CUNY Writing Fellows
CUNY Writing Fellows are advanced doctoral candidates at the Graduate Center, in most cases already working on their dissertations. Selected via formal application and campus interviews for year-long appointments (renewable for a second year), they are then trained in WAC principles and practices at CUNY-wide professional development workshops and in weekly group meetings with the BMCC WAC Coordinators.
Each campus employs its Fellows somewhat differently. At BMCC, they
are partnered with individual faculty newly implementing Writing Intensive
courses; they are also available as consultants to other teachers who
want to experiment with the use of writing or to fine-tune writing assignments
they already use.
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What Fellows do
Writing Fellows are not teaching assistants, nor paper-graders, but they do provide a range of support for their faculty partners:
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Fellows serve as a sounding board for the articulation
of course goals. What does the instructor want students to know
and to be able to do by the end of the course? What habits of
mind do students need to develop for the discipline? The instructor's
goals shape the informal and formal writing assignments in the
course.
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Fellows help instructors refine previous writing
assignments or to design new ones, both formal and informal "low-stakes".
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Fellows help construct explicit criteria for evaluating
student writing – criteria communicated to students as part
of the writing assignment.
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Fellows help faculty to develop useful, efficient
ways of responding to student writing.
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Although Fellows don't grade papers, they read them
and share insights with their faculty partners about strengths
and weaknesses of student writing (e.g., focus, organization,
clarity, use and citation of sources) and about assignment features
that are working well or that need clarification.
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Fellows hold office hours to confer with students
about their writing for the course (not about content per se).
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Fellows can do brief class presentations on such
topics as generating and organizing ideas, using and citing sources,
and proofreading techniques.
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Who's
who: Writing Fellows 2007-2008
Kristopher Burrell is a doctoral candidate in US history at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include twentieth century American history and African American history, particularly the modern civil rights movement and black intellectual history. He is currently writing a dissertation on black intellectuals in New York City and their role in the civil rights movement between 1954 and 1965.
Melis Ece is currently working on her doctorate in cultural anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center. She received her B.A. from the Middle East Technical University, Turkey and her M.A. from the CUNY Graduate Center. She taught at the College of Staten Island and as a CUNY Teaching Fellow at the Queensborough Community College and Hunter College. She completed her dissertation field research in Senegal, where she spent a year as a Fulbright-Hays Fellow. Her dissertation focuses on environmental anthropology, legal and historical aspects of nature conservation, and people displaced from national parks.
Michal Klincewicz is a PhD candidate in philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. His dissertation focuses on theories of intentionality and their role in contemporary theories of consciousness. He has taught in Hofstra and Pace Universities and prior to coming to CUNY he was a computer programmer. In his spare time he paints, makes music, and travels.
Kristin Lawler is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the Graduate Center. Her dissertation is entitled Endless Summer: the Image of the Surfer and the Politics of Popular Culture. This is her second year as a Writing Fellow at BMCC. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.
Julie Pranikoff is a Ph.D. candidate in the Environmental Psychology program, with a concentration in Health Psychology, at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Her research examines how restorative environments, specifically gardens located on hospital grounds, affect patients' coping behaviors and their ability to adapt to illness. Furthermore, she is interested in illness narrative creation and how personal meaning of illness is influenced by the environments in which narratives are formed. She is very excited to be working at BMCC as a Writing Fellow.
Polly Sylvia is a doctoral candidate in Sociology at CUNY Graduate Center. She holds a MA in Sociology from George State University. Prior to becoming a writing fellow, she was a teaching fellow at Baruch College. Her dissertation focuses on exploring the cultural politics of the ‘war on terrorism,’ particularly through the advertisements of a campaign found on the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority Subway System. Her research interests include cultural studies, political sociology and poetry.
Constance Zaytoun is a second-year writing fellow. She is completing her Ph.D. in Theatre Studies at the Graduate Center with a focus on feminist performance. Constance teaches at New York University and Marymount Manhattan and was also once a professor in the Speech Department at BMCC.
| | Office hours in S424 |
| Kristopher | Tuesday 4:30pm-5:30pm; Wednesday 7:00pm-8:00pm |
| Melis | Wednesday 2:00pm-4:00pm |
| Michal | Tuesday, Thursday 12:30pm-1:30pm |
| Kristin | Tuesday by appointment; Wednesday 12:30pm-1:30pm |
| Julie | Monday 4:00pm-5:00pm; Wednesday 2:00pm-3:00pm |
| Polly | |
| Constance | By appointment |
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