Writing Program Staff

 I became Director of the Writing Program at Dickinson in 2009 after a twelve-year stint at a state university in Georgia, where I was an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center.  Although I began my academic career teaching multicultural American literature, my interest in writing within and beyond the academy steadily grew.  I have designed and taught tutor training courses, developed a Writing Fellows Program, and assisted numerous students with undergraduate research projects that were presented at conferences, published in journals, or awarded prizes.  I have taught basic writing, freshman composition, and research writing courses as well as composition theory at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.   I have authored several journal articles, a lengthy critical introduction to the reprint of Mary Austin’s One-Smoke Stories, and a book entitled West of the Border: The Multicultural Literature of the Western American Frontiers (Ohio UP, 2000).  My most recent projects and publications range from training tutors in emotional intelligence, giving voice to tutors’ useful knowledge through podcasting, and using writing as an intervention in psychotherapy.      

I work with Dickinson’s ELL students, teaching courses in writing as well as tutoring in the Writing Center.  I received my B.A. from Westmont College in 1994, and my M.A. from American University in 2004.  For eight years, I taught English as a Second Language to non-native speakers in California, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Italy.  Before coming to Dickinson, I worked at American University’s Writing Center and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.