Lisa Ede

Lisa Ede is a Professor of English at Oregon State University (OSU), where she has directed the Center for Writing and Learning (CWL) since 1980.  Ede hadn’t planned to become involved in writing center work, but when she interviewed at OSU she found herself agreeing to direct both the first-year writing program and the CWL.  There were many rough years—including years when it looked like the Center might close—but Ede stubbornly and passionately stuck with the Center. (Ede is happy to say that the CWL now has a stable budget and is thriving.)  Working with her colleagues and undergraduate and graduate writing assistants is very sustaining for Ede, but she also values her professional and disciplinary connections.  Ede has presented at both regional writing center conferences and the IWCA conference. The CWL hosted the 2006 Pacific Northwest Writing Centers Association Conference in April, 2006 and was the local host for the IWCA Summer Institute in August, 2007. Ede's article "Writing as a Social Process: A Theoretical Foundation for Writing Centers" was recognized with the 1990 National Writing Center Association Award for outstanding scholarship on writing centers. Ede is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of seven books, including Situating Composition:  Composition Studies and the Politics of Location and (with Andrea Lunsford) Singular Texts/Plural Authors:  Perspectives on Collaborative Writing. Her most recent publication is The Academic Writer:  A Brief Guide.  Ede’s nonacademic passions include reading cookbooks and cooking magazines and hiking in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Paula Gillespie

Paula Gillespie came to higher education attending night classes after having two children. She went to a community college part time for four years before enrolling full time. She tutored as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and then went on to direct the Ott Memorial Writing Center at Marquette University in 1987, where she has worked happily with graduate and undergraduate tutors ever since. She has served as the secretary and then president of the International Writing Centers Association; she presently serves on the Executive Committee of CCCC. With Neal Lerner, she is the author of The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring, now in its second edition. With Alice Gillam, Lady Falls Brown, and Byron Stay, she edited Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002) which won the IWCA prize for outstanding scholarship. She has twice co-chaired the IWCA Summer Institute. She, Brad Hughes, and Harvey Kail have been conducting research on the short- and long-term effects of peer tutoring on tutors through the Peer Tutor Alumni Research Project. She has consulted and/or led workshops on peer tutoring in Germany, Greece, and Mexico. She is an avid beader and has a Springer Spaniel named Buster.

Sharifa Daniels

Sharifa Daniels is the Head (Afrikaans) of the Writing Lab at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where her duties include managing the day to day running of the Writing Lab, consultant training and development, and the presentation of academic writing workshops.  She was part of the team that set up and established the Writing Lab at her institution.  From 2004 – 2006 she served on the executive board of the International Writing Centers Association and was a member of the Disability sub-committee.  She has worked with Rebecca Babcock and James Inman on an edited collection about Writing Centers and Disability and sees this collection as an extension of her interest in writing centers and diversity. As an IWCA board member she had opportunity to initiate the celebration of International Writing Centers Week on South African campuses.  She also introduced a collaborative event for South African writing centers during IWCW, i.e. the Writing Centers Indaba.  This collaboration has resulted in the South African writing centre community taking ownership of the Indaba and it has since gone from strength to strength.  She is a founding member of the Western Cape Writing Centers Forum and is actively involved in working towards formalizing the writing center movement in South Africa.  She and her colleague, Rose Richards, are currently researching the role of the writing lab in postgraduate writing, focusing on the expectations and perceptions that students and their supervisors have of the role of the writing lab. In addition, they and some of their colleagues are compiling a book about South African writing centers. She has presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and at conferences in South Africa. 

Nancy Grimm

Nancy Grimm is associate professor of Humanities and director of the Michigan Tech Writing Center. From 1990 to 1994, she, along with Diana George and Ed Lotto, was a co-editor of The Writing Center Journal. In addition to a number of essays and chapters about writing center work, her publications include two books, Good Intentions and Social Change in Diverse Teaching Contexts: Touchy Subjects and Routine Practices (with Nancy Barron and Sibylle Gruber). Grimm has twice received the scholarship award from NWCA (now IWCA). She is a frequent presenter at regional and national conferences. Since 1985 when she first assumed responsibility for the Michigan Tech Writing Center, she has led the Center through at least four major renovations in programming, staffing, and design. Grimm’s scholarship focuses on the tacit values underlying literacy education. She enjoys designing programs that allow students to negotiate those values in ethical and responsible ways.

Jenny Jordan

Jeanette (Jenny) Jordan has been an English teacher and writing center director at Glenbrook North High School in Northbrook, IL, since 1990. During that time she has worked with her colleagues to create a strong WAC-based writing center staffed by student tutors and teachers from throughout the school. Active on the IWCA Board as the secondary representative, Jenny continues to promote the importance of writing centers in K-12 settings and regularly collaborates with teachers from other schools as they build their centers. She also has co-authored several articles about the value of K-12 writing centers and has presented at professional conferences of the IWCA, NCTE,  CCCC, and MWCA.  A leader at the 2006 Summer Institute, Jenny is excited for another opportunity to share, learn, and grow along with fellow writing center professionals.

