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Contacts

Director, Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC)[click to show/hide]
Dr. Terry Myers Zawacki (tzawacki@gmu.edu)
Terry Myers Zawacki directs George Mason University's Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program, named as one of the top twenty programs in the U.S. She also co-chairs the cross-university Writing Assessment Group charged with overseeing a state-mandated assessment of students' writing competence across disciplines. (Click here for a description of this assessment.)

As an associate professor in English, she regularly teaches courses in writing ethnography, advanced writing for the social sciences, first year composition, and graduate courses in composition theory and the teaching of composition. As former director of the University Writing Center, she also developed and teaches the experiential course Peer Tutoring in Writing in the Disciplines. Her publications include Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life, co-authored with Chris Thaiss, along with articles on academic writing and second language writers, writing centers and writing fellows, writing in the disciplines (WID), alternative discourses, writing in learning communities, feminism and composition, and writing assessment. Her current research interests focus on WAC/WID programs and writing instruction transnationally, global Englishes, and what WAC programs and writing centers must learn from second language scholarship and practice to work effectively with multi-lingual writers. Related to the latter, she serves on the Conference of College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Committee on Globalization of Postsecondary Writing Instruction and Research.

Dr. Zawacki is on the Consultants Board of the International WAC Network and a section editor for the Writing Fellows pages of the national WAC Clearinghouse, an online repository of information on WAC programs and a resource for books, journals, and teaching materials focused on writing in the disciplines. She also serves on the editorial board of Across the Disciplines: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Academic Writing and the Digital Books series published by the WAC Clearinghouse.

In addition, she is an editorial consultant and writing in the disciplines specialist for the Diana Hacker series of handbooks on writing published by Bedford/St. Martin's, among these A Writer's Reference and The Bedford Handbook. She consults and gives presentations nationally and internationally on WAC, writing in disciplines, writing center work, and assessment.

Assistant Director, WAC, and Assessment Specialist, Written Communication, for the Office of Institutional Assessment[click to show/hide]
Sarah E. Baker (sbaker@gmu.edu)
Sarah E. Baker holds a Baccalaureat degree from the Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle (London), a BA from Wesleyan University (CT), and an MA in the Teaching of Writing and Literature from George Mason University. She spent 16 years in the private sector as an editor. She currently holds a joint position as Assistant Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, where she helps sustain the robust and nationally acclaimed WAC program at Mason, and as an Assessment Specialist in Written Communication in the Office of Institutional Assessment where she works on state-mandated assessment requirements. She helps oversee the Writing Fellows program, and has taught Peer Tutoring in Writing in the Disciplines, introductory composition, and/or advanced composition in the disciplines courses. Her research interests and panel presentations usually involve the integration of technologies in the writing classroom, as well as visual literacy and digital literacy.
Director, Writing Center[click to show/hide]
Dawn Fels (starting July 2011)
Dawn has extensive writing center and teaching experience at both the secondary and postsecondary level, most recently at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. As a high school English teacher, Dawn created and directed a writing center in an urban-suburban high school placed on corrective action. Her experiences there started her on a research agenda that includes the effects of federal and state curricular policies on teaching and learning. Her dissertation, “The Vernacular Architecture of Composition Instruction: What the Voices of Writing Center Tutors Reveal about the Influence of Standardized Instruction and Assessment,” was awarded an Honorable Mention for the 2011 CCCC James Berlin Memorial Outstanding Dissertation Award. In addition to her hands-on writing center experience, Dawn has served on the Executive Board and several committees of the International Writing Centers Association since 2005 and is a frequent presenter at professional conferences. Her publications cover a variety of writing center-related topics, with the most recent a forthcoming co-edited collection focused on secondary and postsecondary university writing center directors and teacher educators who have worked with area schools to set up centers that serve under-represented youth.

WAC Committee Members and Consultants

Program Info: