Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 14, No. 1 (2016)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Karina Aguilar is a public health advisor for the Office of Population Affairs in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Karina is a doctor of public health candidate in the Department of Health Policy and Management at New York Medical College. Karina’s research focuses on farm worker access and utilization patterns of migrant seasonal head start programs for child care.

Nancy Alvarez is a PhD candidate in the English Department at St. John's University. Her dissertation is a qualitative study of the experiences of Latinas tutoring in writing centers housed within Hispanic Serving Institutions across the United States. Nancy’s research interests include writing center studies, writing pedagogy, digital literacies, language rights, and issues of access and equity for Latina/os in higher education.

Katrina Bell is currently the associate director of the Ruth Barton Writing Center at Colorado College, where she also teaching courses in reading, writing, and rhetoric. She is a PhD candidate at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, with a dissertation focusing on the perceived effects of graduate work in writing centers. Her alter ego plays roller derby and does subversive cross-stitching to procrastinate most efficiently.  

Francia N. Brito serves as an occupational therapist and maternal, child and adolescent health practitioner who works with populations positioned at multiple axes of inequalities. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the Health and Behavior Studies Department at Teachers College Columbia University. Through her research, Francia intends to generate evidence that will inform policy and practice to address structural and socially-patterned inequities in health, particularly among women, children and adolescents.

Cedric D. Burrows is an assistant professor in English at Marquette University. His research interests include cultural rhetorics, African American rhetoric, and the construction of race in textbooks. His is currently working on a book project that examines how whiteness constructs the Black rhetorical presence.

Erica Cirillo-McCarthy currently serves as the assistant director of the Hume Center for Writing & Speaking at Stanford University, where she also teaches in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric.

Celeste Del Russo is an assistant professor of writing arts at Rowan University. She directs the Rowan Writing Center where she collaborates with tutors, students, and faculty across the disciplines.

Candace Epps-Robertson is an assistant professor of writing studies at Old Dominion University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in rhetoric and writing. She has published articles and reviews in Rhetoric Review, Literacy in Composition Studies Journal, and Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetoric, Civic Writing, and Service Learning. As one who benefited from mentorship throughout her time as a student, she is passionate and committed to providing mentorship for students throughout their educational journeys.

Neisha-Anne S. Green is associate director of the Writing Center at American University. She has presented at the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, the North East Writing Center Association Conference and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. She is a multidialectal orator and author proud of her roots in Barbados and Yonkers, NY. She is an ally always interrogating and exploring the use of everyone’s language as a resource who is getting better at speaking up for herself and others. This essay is partly based on work she did for her M.A. thesis which she titled “This Sh*t Was Written for You!: Real Truths about Linguistic Favoritism, Racism & ‘Unfair-ism.”

Jennifer Hewerdine is a professor of English and the writing program administrator at Arizona Western College. She is in the final stretch of writing her dissertation about administrative collaboration in writing centers.

Asao B. Inoue is the assistant chair-elect of CCCC, and an associate professor of interdisciplinary arts and sciences at the University of Washington Tacoma, where he is also the director of university writing and the Writing Center. His research focuses on writing assessment, antiracism, and political economy. He is the author of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing for a Socially Just Future. With Mya Poe he coedited Race and Writing Assessment, which won the 2014 CCCC Outstanding Book of the Year in the Edited Collection category. Recently, he received CWPA’s 2014 Outstanding Scholarship Award for “Theorizing Failure in U.S. Writing Assessments.” His research has appeared in Assessing Writing, The Journal of Writing Assessment, Research in the Teaching of English, and Composition Studies, among other places.

Joseph Janangelo is an associate professor of English at Loyola University Chicago and a past president of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. His book, A Critical Look at Institutional Mission: A Guide for Writing Program Administrators was published by Parlor Press in 2016.   

Griffin Keedy is an instructor for the University of Colorado Denver. Her recently completed thesis and research center on hyperactive rhetorics and the rhetorics of learning disabilities. She is currently completing a visiting professorship and continuing this research in Beijing.

Michelle Hall Kells is an associate professor in the Department of English at the University of New Mexico where she teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in 20th century civil rights rhetoric, contemporary and classical rhetoric, writing and cultural studies, and discourse studies. She has served as special assistant to the dean of the College of Arts and Science 2012–2014 and program chair of the Writing Across Communities (WAC) initiative at UNM 2004–2014. Her work is featured in the journals JAC, Written Communication, Journal of Reflections, and the Journal of Community Literacy, and her current book project is Vicente Ximenes and LBJ’s “Great Society”: Twentieth-Century Mexican American Civil Rights Rhetoric (Southern Illinois University Press, 2017).

Elizabeth Leahy is a PhD candidate in rhetoric, composition, and the teaching of English at the University of Arizona. In January 2017 she will join the faculty at University of Tennessee Chattanooga as interim director of the Writing and Communication Center.

Steven Littles began teaching in 1999. He started his career as a high school english teacher and currently teaches fifth grade at Eastside Elementary School in the Metro-Atlanta area. Prior to joining Eastside, he taught at schools in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Steven holds a Doctor of Philosophy in curriculum and instruction from Mercer University.

Shannon Madden is an assistant professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Rhode Island, where she teaches courses in technical writing and grant writing. Her work has been published in The Writing Center Journal Blog, Kairos Praxis Wiki, and Computers and Composition. She is currently mentoring a multilingual dissertation writer at her institution and working to develop writing groups for junior faculty.

Aja Y. Martinez is an assistant professor of writing studies, rhetoric, and composition at Syracuse University. Her scholarship, published both nationally and internationally, focuses on the rhetorics of racism and its effects on marginalized peoples in institutional spaces. Her efforts as a teacher-scholar strive towards increasing access, retention, and participation of diverse groups in higher education.

Cristina Salazar is a doctoral candidate in the Communication and Education Program in Teachers College, Columbia University. Her dissertation focuses on the multimodal engagement of immigrant students and how their literacy practices impact their schooling trajectories. Cristina has also developed digital learning platforms for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Mexico, and is interested in the disruption of educational inequity through contextually-grounded instructional design.

Charmaine J. Smith-Campbell is currently a PhD candidate in the area of curriculum and instruction at the Tift School of Education at Mercer University in Atlanta. A retired New York City high school history teacher, Charmaine graduated from the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, with a B.A. in history and went on to obtain a M.A. in history from Queens College, CUNY in Flushing, and a M.A. in applied psychology from Steinhardt School of Education at New York University. While at New York University, she studied and researched in the area of local and community history, focusing on the community of Lefferts Manor in Brooklyn. Her current research interest is Paulo Freire’s concept of pedagogical love and its implications for transformative education at the middle and high school levels as an educational gaps-closing strategy. Charmaine is widowed and the mother of three children, Damali, Jelani, and Leah.

Amy Vidali is an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research focuses on the rhetorical politics of disability in university texts, student writing, and writing programs, as well as theories of metaphor and gastrointestinal rhetorics. She teaches classes on rhetorical theory, multimedia writing, disability studies, and the teaching of composition. Her work has appeared in College English, Rhetoric Review, The Journal of Medical Humanities, The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ), and elsewhere.

Amy Whitcomb holds a Masters in Science and a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Idaho. She has served in writing centers as a peer tutor and professional staff. Her writing on writing and pedagogy has appeared in Writing Lab Newsletter and Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. She recently left her post described in this article after a change in management and has since transitioned to freelance editing and communications work.