Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 16, No. 2 (2019)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Eric C. Camarillo, M.A. currently serves the University of Houston-Victoria as manager of academic support, where he runs the writing center and sometimes teaches composition courses. He’s interested in issues of social justice, equity, race, and assessment. Eric is also a Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University.

Hillary Coenen, Ph.D. Hillary Coenen has a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University in rhetoric and professional writing, specializing in feminist and social justice rhetorics. She has worked as an administrator and a consultant in writing centers for ten years in Texas and Oklahoma, where she plans to pursue a career in writing center administration. Growing up white in a rural Texas town, she first encountered activist teaching while pursuing her B.A. in English at a PWI in Texas. As a master’s student at the IWCA Collaborative at CCCCs in 2012, she began to understand the potential relationship between literacy work and activism, and since then she has sought ways to combine her passions for critical pedagogy, literacy education, and social and racial justice. Follow her @HMCoenen.

Wonderful Faison, Ph.D. (she/her) is an assistant professor of English at Langston University. She began her research on writing centers during her time in graduate school. She focuses on writing centers as racialized spaces, the use of Black language in the writing center, as well as a womanist approach to teaching composition. Her activism is rooted in the advancement of POC, the working class, and the LGBTQIA+ community.

Fehintola Folerin, M.A. has a master’s from Oklahoma State University in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESL). She earned her bachelor’s degrees in English at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. She taught International English Composition and doubled as a writing center consultant at Oklahoma State University. Her research interests focus on intercultural communicative competence and social justice research. Since arriving at Oklahoma State she has noticed that some people experience Blackness differently in America and she wants to work toward diminishing the inequities.  Follow her @FPFolarin.

Kathi R. Griffin, Ph.D., M.A.T., University of Iowa, is Director of the Richard Wright Center for Writing, Rhetoric, and Research, and a composition instructor at Jackson State University in Jackson, MS. In 2001, she helped found the Mississippi Writing Center Association and has served on the boards of the Southeastern Writing Center Association and Midwest Writing Center Association.

Tatiana Glushko, Ph.D. coordinates the work of the Richard Wright Center for Writing, Rhetoric, and Research at Jackson State University, where she also tutors undergraduate and graduate students and trains peer tutors. Prior to this, she taught English to international students and was an English language instructor in Russia. Besides her interest in student rhetorical awareness, she also examines listening practices in the writing center and studies writing centers in Russia.

Mick Howard, Ph.D. is Director of the Writing Center and Assistant Professor at Langston University, the furthest west HBCU in the country. During his time there, he has transformed it from a writing lab to a writing center model utilizing undergraduate peer tutors. He has also led the effort to eliminate basic writing courses and replace them with corequisite models uniquely crafted to service the needs of Langston University students, which has led to a record number of students succeeding in their composition courses.

Karen Keaton Jackson, Ph.D. graduated summa cum laude from Hampton University and went on to earn her M.A. and Ph.D. in English Composition from Wayne State University.  She currently is an Associate Professor and Director of the Writing Studio at North Carolina Central University where she continues her research on the role of HBCUs in conversations about race and writing.

JWells, M.A. is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas-Austin where she studies rhetoric and writing. After teaching in correctional facilities, she decided to pursue an area of interest in the rhetorics of prisons. She is currently researching how incarcerated mothers use their writing as a tool to mother while behind bars.

Douglas S. Kern, Ph.D. has served as an assistant director of The Writing Center at the University of Maryland College Park, where has taught Scriptwriting, Introduction to Academic Writing, Writing for the Arts, Introduction to Drama, and African-American Literature and Culture. His main research and teaching interests lie in communication, composition, English and American drama (across theatre, film, and television), African-American literature, language plurality, and creative writing. In listening to and working with his students, Doug implement’s a pedagogy in which linguistic diversity is valued as highly as academic achievement.

Daoying Liu, Ed.D. is an instructor in second language writing for undergraduates and a co-founder of English Writing Center at School of Foreign Studies, Nantong University, China. He also teaches academic writing and business writing for graduates and international students.

