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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.Writing Fellows are not teaching assistants, nor paper-graders, but they do provide a range of support for their faculty partners:
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.
Fellows help instructors to refine previous writing assignments or to design new ones, both formal and informal "low-stakes".
Fellows help construct explicit criteria for evaluating student writing – criteria communicated to students as part of the writing assignment.
Fellows help faculty to develop useful, efficient ways of responding to student writing.
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.
Fellows hold office hours to confer with students about their writing for the course (not about content per se).
Fellows can do brief class presentations on such topics as generating and organizing ideas, using and citing sources, and proofreading techniques.
Who's who: Writing Fellows 2008-2009
Jess Bier is a Ph.D. candidate in geography at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests revolve around migration, postcolonial theory, political economy, forms of Orientalism, and gender and sexuality, including the lived economies of historic Arabic-speaking diasporas in the Atlantic. Her dissertation looks at the geography of Arab Americans in the New York City region, 1880-present, with a focus on the effects of material life on conceptions of identity and ancestry. Topics include belly dancers at Coney Island, Lebanese kimono factories in New Jersey, and Arab casualties of the sinking of the Titanic.
Kimberly Cunningham is a first-year fellow and doctoral candidate at CUNY Graduate Center in sociology. With an interest in the changing social and technical definitions of what counts as social 'reality,' her dissertation focuses on social interaction in the virtual reality online simulation known as Second Life. Other research interests include the sociology of the body, the sociology of fashion, experimental writing, autoethnography, and technology studies. Before coming to BMCC, she taught as an adjunct for 3 years at LaGuardia Community College.
Patrick Inglis
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 taught in Hofstra and Pace Universities. Prior to coming to CUNY he was a computer programmer. In his spare time he paints, makes music, and travels.
Julie Pranikoff is a Ph.D. candidate in the Environmental Psychology program, with a concentration in Health Psychology, at CUNY Graduate Center. 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.
Jason Schneiderman is a fifth year doctoral student in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is the author of Sublimation Point (Four Way Books, 2004). He lives in Brooklyn.
Office hours in S424 Jess Thursday 2:00-4:00 Kimberly Wednesday 12:00-1:00 Michal Tuesday 2:30-4:30 Patrick Wednesday 12:00-2:00 Julie Monday 1:45-2:45, Wednesday 11:00-12:00 Jason