Neal Lerner

Neal Lerner is Director of Training in Communication Instruction at MIT, where he teaches teachers who support communications-intensive classes, lends his own support primarily to classes in biology and biological engineering, and teaches undergraduate technical communication. This summer in Madison will be Lerner’s third experience as an SI leader, following the first SI, also in Madison, and the second SI at Clark University in Worcester, MA. When not working with students who are writing about topics that he really doesn’t know much about, Lerner focuses his research on the history of teaching writing, whether in writing centers, classrooms, or laboratories. His book on that topic, The Idea of a Writing Laboratory, will hopefully come out before the next millennium. He’s also working on a book with two colleagues from MIT that investigates science and engineering students’ experiences with communications-intensive classes. Lerner is a three-time recipient of the IWCA Outstanding Scholarship Award, soon to be past co-editor of Writing Center Journal, co-author (with Paula Gillespie) of The Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring, and started his writing center tutoring career at San Jose State University in 1987. His non-academic passion is vintage bicycles, whether fixing them, buying and selling them, or riding them.

Jill Pennington

Jill Pennington has been a member of the writing center community since 1990 when she was an undergraduate writing tutor at Alma College. Since then, her involvement has extended to the development of writing centers at small liberal arts colleges, large universities and community colleges. Pennington is founder of the Michigan Writing Centers Association, and has served as President of the East Central Writing Centers Association, and Community College Representative and Secretary of the International Writing Centers Association. She has delivered more than sixty conference presentations on writing center-related topics and was a leader in the IWCA Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors and Professionals twice previously at the University of Wisconsin in 2003 and Clark University in 2004. Currently, she directs the Writing Center at Lansing Community College where she also teaches developmental and transfer-level composition. Pennington is an only child and an Aries who has too much patience for people, too little patience for machines, loves cheese, hates beets and has a terrible singing voice.

Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton

After completing her PhD in American literature at the University of Texas at Austin, Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton began her career in writing centers in 1995 when she became the full-time coordinator of the University of Texas’s newly funded Undergraduate Writing Center. After nearly four years at UT, during which time the UWC’s student visits increased ten-fold, she accepted a tenure track position at Southwestern  University, a small liberal arts college up the road from Austin in 1999. Now associate professor of English, she founded and directs Southwestern’s Debby Ellis Writing Center and teaches courses in American literature, writing, and writing center theory.  She has served as president of the South Central Writing Centers Association, and is currently the SCWCA’s representative to the IWCA board. Her recent research and publications focus on the Vietnam and post-Vietnam war narrative, and on writing centers and liberal arts colleges. She looks forward to brainy days and sociable evenings with colleagues at the summer institute in Madison.

Deborah Brandt

Deborah Brandt has been on the faculty of UW-Madison English Department since 1983, where she directed the intermediate composition program for 14 years and where she is the coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Composition and Rhetoric. She teaches undergraduate writing and graduate courses in literacy and contemporary composition theory. She is author of two award-winning books: Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers and Texts and Literacy in American Lives. A collection of her essays is forthcoming from Jossey-Bass in 2009 and she is at work at another project called Writing Now: New Directions in Mass Literacy.

Emily Hall

Emily Hall leads the Undergraduate Writing Fellows program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she received her PhD in 2000.  In addition to supervising the Fellows' work (as curriculum-based peer tutors they comment on drafts of papers before meeting with each student for a 30-minute conference), Emily teaches the semester-long honors training seminar that all Writing Fellows take.  She recently co-edited, with Brad Hughes, a special issue of Across the Disciplines on how Writing Fellows programs can serve as agents of change within WAC.  She has presented research at CCCC, IWCA, and others on the politics of tutor training as well as on race and tutoring.  In 2005 she was the recipient of UW-Madison's Academic Staff Early Career Excellence award.  When she is not teaching or overseeing Writing Fellows she can be found shuttling her 3 children (ages 7, 4, and 1) around Madison.

Les Howles

Les Howles has over 20 years experience as an instructional technology and e-learning consultant in corporate, government, medical and academic settings. Les currently works as a senior e-learning consultant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the department of Academic Technology.  He is also president of Howles Associates, an e-learning design and development consulting group.  Les works with faculty, trainers and subject experts in dozens of disciplines to develop instructional programs, multimedia applications and e-learning courses. He has a graduate degree in educational technology from the University of Oregon and undergraduate degrees in education and educational psychology. Les is a frequent presenter at national, local and regional conferences, as well as a guest speaker at various universities.

