Academic Appointment 

Professor of English, LaGuardia Community College--CUNY 

What's New?

• I am one of the new (again) Writing Program Administrators for the Department of English at LaGuardia. I’m excited to have this opportunity to work with my colleagues Dominique Zino, Tara Coleman, and Rachel Boccio in guiding the writing program. One of our new projects was instituting a Writing Program Orientation for incoming students.

  • https://www.canva.com/design/DAFb3D61Tg8/84JMcjUwcKbh4WLmA3-Xfw/view

• I was delighted to give a talk on Motivating Learners and the CUNY Mindset Initiative at Queens College’s Pedagogy of Kindness Seminar in April of 2022.

  • https://www.canva.com/design/DAE_w6fWVbE/0IrX7c6fKZyTNXd-2LB20A/view

• I explored ChatGPT, Project-Based Learning, and Project Design in “Projects are People,” the keynote address for the January 2023 meeting of the WPI PBL Collaborative.

• I have been working since 2021 with the CUNY Mindset Program. I spent the spring 2021 semester as a participant in the Motivating Learners course, thinking about mindful motivation. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, I served as a Mindset Fellow for faculty taking the course. In summer 2022 & 2023 I worked as a Mindset Associate, guiding a group of Mindset Ambassadors as they prepare to share our CUNY Mindset work on their campuses. I talked with Dr. Linda Hirch and Dr. Mari Watanabe-Rose on EdCast about this work:

  • https://youtu.be/B7ZDv9Jo6jU

• I joined Jeffrey Yan, Megan Mize, Peter McLellan, and Sarah Zurhellen of the AAEEBL Digital Ethics Task Force in a three-part conversation on ePortfolios

  • Part One: https://podcast.digication.com/episodes/ethics-in-eportfolio-technology-in-the-bright-new-days-of-innovation-privacy-and-inclusion

  • Part Two: https://podcast.digication.com/episodes/s3-e11-ethics-in-eportfolio-technology-in-the-bright-new-days-of-innovation-privacy-and-inclusion

  • Part Three: https://podcast.digication.com/episodes/s3-e12-ethics-in-eportfolio-technology-in-the-bright-new-days-of-innovation-privacy-and-inclusion

• I’m co-leading a seminar to collaboratively create a new mid-point course for Liberal Arts majors, LIN 150, which uses a project-based learning approach to help students explore, expand, and integrate their learning in the Liberal Arts.

• I’m returning to both Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Project-Based Learning Institute and AAC&U’s Institute on Engaged and Integrative Learning (IEIL) this summer (2023).

Writing For Kids (@Liz Summit)

For my recent kidlit, please see lizsummit.com

Current Academic Service

• Writing Program Administrator (shared position with Dominique Zino and Tara Coleman) (2022-present)

• Co-chair, Senate Ad-Hoc Online Learning Committee, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY (2022-present).

• Member, Senate Ad-Hoc IT Advisory Committee, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY (2021-2022, chair; 2022-present, committee member).

• I designed the Resources for Faculty website for LaGuardia Community College’s English Department. Here’s the result! https://lagccwriting.commons.gc.cuny.edu

• In 2018, CUNY removed its high stakes test, the CATW, from developmental writing. That decision created new space in our accelerated composition course. A group of faculty worked together to create a new guiding framework for the course. Last summer, another group of faculty created student-facing videos, wrote activities and assignments, and created background information for faculty teaching using the framework. I think this is a great example of collaborative curriculum development. Check out our work here! https://lagccwriting.commons.gc.cuny.edu/ena-101/ena-101-framework-2/

• The English Department at LaGuardia Community College received a grant to create Open Educational Resources for our writing courses. We built a section of our new writing program website to highlight these resources:

  • https://lagccwriting.commons.gc.cuny.edu/department-of-english-open-educational-resources-library-oer/

• Member, Budget Committee, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY (2020-present).

• Institute Faculty, Institute on Project-Based Learning at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (June 2016-present).

• Teaching English in a Two Year College: reviewer (2014-present).

• International Journal of ePortfolio: reviewer (2011-present) and associate editor (2018-present).

• Institute Faculty, Institute on Engaged and Integrative Learning (IEIL), American Association of Colleges and Universities (2009-present).

  • Previous iterations of this institute included: Engaging Departments Institute (EDI), Institute on Integrative Learning and the Departments (ILD), and Institute on Integrative Learning and Signature Work (ILSW)

Selected Academic Publications

• "Assessment," curated entry in Davis, Rebecca Frost, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers, editors. Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments. Modern Language Association, 2020, https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/Assessment.

