Thomas Polk, PhD
Director, Writing Across the Curriculum
Innovation Hall, Room 433
[email protected]
Thomas Polk serves as the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum at George Mason University where he also teaches professional and academic writing in the English department. Tom regularly facilitates professional development events on writing-enriched teaching and learning and has published on assignment design, mentoring, and research methodologies in writing studies. His scholarship appears in College Composition and Communication, WAC Journal, Across the Disciplines among other venues. His current research project draws on a critical literacies lens to understand student experiences with writing across the curriculum, particularly in authentic or experiential learning environments. This project specifically focuses on the proposal writing practices of students applying for undergraduate research fellowships and considers how evaluation, mentoring, and networks mediate access to these programs. Prior to working at Mason, he coordinated the writing center at Bowie State University.
Joan Hwang, PhD
Faculty Fellow, Writing Across the Curriculum
[email protected]
Joan Hwang serves as Faculty Fellow for Writing Across the Curriculum and teaches academic writing in the English department. Her current research centers on the translingual pedagogy in writing classrooms, increasing audience awareness as a central rhetorical concept in writing curriculum and promoting trans/multimodality in writing instructions. Recent research has focused on making more visible the importance of teaching audience awareness in writing courses through combined pedagogical approaches from translingualism and multimodality. Prior to serving at Writing Across the Curriculum, Joan taught First-year writing courses and Advanced compositions at Mason for five years.