Alexandria Lockett, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College. She publishes about the technological politics of race, surveillance, and access. Her work has appeared in Composition Studies and Enculturation, as well as Black Perspectives on Writing Program Administration: From the Margins to the Center (SWR Press), Out in the Center (Utah State University Press), and Bad Ideas about Writing (West Virginia University Digital Publishing Institute). An extended biography is available via her portfolio at: www.alexandrialockett.com

Katie Levin, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities as Co-Director of the Center for Writing and Affiliate Graduate Faculty member in Literacy and Rhetorical Studies. She began her work in writing centers at Skidmore College and continued to Indiana University–Bloomington, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English and wrote a qualitative dissertation study of a large WAC writing center. She has been involved in the MWCA and IWCA Antiracism Activism SIGs since 2006. Katie is particularly interested in collective work for racial and social justice in and through writing centers.

Dan Melzer, Ph.D. is Associate Director of First-Year Composition. His research interests include writing across the curriculum, writing program administration, and multiple literacies. His articles have appeared in College Composition and Communication, Writing Program Administration, Kairos, The WAC Journal, and other publications. He has written two textbooks, Everything's a Text (with Deborah Coxwell Teague) and Exploring College Writing, and the scholarly books Assignments Across the Curriculum: A National Study of College Writing and Sustainable WAC: A Whole Systems Approach to Launching and Developing WAC Prorgams, coauthored with Michelle Cox and Jeff Galin.

Kendra Mitchell, Ph.D. is a Fulbright alumna and earned her doctorate in English with a concentration in rhetoric and composition studies and a specialty in writing center studies. She has led writing initiatives,  taught writing courses, and trained tutors at Florida A&M University.

Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is an assistant teaching professor and Associate Director of the University Writing Center at the University of Notre Dame. She began working in writing centers as an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma. Talisha completed her Ph.D. with an emphasis in writing center studies from Purdue University. Her research investigated experiences of and insights into racism and antiracism of Black writing tutors at predominantly white institutions. Talisha is currently a co-leader of the IWCA Antiracism Activism SIG.

Elijah Simmons, M.A. (he/him/his) is a Ph.D. student in the Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures Department at Michigan State University. He began his work in writing centers at Binghamton University and continued to Miami University and Michigan State University. He approaches writing center theory and practice through the lens of critical race theory and fictive-kinship, with particular attention to Black students’ usage of the center.

Jasmine Kar Tang, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) is at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities as Co-Director of the Center for Writing, Affiliate Graduate Faculty member in Literacy and Rhetorical Studies, and Assistant Director of the Minnesota Writing Project. Her research interests involve critical race and ethnic studies, migration studies, and writing studies. She is currently working on a project on Orientalism in the writing center.

Natasha Tinsley, M.A. is a professor at Southwestern Oklahoma State University. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Oklahoma State University (OSU), as well as a Master of Arts in Education from Cameron University. When she was an assistant director of the writing center at OSU, her contributions to the writing center included serving as a presenter, co-presenter, and contributor on presentations for several writing center conferences, and publishing a book review in the 2017 issue of the The Writing Center Journal. Her research focuses on identity, gender roles, and motherhood as they relate to Black people. As she grows as an educator and human being, she learns more about herself and her role in denouncing the discrimination that has impeded cultural growth and awareness in society for so long. Follow her @NatashaATinsley.

Keli Tucker, M.A. (she/her/hers) first joined the writing center field as a graduate assistant in the writing center at DePaul University, where she earned a master’s degree in English. At present, she supervises a team of peer writing tutors as an English Specialist in the Success Center of Southwestern Illinois College, and she is a co-leader of the IWCA Antiracism Activism SIG.

Lisa Wright, M.A. is a Ph.D. student in English with a focus in nonfiction creative writing. She teaches composition and creative writing and is a writing center consultant at Oklahoma State University. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, The Muslim Journal and the 2017 Oklahoma Writing Project Anthology. Her research interests include critical race theory, antiracism, decolonization, women’s studies and liberation studies. She is currently working on an essay collection about her experience with home births. Follow her @MrsLisaEWright.