• “What, Exactly, Are We Amplifying? A Decade of AAC&U’s ePortfolio Forum,” The International Journal of ePortfolio, 9.1 (2019).

• "From Selfies to Self-Representation in Electronically Mediated Reflection," in Kathleen Blake Yancey, ed. A Rhetoric of Reflection, an edited collection for University Press of Colorado (July 2016).

• "A High-Stakes Essay Says Nothing About a Student’s Writing Ability" in "Room for Debate." The New York Times. 10 March 2014. Online.

• "Measuring Progress with Student ePortfolios," co-authored with Bret Eynon. Peer Review, 13.4./14.1 (2011/2012).

• "Effective Pedagogy" in General Education and Liberal Learning: Principles of Effective Practice by Paul L. Gaston. Washington, D.C.: AAC&U, 2010.

• "The Digital Imperative," Computers and Composition 27.1 (2010).

• "ePortfolios @ 2.0: Surveying the Field," co-authored with Bret Eynon. Peer Review, 11.1 (2009).

• "New Worlds of Error and Expectation: Basic Writers and Digital Assumptions," co-authored with Marisa A. Klages. Journal of Basic Writing. 28.1 (2009). Also reprinted in Teaching Developmental Writing, 4e, ed. Susan Naomi Bernstein (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013).

• "Developing Core Skills in the Major," co-authored with Paul Arcario and Marisa Klages, Learning Communities and Student Affairs: Partnering for Powerful Learning. Washington Center, 2007.

• "Policing, Politicizing, Poeticizing the Virgin/Whore Split: Contemporary American Women’s Poetry about AIDS," Ill-uminating Gender II: Gender and Disease, a special issue of Gender Forum: An Internet Platform for Gender and Women's Studies, Ed. Beate Neumeier, 19 (2007).

• "The Bartlet Administration and Contemporary Populism in NBC’s The West Wing,” The Contemporary Television Series. Ed. Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2005.

• "Versus Verse: Teaching Poets Against the War," Radical Teacher, 74 (Fall 2005).

• "Making Connections: Integrated Learning, Integrated Lives," co-authored with Paul Arcario and Bret Eynon, Peer Review, 7.4 (2005).

• “(In/Out)side AIDS Activism: Searching for a Critically Engaged Politics,” Journal of Medical Humanities, 25.4 (Winter 2004).

• “Interview with Rachel Hadas” and “Interview with Tory Dent,” the minnesota review (Fall 2002).

• “Women’s Studies on the Sly,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, co-authored with Katie Hogan (Fall/ Winter 2002).

Highlighted Presentations

• Kelly Driscoll of Digication interviewed me for the Digication Scholars Podcast. We had a really fun conversation ranging from oceans, writing, ePortfolios and teaching (among other things!). One of the things I loved about this conversation was how it got to the heart of ePortfolios: integrating all of the different parts of our lives into a gestalt. The personal, professional, political and pedagogical all rolled into one! It was such an honor to talk with Kelly!

  • Part One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Cz9GjkDFOo

  • Part Two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uphEsZPqqzY

• The Future of Liberal Education in the New Learning Ecosystem," featured session with Randy Bass, José Antonio Bowen, and Gardner Campbell, American Association of Colleges and University's Centennial Meeting (23 January 2015).

• "The Future of Basic Writing II" with Heidi Johnson. Online YouTube Video of a talk for at the CUNY Graduate Center for Comp Comm Committee, (May 2014).

  • My thanks to Sean Malloy, producer, director and editor and his co-producers Robert Greco and Andrew Lucchesi!

• "Digital Yesterdays, Digital Tomorrows: The Social Life of Information and the Shape of Writing Instruction," CUNY Mina Shaughnessy Lecture with Kathleen Blake Yancey (6 December 2013).

• "There's Nothing Basic About Basic Writing," interactive on-line and in-person conversation and presentation via Adobe Connect, Facebook, and Twitter with Elaine Jolayemi, Leigh Jonaitis, Ilene Rubenstein, Debra Berry, Maria Klages, Carla Maroudas, and Amy Edwards Patterson. This presentation featured month of pre-conference on-line discussion on key topics in basic writing, followed by the conference presentation. College Composition and Communication Conference, Las Vegas, NV (14 March 2013).

• "Facebooking the Classroom? Digital Media Strategies To Enhance Writing," preconference workshop with Kathleen Blake Yancey, AAC&U General Education and Assessment Meeting, Boston, MA (February 2013).

