David Bridges, Writing Fellow

I am a PhD candidate in Music Composition at the CUNY  

Graduate Center. My dissertation is focusing on Stravinsky’s The Fairy’s Kiss and Intertextuality. As a composer and clarinetist I have written for several performers and ensembles and perform with The Cabinet, a chamber orchestra that focuses on new and contemporary works. I teach music appreciation and various music theory courses at the Brooklyn College Conservatory. As a Writing Fellow I plan on working with faculty to develop effective writing in their classes and developing my own courses around WAC principles.

My signature project was collaborating with Music Professor Sara Holtzschue on a resource book for Music 11 that can be found here.

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 Senior Writing Fellow at Bronx Community College, I am the WAC-team lead for the WAC/Thesis project, a creative writing assignment distributed to faculty in all disciplines in order to generate submissions to the College's student literary magazine, Thesis. I will also be helping faculty members incorporate WAC practices into their own courses through individual consultations and by delivering workshops on effective strategies for responding to student writers, working with developmental writers, and dealing with grammar issues in student writing.

My signature project was to develop a resource book for WAC in the Humanities.  It can be found here.

Benjamin Dumbauld, Writing Fellow

I am a PhD Student in Ethnomusicology at the CUNY Graduate Center. For my dissertation research I am working with the Romanian community in New York City, focusing on how musicians and composers from the socialist era have culturally and economically adapted to the neoliberal landscape of the United States, and how such adaptations are revealed during musical performance. As a Writing Fellow at Bronx Community College, I work with faculty in the arts department in developing effective WAC strategies, as well as with students in promoting effective writing strategies. In addition to being a Writing Fellow, I also teach music courses at Hunter College. 

My signature project was to create an ePortfolio that breaks down scholarly literature to create strategies for reading and writing in various genres.  The site can be found here.

 Yu-Yun Hsieh, Writing Fellow

I am currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center.  I was born in Taipei, Taiwan. After earning a B.A. in English from National Chung Hsing University, I went on to pursue my M.A. in English at National Taiwan Normal University. My works of fiction received the UNITAS Literature Award in 2004 and the Taipei Literature Award in 2009. I was a Writers' Institute fiction fellow during the 2012-13 academic year, and my translation of Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49" will be published this year.

I collaborated with Michael Polesny on creating a series of Conversation Circles discussing various writing issues to be used by the Writing Center, but are useful for anybody looking for an informal way of addressing these issues.  They can be found here.

Svetlana Jović, WAC Consultant 

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. I spent three years teaching psychology at Hunter College, and presently, as a visiting lecturer, I teach at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In my current role as a WAC Consultant at Bronx Community College, I work on preparing resources - an open access package with sample syllabi and numerous writing activities that can be implemented in specific fields of study, and across the disciplines - which will help faculty develop writing intensive courses. I assist Jennifer on the WAC/Thesis project which 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.

My signature project was to develop a resource book for WAC in the Social Sciences.  It can be found here.

Michael Polesny, Writing Fellow

I am a doctoral candidate at dissertation stage in English

Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New

York (and expect to complete my degree in Spring 2014). I mainly work with nineteenth- and twentieth-century  poetry,

prose, fiction and philosophy; classical myth, drama and epic

poetry; and the authors T.S. Eliot and Alfred Lord Tennyson

(authors who are the subject of my dissertation). I have been teaching at the college level for six years and presently teach “Great Works” (from Homer to Shakespeare) and composition courses at Baruch College. As a WAC fellow at Bronx Community College, I demonstrate to faculty how WAC principles may enhance and enliven both classroom learning goals and the process of meeting course requirements; and additionally, I consider with editors from the college’s literary journal (Thesis) how WAC models may enhance the preparation stage of a creative submission to the journal.      

I collaborated with Yu-Yun Hsieh on creating a series of Conversation Circles discussing various writing issues to be used by the Writing Center, but are useful for anybody looking for an informal way of addressing these issues.  They can be found here.