2013–14 Writing Fellows

Jennifer Chancellor, Writing Fellow

I am a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center.  My dissertation focuses on a group of postmodern novelists who worked in advertising and public relations during the 1950s and early 1960s. During my time as a doctoral student, I have taught a number of English Composition and Intro. to Literature courses. As a Writing Fellow at Bronx Community College, I have prepared and presented faculty workshops on effective strategies for teaching English language learners and dealing with grammar issues in student writing. I am also currently co-developing an interactive online tool for students to improve their writing skills, as well as a creative writing assignment to be distributed to faculty in all disciplines in order to generate submissions to the College's student literary magazine, Thesis.

Svetlana Jović, Writing Fellow

I am a PhD candidate in developmental psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. My current research explores some of the ways in which socioeconomic and racial/ethnic background predisposes young people to seeing the world, and other people in it, as more or less just and trustworthy. As a Teaching Fellow, I spent three years teaching Human Development at Hunter College. In my current role as a Writing Fellow at Bronx Community College, I help to prepare and facilitate faculty development workshops. I am a co-developer of an online tutorial that would assist students in developing their writing skills. Another collaborative project in which I am involved entails devising and implementing a campus-wide writing assignment to engage students in creative writing activities allowing them to express their knowledge and thinking about the course content in ways that are seldom used in the college classroom. I also serve as a liaison to the student literary magazine, Thesis.

Tristan Striker, Writing Fellow

I am a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. I work primarily on history and memory in African American literature, and how individual memory and imagination engage the various forms of historicity that constitute the larger American historical narrative. As a Writing Fellow at Bronx Community College, I work with the Library to create a dynamic resource that brings already existing writing resources together. Through this, I am interested in bringing together the WAC philosphy of making students better critical thinkers through writing with the library's mission of bringing information literacy to students and faculty. In addition, by holding one-on-one tutoring sessions in the library and by hosting workshops designed to promote the teaching of writing across disciplines for faculty, I hope to advocate for the mutual benefits of writing across the curriculum and information literacy.

Monique Whitaker, Writing Fellow

I am a PhD candidate in philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center. My main research interests are in the semantics and pragmatics of ordinary language conditionals—trying to provide a well-motivated, unified logic underlying our very varied everyday usage—and the metaphysics of modality. As a Writing Fellow at Bronx Community College, I work on preparing and presenting a number of faculty development workshops, for faculty teaching Writing Intensive courses. One of these workshops aims to help faculty develop effective informal writing assignments--one's that promote learning but without adding to the grading burden! I'm also working on evaluating and reporting on the use of a number of WAC strategies in my own current teaching.

Emeritii Fellows

Johanna Braff

Johanna Braff served as a Writing Fellow at BCC during the fall semester of 2013, but resigned her fellowship at the end of the semester when she was offered a full-time job teaching Latin at one of New York City's elite private schools. As a PhD candidate in classics at the CUNY Graduate Center, her dissertation focused on the role of Helen of Troy in Greek archaic lyric and epic literature, and touched upon the ambiguous nature of the female in these works within the initiation of the Trojan War. 

Mark Drury

Mark Drury served as a Writing Fellow at BCC during the fall semester of 2013, but resigned his fellowship at the end of the semester upon being awarded a substantial Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship to pursue his anthropological dissertation research on the decolonization of Western Sahara (a contested territory in northwest Africa). As a Writing Fellow at Bronx Community College, he coordinated WAC faculty workshop logistics, from publicity and outreach to collecting feedback and archiving instructional materials. As WAC librarian, he organized literature on WAC pedagogy and made it available through the BCC library as well as through the WAC eportfolio sites. He left with high praise for the collegiality and enthusiasm of BCC WAC program coordinators, collaborators, participants and fellow Fellows.

Thanks for your service, Mark and Johanna, and good luck with your new work!