Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 15, No. 1 (2017)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Rachael Blasiman, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Kent State University's Salem campus. As an experimental cognitive psychologist, she is primarily interested in learning, memory, and student success. Her past work examines student study habits and interventions to improve learning and academic performance.

Alison Bright, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the University Writing Program at the University of California, Davis. Her research interests include the preparation and professional development of writing tutors, teaching assistants, and pre-service teachers. Her research has been published in Teaching/Writing and English Education. 

Clint Gardner, M.A., is the Program Manager of College Writing and Reading Centers at Salt Lake Community College.  He is currently the President-Elect of the Rocky Mountain Writing Centers Association, and recently served as President of the Board of Trustees of the National Conference of Peer Tutoring in Writing.  He has been Archivist for the Two-year College Association of the National Council of Teachers of English (TYCA) since 2011, and served as TYCA-West National Representative (2011-2013) and Secretary of TYCA (2008-2011). His other professional leadership includes the International Writing Centers Association (President, 2005-2007). His writing center research and development include the work of peer consultants (tutors) in community college writing centers.

Joshua Geist, M.F.A., has been tutoring in various Writing Centers since 2001, when as a freshman undergrad he took a sequence of training courses for Writing Center tutors, about which he had many opinions and became very frazzled. He now serves as the Director of the Writing Center at College of the Sequoias in Visalia, California, where his primary job duties include teaching a sequence of training courses for Writing Center tutors, having opinions, and being frazzled.

Megan Baptista Geist, M.F.A., is the Writing Center Coordinator at College of the Sequoias in California’s central valley, where she oversees twenty tutors in writing centers on three campuses. Her passions include acceleration pedagogy and outcomes assessment.

Genie Giaimo, Ph.D., is the current Director of The Ohio State University Writing Center. Before her recent arrival to OSU, she was Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Centers at Bristol Community College. Her research applies RAD-based methodologies to large-scale and often systemic issues within writing center administration, such as student perceptions of the writing center in open access institutions, or the impact of ordinary and extraordinary stress on writing center workers. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Language and Literature, Literature and Medicine, and European Journal of Life Writing and chapters in edited collections on pedagogy and literary studies. She is also the special editor of the Praxis issue on Two Year College Writing Centers.  

Brett Griffiths, Ph.D., is the current director of the Macomb Reading and Writing Centers at Macomb Community College. She completed her PhD in composition studies in the Joint Program for English and Education at the University of Michigan.  Her primary research interests are on writing instruction at access institutions, first-year writing, and departmental and institutional approaches that support quality instruction and student success.  She has published work on mathematics education and the effects of poverty on writing instruction at community colleges. She also publishes creative non-fiction and poetry.

Randall Hickman, Ph.D., has more than two decades of work experience in educational research, at the University of Texas Research and Development Center for Teacher Education, and institutional research, at Central Piedmont Community College (in Charlotte, North Carolina), at Tri-County Technical College (in Anderson, South Carolina), and at Macomb Community College (in Warren, Michigan). He has published articles on workforce development, developmental education, and research methodologies and has presented research results at numerous conferences.

Wendy Pfrenger, M.A., teaches English and coordinates the Learning Center at Kent State University Salem. She is interested in improving retention and completion rates for rural students. She also directs the Kent State University Rural Scholars Program, a post-secondary opportunity program for middle and high school students in Columbiana County, Ohio. Her work and research focus on college access, writing center practice, and composition pedagogy.

Jill Reglin, M.A., has held her position as Coordinator of the Writing Center at Lansing Community College Lansing, Michigan) since 1997. As a full-time faculty member in the English Department, she also teaches various levels of composition. Reglin has been an active member on the boards of the Michigan Writing Centers Association, the East Central Writing Centers Association and the International Writing Centers Association. She has served as a leader in the IWCA Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors and Professionals four times. Her current research interest (and subject for an upcoming sabbatical) is focused on preparing faculty who have worked in the Writing Center to provide WAC assistance to their peers.

Jan Robertson, M.A., has been director of the Bronx Community College Writing Center for fifteen years and the co-trainer of the Bronx Community College CRLA college-wide tutors for eleven years. She has also taught in CUNY for 27 years, teaching English and all levels of ESL, including the CUNY Language Immersion Program. Further, she has taught ESL and Spanish in NYC public and independent schools. She has an MA in English from Columbia University, Teachers College and an MA in Educational Theater from New York University where her focus was designing drama-in-education lessons for ESL students. 

James Winter, MFA, teaches English and coordinates the Learning Center at Kent State University Salem. This is his first academic publication. His fiction and nonfiction have been published or is forthcoming in One Story, Prairie Schooner, Salamander, PANK Magazine, Midwestern Gothic, Prick of the Spindle, and The Rubbertop Review.

Sebastian Zöllner, Ph.D., is Professor of Biostatistics and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan. He has the equivalent of a Master’s degree in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Munich. His primary research is in population genetics and the genetics of psychiatric diseases. He is interested in the parallels between epidemiological and educational research.