. from self-sponsored writing to academic writing, from academic writing to post-graduation writing, etc.). Her work uses mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative), including surveys, interviews, focus groups, textual analysis, and case studies. Her previous research also has examined the impact of specific teaching pedagogies on student learning and ESL/ELL/second language writing.
Lana Oweidat
Area of Expertise/Consultation: L2/ESL students, writing centers, feminist rhetoric
Research Statement: Lana Oweidat is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition and Director of the Writing Center at Goucher College. She has taught courses in writing, rhetoric, and gender studies. Her research focuses on transnational feminist rhetorics and how they challenge and broaden the understanding of cultures, texts, and identities. She has presented at CCCC, The Thomas R. Watson Conference, Rhetoric Society of America, College English, Feminisms and Rhetorics, and is currently developing an anti-Islamophobia pedagogy utilizing feminist research methods. She is also working on a pedagogical model for tutor training that is foregrounded in critical empathy.
Michael Riffenberg
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Non-school literacies
Research Statement: For the past decade, I have worked closely with student-athletes to study the reading and writing they undertake in their sport. Through observations, interviews, and textual analysis of scouting reports, plays, and other common genres, I try to paint a rich picture of the many reading and writing practices swirling through their non-school discourse community.
Leigh Ryan
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing Centers
Research Statement: For many years, I directed the Writing Center at the University of Maryland, training and overseeing more than 60 writing tutors each semester. I wrote The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors, now coauthored with Lisa Zimmerelli and in its 6th edition, have published and presented on many aspects of peer tutoring, and consult nationally and internationally. To my delight, I’ve also worked with many students researching, publishing, and presenting on aspects of teaching and tutoring writing—most recently with a former tutor on establishing an inner city high school writing center. My current research is archival and focuses on a Maryland slave family. I served on The Committee to Clear Chaplain [Henry Vinton] Plummer, and our extensive research and report resulted in the US Army’s changing his 1894 discharge from “dishonorable” to “honorable.” We also recovered a diary kept by Adam Francis Plummer, Henry’s enslaved father, and I work with that.
Megan Schoettler
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Peer tutoring, WAC, indigenous and feminist rhetorics
Research Statement: I began my adventures as a writing researcher as an undergraduate peer tutor at York College of Pennsylvania. Now I am a PhD student at Miami University of Ohio, and my primary research interests are composition pedagogy, writing center tutoring, and rhetorical histories of women and indigenous people. My MA thesis was on the writerly identities and dispositions of five students as they transitioned between first-year composition requirements and disciplinary coursework. I used mixed methods, working with quantitative measures, artifact analysis of writer portfolios, and discourse-based interviews with students. I have also presented on and am engaged in several other projects. With a colleague at my writing center, we are studying the writerly identities and beliefs of peer tutors and examining how these beliefs impact their work. Finally, I am interested in recovering the rhetorical strategies of social justice advocates, including the Grimké sisters and the Marshallese organization Nuclear Zero.
Michelle Stuckey
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Multi-modal composing, community-based research
Research Statement: I administer an online first-year writing program at Arizona State University. My interests include multi-modal composing, digital literacy, and using reflection and meta-cognition to help students apply their learning about writing to writing situations in other classes as well as in their personal, professional, and civic lives. I also oversee an online embedded peer tutoring program. I am interested in how peers contribute to learning about writing.
Mike Zerbe
Area of Expertise/Consultation: Writing in STEM fields
Research Statement: Mike Zerbe is the WPA at York College of Pennsylvania, and has expertise in the rhetoric of science, professional writing and writing program administration.