• "There's Nothing Basic About Basic Writing," interactive on-line and in-person conversation and presentation via Adobe Connect, Facebook, and Twitter with Elaine Jolayemi, Carla Maroudas, Ilene Rubenstein, Amy Edwards Patterson, J. Elizabeth Clark, Leigh Jonaitis, Marisa Klages, Debra Berry, Kelly Keane and Shelley Rodrigo. This presentation featured month of pre-conference on-line discussion on key topics in basic writing, followed by the conference presentation. College Composition and Communication Conference, Saint Louis, MO (24 March 2012).

• "ePortfolios from the Ground Up: Planning, Creating, Implementing," half-day preconference workshop with Bret Eynon, American Association of Colleges and University's Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (25 January 2012).

• “Digital Multiplicity: The Global Skills for College Completion Project to Create a Replicable Model for Success in Basic Writing” with Marisa A. Klages, Michelle Zollars, and Reid Sunahara. College Composition and Communication Conference, Atlanta, GA (6-9 April 2011).

• “The Fragile Dream: ePortfolio, At-Risk Students, and College Success,” Keynote Address (luncheon), American Association of Colleges and University's ePortfolio Forum, San Francisco, CA (29 January 2011).

• “Ten Years Later: ePortfolio and Assessment. Learning, Changing, and Closing the Feedback Loop” with Marisa A. Klages. IUPUI 2010 Assessment Institute, Indianapolis, IN (24-26 October 2010).

• "Technology and The Academic Zeitgeist: Te(ch)-ing in the Two Year College and Beyond," a full day preconference workshop with Carlos A. Hernandez and Marisa A. Klages at the College Composition and Communication Conference, Louisville, KY (17-20 March 2010).

• "Make It Real: Learning, Assessment & ePortfolio at an Urban Community College," Keynote with Bret Eynon at the American Association of Colleges and University's ePortfolio Symposium--The Search for VALUE: Innovation, Economic Uncertainty, and ePortfolio Assessment, Washington, DC (20 January 2010).

• "Assessment, in a Word, is Good: Taking the Next Steps in Student-Centered Assessment," Keynote Address, Basic Skills Conference, Fresno City College, Fresno, CA (24 April 2009).

• "From Paper to Screen: Are We Still Having This Conversation? Transforming a Writing Program One Classroom at a Time," College Composition and Communication Conference, San Francisco, CA (11-14 March 2009).

• "Rhetoric in the 21st Century: The Digital Imperative," The International Conference on Teaching and Learning, Jacksonville, Florida (14-18 April 2008).

• "Reclaiming the Classroom: Two Year Colleges and Innovative Self-Assessment" with Professor Marisa Klages, Professor Linda Chandler, and Dr. Michelle Pacht at the College Composition and Communication Conference, New Orleans, LA (3-5 April 2008).

• "First-Year Academies: Facilitating Engagement and Success in the First Year of College," 2007 Bellwether Award Winning Presentation with Vice-President Peter Katopes, Dean Paul Arcario and Assistant Dean Bret Eynon at the 2007 Community College Futures Assembly, Orlando, Florida (28-30 January 2007).

• "Building an ePortfolio Program," a day-long workshop with Assistant Dean Bret Eynon, Vice-Provost Terrel Rhodes, San Mateo Community College (19 July 2006).

• “Electronic Portfolios, Writing Classrooms, and College Programs: Practices, Theories, Issues, and Challenges,” with Dr. Michael Day, and Dr. Kathleen Blake Yancey as Co-Leaders of the 2006 WPA Assessment Institute, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (13 July 2006).

• “Building Community in Basic Writing: LaGuardia Community College's First Year Experience Academies," with Professor Marisa Klages and Dr. Gail Green-Anderson at the Conference on Basic Writing Preconference (CCCC): Creating Access with Basic Writing--Successful Programs at Community Colleges, Chicago, Illinois (22 March 2006).

• "No Metaphors, No “Happening Adjectives,” No New Line Breaks: Black Milk and Tory Dent’s Oppositional Witness," CUNY Conference on Contemporary Poetry, New York, New York (3-6 November 2005).

• "The Second Space: Allende, Valenzuela, and Negotiating Home," Vernacular: The International Colloquium for Vernacular, Hispanic and Folkloric Studies, Puebla, Mexico (25-29 October 2005).

• "Citizen Cancer: "Nationless" Women in a Sick World," 2005 Women & Society Conference, Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York (23-24 September 2005).