Nancy Linh Karls

Nancy Linh Karls began her writing center career as an undergraduate tutor at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin.  As a graduate student, she worked at the Writing Center and helped develop the Peer Mentoring Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.  She then served as Assistant Professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at the University of Colorado at Denver.  During that time, she participated in the first-ever SI, which she credits as being absolutely essential to her growth and success as a writing center professional.  For the past three years, Nancy's been thrilled to call the UW-Madison Writing Center her professional home.  Here she serves as the science writing specialist; teaches lots of writing center classes, such as "Writing Graduate Research Proposals," "Developing and Delivering Conference Presentations," and "Writing for Podcasts"; and works with students and faculty from across the disciplines, including Nursing, Pharmacy, Veterinary Medicine, Scandinavian Studies, and Art History.  Nancy is Co-Chair (with Haivan Hoang) of NCTE's Asian/Asian American Caucus and has presented her work on writing center issues at many conferences, including CCCC, IWCA, and WAC.  Besides writing centers, Nancy is passionate about oldies, chocolate soy milk, and her two-year-old son, Sam--although not necessarily in that order!

Terry Maggio

Terry Maggio, a local coordinator for the institute, is the administrator for the UW-Madison Writing Center. Terry received her masters in Journalism from the University of Iowa and has worked for pay for the American Cancer Society and the Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention Board and for free for her husband’s dental clinic and disaster relief efforts.  At the Writing Center, Terry creates publicity materials, schedules classes, remodels tired facilities, and juggles budgets (and she’s proud to say she's never backed down from a good fight with Physical Plant). In 2008, Terry received an excellence award from the College of Letters and Science at UW.  Terry and Paul are the parental units of three daughters who have taught them much, including the UW’s alumni dirge, Varsity.  When not working, eating in and eating out, sailing, gardening and sudokuing, one often can find Terry on the sidewalks of Waunakee trailing behind her goofy Rhodesian ridgeback, Nala.

Jason Mayland

Jason Mayland is the Director of Institutional Effectiveness and Research at Lansing Community College in Lansing, Michigan.  In that capacity, he directs all state, federal, and operational reporting for the College and conducts a wide array of research relating to student achievement and institutional efficacy.    Prior to joining Lansing Community College, Jason coordinated the activities of the MIHELP Consortium, a metropolitan affairs research consortium comprised of Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and Grand Valley State University. He has a strong background working with coalitions and managing special projects, as well as coordinating special outreach initiatives.

Jason’s approach to educational research is predicated upon an extensive background in public policy. As the John Boyer Memorial Scholarship Fellow in 2004-2005, Jason spent ten months in Europe doing comparative analysis of local governments.  Prior to 2004, he managed a number of state and local political campaigns and assisted during the 2000 Presidential election recount in Florida. Jason served in the United States Army and was deployed to Bosnia from 2002-2003. His interest in educational research and policy includes extensive work with school districts in both Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Melissa Tedrowe

Melissa Tedrowe is the associate director of the UW-Madison Writing Center, where she has worked since 2001.  Her writing center roots trace back to the University of Vermont, where she did her MA, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she did her PhD.  At Madison's Writing Center, she has been most deeply gratified by the opportunity to work on social justice issues, to coordinate the Community Writing Assistance program, and to collaborate with Brad Hughes on exciting new technology initiatives.  She won an Early-Career Award for Excellence from the College of Letters and Sciences in 2006. Broadening out, she serves on the board of the Midwest Writing Centers Association (if you like the newsletter, she's got something to do with that).  When Melissa's not in the Writing Center, you'll find her running with her two best friends, Tucker and Rosie, or rooting around in her garden.  She's thrilled that the Summer Institute has returned to Madison and heartily welcomes everyone here!

Annette Vee

Annette is a Ph.D. Candidate in Composition and Rhetoric in the English department at the UW-Madison. She is also the Coordinator of the Online Writing Center at the UW-Madison, where she works with talented online tutors and Writing Center staff and takes care of all the technical details involved in synchronous and asynchronous online conferencing. Talk to her if you want to chat about online tutoring, or you have comments about the Summer Institute and the UW-Madison Writing Center websites, since she's webmaster (although not designer) of both. She hopes to find an academic position that allows her to continue to work with excellent writing teachers, fun students, and messy technical stuff.

Chris Wagner

David Woods

David Woods is a Researcher with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he specializes in creating computer programs that facilitate the work of researchers.  He is the author and developer of Transana software for the transcription and qualitative analysis of video and audio data.  He collaborates with researchers around the world, and has developed a number of unique analytic tools that allow researchers to analyze and understand their data in new ways.  David enjoys family, photography, and travel.

Andrea Alden Lewis
Arizona State University

Jeffry Newton
Culver Academies, IN