WAC Fellows
Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson
Associate Professor
Philosophy
Courses she teaches at Syracuse University:
● PHI 191: The Meaning of Life
● PHI 397 / PSC 375: Philosophy of Law
● PHI 317 / PSC 373: The Social Contract Tradition and Its Critics
● PHI 417 / PSC 382: Contemporary Political Philosophy
“I have tinkered with my Philosophy of Law course ever since I started teaching it about ten years ago, to effectively serve students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, many of whom want to pursue a career in law. The result was somewhat of a Frankencourse, with various assignments that served specific purposes but were not tied to each other, to a comprehensive writing strategy, or to my efforts to implement accessible and antiracist pedagogical practices. WAC allowed me to step back, see the bigger picture, and rethink some fundamental elements of the course. The fellowship gave me concrete strategies for scaffolding all assignments and aligning them with my pedagogical goals and values, thereby allowing students to clearly see the purpose of everything they do in the course to advance their learning. WAC has been the single most productive and inspiring opportunity for my development as a teacher and offered a space for connection, collaboration, and solidarity with colleagues from other disciplines.”
Mariaelena Huambachano
Assistant Professor of Environmental Humanities
Native and Indigenous Studies
Courses she teaches at Syracuse University:
● Indigenous Food Sovereignty
● Indigenous Research Methodologies
● Food Fights and Treaty Rights: Revitalizing Indigenous Philosophies
“I am grateful for the WAC Fellowship because I can collaborate with and receive mentorship from writing specialists. As a result, I developed writing-to-learn strategies and (re)designed syllabi for my writing-intensive courses. As an Indigenous faculty, it is great to be engaged with a community of educators committed to improving best practices for supporting student writing and learning in the disciplines.”
Meredith Martin
Associate Teaching Professor
Psychology
Courses she teaches at Syracuse University:
● Foundations of Human Behavior
● Psychology of the Adolescent
● Behavior Disorders in Children
● Lifespan Developmental Psychology
● Teaching of Psychology
“I entered with the narrowly defined goal to integrate more writing into my large lecture course and was anticipating coming out with a few new ideas. I was not prepared for how fundamentally this fellowship would influence my teaching. I was challenged to interrogate my core assumptions around course design and assessment in a way that has, without exaggeration, redefined how I think about this class. The smooth integration of antiracist pedagogy within the WAC fellowship was particularly impactful. This has hands-down been the most meaningful professional development program I have ever been a part of. The benefits go far beyond simply improving one class.”
Jennifer O’Reilly
Visiting Assistant Teaching Professor
African American Studies
Courses she teaches at Syracuse University:
● AAS138: Writing about Black Culture
● AAS231: African American Literature before 1900: An Introduction
● AAS232: African American Literature: Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
● AAS611: Arts, Literatures, and Cultures of the Pan-African World
“As an instructor of literature, writing has always been at the core of my courses. I spend multiple hours every week teaching my students how to do the work of interpreting and analyzing various types of writing, yet I’ve rarely had the space and professional support to think more deeply about how I can use writing as a tool to develop the critical thinking and interpretive skills that are foundational to my courses. The WAC Fellowship allowed me the opportunity to reimagine writing in ways that allow my students to move beyond analysis and to experience the value of writing to think, learn, process, and reflect. Being in community with colleagues who teach Writing Intensive courses and working with experts in the field enabled me to design more formative and purposeful assignments that will broaden the ways my students can utilize writing. Engaging with this program has transformed my approach to teaching writing and will hopefully transform the ways my students engage with the writing process.”
dtgraysa@syr.edu
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics
Courses he teaches at Syracuse:
- Calculus I & II
- Assessment and Data Driven Instruction in Mathematics
- Research Seminar in Mathematics Education
- Argumentation in Mathematics and Science Education
- Modeling in Mathematics and Science Education
- Teaching and Learning Geometry
- Teaching and Learning Functions
- Generalizing in Mathematics Education
As a mathematics instructor, I know that listening to student thinking, and reading students’ explanations of their work, are informative and useful assessment practices. The Writing Across the Curriculum program has helped me to extend that idea to include student writing as an important instructional practice. By incorporating more informal and formal writing activity in my mathematics and mathematics education courses I am learning more about what my students are thinking and what they are wondering. More importantly, by expressing their thinking and their ideas, my students are actively reflecting on course content to construct, refine, and deepen their understandings.
Assistant Teaching Professor
German
Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics
German language Literature and Culture
Modern Foreign Languages
332 HB Crouse Hall
meikelpo@syr.edu
Courses she teaches at Syracuse:
- GER 101
- GER 102
- GER 201
- GER 202
- GER 300 Introduction to German Literature
- GER 357 German Culture and Civilization
- CAS 201
"I have taught introductions to German literature in both German institutions and the US, however, I hardly ever took the chance to critically review and rename my goals with outside support.
WAC gave me that opportunity.
WAC also encourages me to explore approaches of critical pedagogy and tie them to my teaching so students have more agency in the set-up of the learning processes.
Pedagogically, the WAC program has turned me outside in and inside out and thus strengthened by abilities to merge critical thinking and critical teaching, at a time when pedagogies are faced with the challenges of 2020. It brought me closer to my colleagues from different disciplines and gave me new insights and connections. This program, to say the least, is transformative.