• “ePortfolios and the First Year Academies: Radically Reconstructing Success in the First Year,” with Assistant Dean Steve Greenfeld at the Annual Conference on the First Year Experience, Phoenix, Arizona (4-8 February 2005).

• “ePortfolios and Creative Accountability: A Means of Integrated Learning and Assessment,” with Dean Paul Arcario, Assistant Dean Bret Eynon, Vice-Provost Terrel Rhodes, Dr. Judith Patton and Mr. Nakiso Maodza at the American Association of Colleges and Universities, San Francisco, California (25-29 January 2005).

• “Poesída: Deseo, Sexualidad y Sida en la Poesía Panlatina” Vernacular: The International Colloquium for Vernacular, Hispanic and Folkloric Studies, Puebla, Mexico (8-11 October 2003).

• “Evidentiary Boundaries: The Censorship of Demetria Martínez,” Fifth Conference of the Americas, Universidad de las Americas, Puebla, Mexico (17-21 October 2001).

• “Policing, Politicizing and Poeticizing the Virgin/Whore Split: Women and AIDS in American Society,” Sixth Annual Interdisciplinary Women’s Studies Conference, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, Georgia (March 2001).

• “Women Who Must: Tory Dent and River Huston,” Session Chair for “Post-Protease AIDS Literature” and Presenter, Northeastern Modern Language Association, Hartford, Connecticut (March 2001).

• “Traveling Light: Demetria Martínez and the Price of Nomadism in Latina Literature.” Eighth National American Women Writers of Color Conference, Salisbury State University, Ocean City, Maryland (October 1999).

• “More Than the Colonial IBM Thinkpad: The LINK Alternative,” Session Chair and Presenter, College Composition and Communication Conference, Chicago, Illinois (April 1998

• “Thresholds of Conflict: Marginalization and Resistance in Cisneros’ House on Mango Street and Viramontes’ Under the Feet of Jesus,” Seventh Annual National American Women Writers of Color Conference, Salisbury State University, Ocean City, Maryland (October 1997).

• “When the Picture’s Exposed: Rigoberta Menchú and the Negative Spirit Of Place,” The Spirit of Place in Contemporary European and Latin American Literature Conference, Lycoming College, Williamsport, Pennsylvania (April 1997).

• “Caught In a Net of Purpose, Forché, Eliot: Poetics, Politics and War,” American Culture Association Conference, Literature and Politics Division, San Antonio, Texas (March 1997).

• “Carolyn Forché: Political Poet,” Writing By Degrees: The National Graduate Creative Writing Conference, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York (March 1997).

• “Translated Women: The Political Voice of Everyday Experience,” National Graduate Women’s Conference, Penn State University, State College, Pennsylvania (March 1996)

• “Whitman’s Cathedrals and Lawrence’s Skyscrapers: An Encounter with the Sacred," International Conference on the Sacred and the Profane, West Georgia College, Atlanta, Georgia (October 1995).

Community Service

• New York Aquarium Dive Team Leader & Diver (2012-present)

• Veriditas Trained Labyrinth Facilitator (2008-present)

Selected Poetry Publications

• "Burrowing," The Potomac, (2009).

• "Mad Anna" and "What Kind of Poem Is This?" published under the umbrella title "Longing," Ars Medica, 3.2 (2007)

• "Subway Analogies," WOMB, 1.1 (2007).

• "Fairy Tales" and "Day's Break," The Paterson Literary Review, 33 (2004).

• "Resident's Notes: Chief Complaint--1 a.m." Poets Against the War Website, Featured "Poem of the Day" on 21 March 2003.

• "Testing for Birthdays," The Santa Clara Review (Spring 2003).

• "Two Photographs" and "Dress Rehearsal" New Writer (May/June 2002).

• "What is Owed" Curbside Review (Fall 2001).

• "A Love Poem" Edgz (Winter/Spring 2001).

• "Dream Slut" and "Pen Pals" New Writer (Fall 2000).

• "Emily Chooses A Wife," "Chanting Exhaustion," "La Curandera," and "El Agua," RiverSedge (Spring 1999).

• "A Garden in His Mind, His Hands," The Comstock Review (Spring 1998).

• "On Wednesday I Spoke of Mary" A&U: America's AIDS Magazine (August 1997).

Selected Past Academic Service (external)

• Association for Authentic, Experiential, Evidence-Based Learning's (AAEEBL) Digital Ethics Task Force (2021-2022).

• Consulting Editor, Change magazine (2018-2021).

• Basic Writing eJournal, editorial board (2009-2020).

• Council on Basic Writing (CBW) Board Member and past co-chair, (2008-2020).

