University of Illinois Writing Project

Steering Committee Members

Director
Gail E. Hawisher is Professor of English and founding Director of the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois. Her research has primarily focused on connections between literacy and technology studies, and she co-edits the international journal Computers and Composition. She and co-author, Cynthia Selfe, published the book-length Literate Lives in the Information Age (2004), which uses life history interviews to look at how ordinary people acquire digital literacies.  In her everyday work through the Center for Writing Studies and its programs, she likes to think that she works to change--with lots of help from good colleagues and writing studies' graduate students--the culture of teaching at her large research university. She currently serves on the National Advisory Panel to the National Commission on Writing for America's Families, Schools, and Colleges.

 

Co-Directors
Libbie Morley is Director of the Writers Workshop at the University of Illinois, the university’s writing center. Libbie’s research focuses on college students, academic writing, and writing centers. Her teaching experience includes writing courses for college students, graduate and undergraduate courses for pre-service teachers, and secondary English, in addition to less formal settings such as Upward Bound. Libbie has given presentations at regional and national conferences, in addition to mentoring new teachers. She is a Fellow of the Bluegrass Writing Project in Lexington, Kentucky, and participated in the National Writing Project Workshop on Professional Writing in 2000.

 

Sarah McCarthey is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois.   Her research focuses on the ways in which students construct their identities as readers and writers within home and classroom contexts. An article published in Reading Research Quarterly (2001) presents, for example, cases of fifth graders and the ways in which they negotiated their identities as literacy learners. Another research project extends the work on identity by investigating the ways in which second language learners construct their identities as writers in English and in their native language. She has published articles in Research in the Teaching of English (2004), Written Communication (2005) and an article with graduate students in Journal of Second Language Writing (2005). She is currently looking at the impact of NCLB on teachers' writing instruction in several states and working with teachers to understand the ways in which they integrate writing into their science instruction. She taught elementary school for eight years and has worked collaboratively with teachers since she began her graduate work at Stanford and Michigan State Universities. She is currently co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English with Mark Dressman and Paul Prior.

In-Service Coordinator
Scott Filkins works as the Professional Development and Content Specialist for the ReadWriteThink.org project at the National Council of Teachers of English. A former high school English teacher and department chair, Scott is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and member of NCTE, IATE, and IRA.

 

 

 

Members
Julie Erlinger has taught English and Speech Communications for nineteen years, the last fourteen at Urbana High School. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a member of NCTE. Her current teaching assignments include 9th grade AP Prep Composition, inclusive 10th grade World Studies English, 12th grade Writer’s Workshop, and Speech Communications. Julie also works with novice teachers as the new teacher/mentor coordinator at Urbana High School.

Lisa Storm Fink taught grades K-4 for 9 years, gaining experience with a great variety of teaching practices: multi-age classrooms, grade level looping, acting as a cooperating teacher for preservice teachers, and earning a specialization in Remedial Reading. Lisa is currently the Project Manager for ReadWriteThink at the National Council of Teachers of English, working on a website for English Language Arts instructors. She also works in professional development, consulting, publishing and presenting. In addition, Lisa teaches an Undergraduate Open Seminar at the University of Illinois, an introduction to education with a service-learning component.

Delores Lloyd is a primary teacher who has taught in Urbana District 116 for over eleven years.  She completed her bachelor's degree at Illinois State University and later returned to the university to obtain a Masters degree in Reading.  Currently, she is pursuing a degree in Educational Organization and Leadership from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Delores has been involved in several leadership and professional development opportunities and has served as a district presenter for many years.  Her extensive knowledge of literacy instruction and desire to promote professional growth continues to be the motivation for providing valuable, classroom based examples of how to apply best practices in content area literacy.

Charles Weinberg, a graduate of UIUC and member of NCTE, has taught high school English for five years in Champaign, Illinois.  His current teaching assignment consists of inclusive 9th Grade English and Advanced Placement Literature and Composition. He has co-authored an academic literacy curriculum that works to foster engagement in emergent learners. Charles also tutors at an after-school study program responsive to achievement disparities.

Graduate Assistants
Patrick Berry is a PhD candidate in the Center for Writing Studies and Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is Assistant Director for the Center and Associate Editor for the journal Computers and Composition. He has taught courses in first-year composition, professional writing, and new media. His research concentrates on English teachers’ literacy narratives as a family of genres to explore intersections among literacy, personal experience, technology, and social class.

Sara Horton is a PhD student in the department of Educational Policy Studies, focusing on Philosophy of Education. She earned a BA and an MA in English from Texas A&M University and taught composition courses there before coming to the University of Illinois. Her main area of interest is the role of the teacher in the writing classroom.

Hannah Lee is a graduate student in the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois, where she also received her BA in English Literature and Education. She taught as a high school English teacher in Chicago and as an English assistant to junior highers in the Paris, France region. She is currently interested in examining the intersection between identity, language, rhetoric (visual and otherwise), and power, and teaches ART 250: Writing with Video, an advanced composition course. She is the webmaster for the UIWP site.

Xun Zheng is a doctoral student in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois. She received her BA and MA in English Language and Literature in China where she taught English in an elementary after school program. She is now volunteering in an Urbana elementary school helping ESL teachers in various activities. Her research interest in doctoral study is to examine the writing practices for English language learners in elementary schools.