Associate Professor
Spanish; Undergraduate Adviser
Director of Latino-Latin American Studies Program
Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics
Latino-Latin American Studies
Modern Foreign Languages
Spanish Language Literature and Culture
310 HB Crouse Hall
mygarcia@syr.edu
Katie Becklin
kmbeckli@syr.edu
Assistant Professor
Department of Biology
Courses she teaches at Syracuse:
- Ecology and Evolution
- Isotopic Approaches in Global Change
- Conservation Biology
- Global Change Seminar
“As an instructor my primary goal is to help students become lifelong learners with the ability to think critically and deeply about science. For me, writing has always been an integral part of the learning process, but I have struggled with how to best implement writing in my classes, especially those with large student enrollment. Through the Writing Across Curriculum program I have explored new ways to use informal writing exercises to support student learning and encourage metacognition. I am especially interested in the potential benefits of writing-to-learn for students from historically underrepresented groups in science. It has been exciting to see students develop new knowledge and express their creativity in science through writing.”
Theodore Cateforis
tpcatefo@syr.edu
Associate Professor
Director of Undergraduate Studies in Fine Arts
Music History and Cultures
Courses he teaches at Syracuse:
- American Popular Music
- Indie Music
- Music and Media
- Music and Sports
- Popular Music Studies
- Rock Music
"I have taught writing assignments for many years, generally giving the students very goal-directed instructions that involve close-text reading or analysis of some kind. Through the WAC program, I have been encouraged to explore new, exciting avenues--ones, for example, in which the students interact with primary sources and adopt creative writing strategies to place themselves within the historical period we are studying. I am especially in favor of assignments that give students agency in their writing voice, while steeping them in the subject matter of the course. The WAC program has been a transformative experience for my teaching."
Nicole Fonger
nfonger@syr.edu
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics
Courses she teaches at Syracuse:
- Precalculus
- Calculus
- Methods and Curriculum in Teaching Mathematics
- Candidacy Student Teaching
- Research Seminar in Mathematics Education
“One of my mantras for teaching mathematics is “We learn mathematics by doing mathematics.” Since participating in the WAC fellowship program, I have incorporated a new mantra into my teaching practice: “We learn mathematics by writing about and reflecting on mathematical ideas.” These mantras together have helped me refine my teaching philosophy; mathematics is a social activity that involves the practice of representing mathematical ideas in spoken and written forms. With the support of WAC faculty, I have created new course assignments that encourage mathematics and mathematics education students to regularly engage in the process of writing as a way to synthesize the ideas they are learning.”
Genevieve Waite
gowaite@syr.edu
Assistant Teaching Professor
French Language Coordinator
Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics
Courses she teaches at Syracuse:
- Translingual Francophone Authors
- French Phonetics and Conversation
- Intermediate French
“The Writing Across the Curriculum program allowed me to effectively apply writing-to-learn pedagogy to a literature course that is taught in a foreign language. In addition to designing more interactive presentations that prompted students to participate actively in class, I learned to edit my assignments so that students could more effectively produce a scaffolded, thesis-driven final paper. I was delighted to receive many insightful recommendations for improving my course, and I look forward to implementing these changes in the spring.”
Timur Hammond
Assistant Professor, Geography
twhammon@maxwell.syr.edu
Faculty Profile
Courses he teaches at Syracuse:
- Geography of Religion
- Introduction to Human Geographies
- Geographies of Memory
- The Global Middle East
- Seminar in Cultural Geography
“When I’ve assigned writing to students in the past, it has usually been in the form of final research papers, with a few signposts set out along the way to help me organize the assignment. One of the best lessons I drew from the Writing Across the Curriculum program was the need to ask a seemingly basic question when I designed my syllabus: How did my course’s writing assignments actually help students learn course material more effectively? Instead of using writing assignments as a way to demonstrate learning that had happened elsewhere, working with the Writing Across the Curriculum program gave me the opportunity to better integrate writing assignments as part of an ongoing learning process.”
Linda Ivany
Professor, Earth Sciences
lcivany@syr.edu
Faculty Profile
Courses she teaches at Syracuse:
- Earth Science
- History of Earth and Life
- Introduction to Paleobiology
- Paleoecology
- Geochemical Patterns in the History of Earth and Life
Topics in Paleobiology
“I have been teaching a writing-intensive course (EAR 325–Introduction to Paleobiology) here at SU for a number of years. Nevertheless, though I’ve been at this for a while, there were things about the way writing was integrated into the class that didn’t seem to work as well as I’d have liked, and each year I tried to adjust it but was never quite sure how best to do so. When I saw the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program announced, I jumped at the chance to interact with people who thought explicitly about this issue–how to effectively incorporate writing into courses that focus on other diverse topics.”
Sarah Fuchs
Assistant Professor, Music History and Cultures
sefuchss@syr.edu
Faculty Profile
Courses she teaches at Syracuse:
- Film Music
- European and American Music Since 1800
- Introduction to Music History
“From the outset, one of the aspects of the Writing Across the Curriculum movement that attracted me most was the concept of “writing to learn,” in which students engage in informal, in-class writing exercises as means of making the course content their own. In an effort to integrate such practices into the curriculum and the classroom, I replaced the scaffolded research project I had previously assigned with prompts that will invite students to think critically and creatively.”
Laura E. VanderDrift
Associate Professor, Psychology
lvanderd@syr.edu
Faculty Profile
Courses she teaches at Syracuse:
- Close Relationships
- Social Psychology
- The Social Psychology of Interpersonal Relations
- Research Methods in Social Psychology
“I’m not prone to hyperbole, but this program was absolutely a career-changer. I hadn’t realized it, but going into this program, I had lost track of how to teach effectively, what my goals as an instructor were, and how to connect with students. In learning how to incorporate writing into the curriculum, my goals as an instructor became laser-focused. I want students to be engaged and think deeply about the material I teach and its applicability to their life and career path. On top of helping me realize my goals, this initiative gave me the concrete tools to achieve them.”