Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 17, No. 1 (2019)

About the Authors

Julia Bleakney, PhD is Director of the Writing Center in the Center for Writing Excellence and Assistant Professor of English at Elon University, where she is also co-chair of the Center for Engaged Learning’s 2019-2022 “Writing Beyond the University” research seminar. She was co-chair of IWCA Summer Institute for 2018 and 2019 and at-large board member for IWCA from 2014-2018.

Katherine Field-Rothschild, MFA is a doctoral candidate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania in Composition and Applied Linguistics conducting a multi-university study of transfer into STEM courses. She is adjunct Associate Professor of English Composition at St. Mary’s College of California and her scholarly work has appeared in Curriculum & Pedagogy, the Purdue Handbook Series, and is forthcoming from Feminist Media Studies. 

Kirsten Jamsen, PhD is the Director of the Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities and Co-Director of the Minnesota Writing Project. She began her work in writing centers at Carleton College and continued at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she received her M.A. and Ph.D. She is active in many national and regional professional organizations, and co-founded the Writing Center Professionals of Minnesota and the E12 Writing Centers Collective. With her colleagues, she studies writing consultancy, writing across the curriculum, teacher professional development, and academic technologies in writing centers and classrooms.

Katie Levin (she/her/hers), PhD is a Co-Director at the Center for Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities. 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 is particularly interested in collective work for racial and social justice in and through writing centers.

Claire McMurray, PhD is the Graduate Writing Specialist at the University of Kansas Writing Center where she coordinates graduate-level writing resources, such as graduate/research write-ins, Thesis/Dissertation Accelerators, thesis/dissertation coaching, and graduate writing groups.

Michael Mattison, PhD is Director of the Writing Center, Associate Professor of English, and Associate Provost at Wittenberg University, where he teaches courses in writing center theory, composition, and rhetoric and grammar. He has served as an at-large board member for IWCA, co-chaired the 2019 IWCA-NCPTW conference, and is currently the president of NCPTW. He also often recognizes in himself the same resistance to feedback described in this study.

Kristen Nichols-Besel, PhD is Multilingual Coordinator and Writing Center Faculty Tutor in the Academic Enrichment and Support Center and Adjunct Faculty in English Education at Bethel University. She teaches writing courses for multilingual students, consults with faculty and student tutors on best practices for working with multilingual learners, and supervises English Education student teachers. Kristen earned her Ph.D. in Literacy Education at the University of Minnesota, where she also served as a graduate writing consultant in the Center for Writing. 

Georganne Nordstrom, PhD is an Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric and Director of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s (UHM) Writing Center. Her research and teaching focus on writing center studies, critical and place-based pedagogy, and examinations of Indigenous and minority rhetorics, with a specific focus on Hawaiʻi’s Creole, Pidgin. She is the co-editor of Huihui: Aesthetics and Rhetorics of the Pacific (UH Press, 2015). Her work has also been published in College English, College Composition and Communication, and The Writing Center Journal. A 2018-19 Fulbright Scholar to Ireland, Nordstrom is also the recipient of UHM’s 2016 Chancellor’s Citation for Meritorious Teaching and the 2012 Richard Braddock Award for the article “Ma ka Hana ka ‘Ike (In the Work is the Knowledge): Kaona as Rhetorical Action.”

Jennifer Ryan, BA is a former advisor for the Wittenberg Writing Center. She served on the hiring committee for the Writing Center for two years, and she was the recipient of a Burkean Parlor Grant from NCPTW in 2017 and served on the NCPTW Grants Committee in 2018. She received her Bachelor of Arts in English in May of 2019, and she is currently pursing graduate studies at the University of Dayton.

Catherine Savini, PhD, associate professor of English, is the writing center director and WAC coordinator at Westfield State University. Her work has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Writing Lab Newsletter, Writing Spaces, and Community Literacy Journal, Scary Mommy, and MotherShould?. She writes about critical service learning, writing center pedagogy, and motherhood. 

Ashna Schome, BA is a graduate of Barnard College, with a B.A. in Neuroscience and Behavior. At Barnard, she served as a member of the Writing Center staff for three years as a student, and was the first Coordinator of the Science Fellows program as a graduate. She is now a student at New Jersey Medical School, where she is pursuing an MD.