Lauren Williams

 I earned a BA in English from SUNY Stony Brook in 2003 and worked as the local news director for an independent community radio station in Richmond, VA, before returning to New York City in 2007 to pursue a career in education.  I finished an MA in Language and Literacy at CUNY City College in 2009 and I am currently working on my DA in English at St. John’s.  I have worked as a writing consultant in the writing centers at Laguardia Community College and the City College Center for Worker Education.  I also volunteered as an adult literacy tutor at the New York Public Library’s Aguilar Branch in East Harlem.  While completing my MA, I was the recipient of the 2007 Marilyn Sternglass Writing Award and the 2009 Stanley B. Jacoff Memorial Fellowship from the English department at City College.   I currently live in Washington Heights with my husband and two cats, and we are expecting a baby boy in the summer of 2010.

My interests include composition studies and critical pedagogy, as well as digital literacy, postcolonial studies, sociolinguistics, and critical race theory.  My future plans include teaching writing at the first-year college level in New York City while writing and researching on topics related to writing studies. 

Research:

Evaluating the WAC Faculty Fellows/Writing Fellows Program 2010: 

As co-investigator with Dr. Anne Ellen Geller, I am collecting data in the form of course work, interviews, and interpersonal communication from participants in a WAC pilot program at St. John’s during the spring 2010 semester.  In the future, Dr. Geller and I hope to present the findings of this research at conferences and publish on this topic.

Examining Authority in Open Source Writing Environments 2009-2010:

This study is designed to evaluate the experiences of first-time contributors to the online, open-source encyclopedia Wikipedia.  I am using this information to think about the ways in which Wikipedia can be used in the composition classroom.  I will be presenting findings of this research at the IWAC Conference 2010 in Bloomington, Indiana.

Meeting in the Middle 2009:

As co-investigator with Dr. Octavia Davis, our research focuses on best practices for embedded tutoring.  We specifically looked at what kinds of intervention with an embedded tutor result in revisions to student writing, visits and continued use of the Writing Center.  During the fall 2009 semester, I worked as an embedded tutor in three sections of Dr. Davis’ First Year Writing course.

Conferences:

 

National Council of Teachers of English 2007, New York, NY.

National Council of Teachers of English 2009, Philadelphia PA.

Northeast Writing Centers Association Conference 2010, Boston MA. “Creating a New Image: Re-imagining the Undergraduate Writing Consultant as Writing Fellow.”

Northeast Writing Centers Association Conference 2010, Boston MA. “Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered: When the Best of Intentions Confront the Ugly Truth, or Inventorying Privilege in Community-based Writing Center and Academic Service-Learning”

International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference 2010, Bloomington IN. "A New Frontier: Teaching with Wikipedia."

Northeast Writing Centers Association Conference 2010, Boston, MA. “Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered: When the Best of Intentions Confront the Ugly Truth, or Inventorying Privilege in Community-based Writing Center and Academic Service-Learning”

International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference 2010, Bloomington IN. "A New Frontier: Teaching with Wikipedia."

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