• General Education Maps and Markers Project, Digital Working Group, American Association of Colleges and Universities (2014-2015).

• Taking College Teaching Seriously Faculty Coach: serving as a mentor for faculty in the Kresge-funded TCTS project facilitating weekly on-line conversations and feedback for pedagogy circles (2015).

• CCC Editorial Board Member (2010-2013).

• College Composition and Communication Conference Stage I Reviewer (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015).

• Global Skills for College Completion, a two year research project with 26 faculty from across the United States examining their practice as basic skills faculty, seeking to create a model for a more effective basic skills pedagogy (2010-2012).

• Modern Language Association (MLA) Member on the Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession (2005-2008, member; 2006-2008, committee co-chair).

• MLA Delegate Assembly Representative for Community Colleges (2004-2007)

• Carnegie Foundation/AACU Integrated Learning Project Team Member for LaGuardia Community College (2004-2006).

• Radical Teacher Editorial Board Member (1998-2008); Managing Editor, Radical Teacher (Fall 2001-January 2008).

• Writing By Degrees, founding member (1997-2000).

Selected Past Academic Service (LaGuardia)

• Coordinator for Accelerated Learning Basic Writing Course (ENA 101) at LaGuardia Community College: administering ENA 101 course, providing faculty professional development, creating curriculum materials (2014-2019).

• Strong Start to Finish Faculty Coach for ENA 101 (2018-2019).

• English 099 Curriculum Revision Working Group, member at LaGuardia Community College (2018).

• Convener & Facilitator of the ENA 101 Work Group and Course Curriculum Revision at LaGuardia Community College (2017-2018).

• The Capstone and Integrative Learning Faculty Development Seminar Leader at LaGuardia Community College (2016-2017).

• ePortfolio Leadership at LaGuardia including: I have served as a member of the Research Team, as one of the pilot faculty members, as Interim ePortfolio Director, and as part of the Assessment Leadership Team, working extensively with ePortfolio since 2002. I often work with LaGuardia's Center for Teaching and Learning during the academic year as a faculty leader for various professional development seminars using ePortfolio such as the Capstone Seminar and the Digital by Design seminar. I also co-led the ePortfolio Leadership Team.  (2002-2017). 

• Digital By Design Faculty Development Seminar Leader at LaGuardia Community College (2015-2017).

• Assessment Leadership Team at LaGuardia Community College, and primary writer for LaGuardia's Middle States Assessment chapter (Standard 14 text and Standard 14 appendix materials, 2011-2012).

• Common Reading Coordinator (2002-2009).

• First Year Experience Committee (2002-2009).

• Straight and Gay Alliance Faculty Co-Mentor, (2000-2009).

Education

Ph.D. / English & American Literature, Binghamton University

Dissertation: Miles of Poems/Culture of Blame: Advocacy, Activism and the Poetry of AIDS explores the seven sources of AIDS poetry—Anthologies, Writing Groups, Performances, Literary Magazines, the Internet, the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, and the work of prominent AIDS poets—in conjunction with my own poetry of AIDS. I argue that the poetry of AIDS, in the aesthetic tradition of Whitman, Sandburg, and Lindsay, creates a vehicle to mirror the national consciousness about this pandemic. AIDS poetry is democratic, written and published by professional and amateur poets alike, serving as a written witness to the many facets of life with AIDS. Accordingly, this poetry works as both advocacy and activism, accompanying and recording history, becoming history itself as the poetic works about AIDS call for social change. The theoretical lens for this work calls on feminist, Marxist, and queer literary theory to analyze the poetry of AIDS. Original poetry serves as section dividers, building on the theoretical and analytical themes throughout the dissertation. 

Co-Directors: Susan Strehle and Leslie Heywood.  Committee Members: Lennard Davis and Sidonie Smith.

Field Exam Areas: American Poetry and Poetic Theory, Latino/Latina Literature, 20th Century American Literature

Additional Certifications: Latin American and Caribbean Area Studies, College Teaching in English

M.A. / English Literature & Creative Writing, Binghamton University

Thesis: Boxes in the Attic (original poetry). 

Director: Ruth Stone

B.A. / Creative Writing & History, Lycoming College

Honors Thesis (Creative Writing): Lifting the Stable (original poetry

Director: Penelope Austin; Committee Members: G.W. Hawkes, Gary Boerckel

Honors Thesis (History): Spiralling Dreams of the Susquehanna: A Study of Local Creative Writers

Director: John F. Piper; Committee Members: Robert H. Larson, Gary Hafer, Robert VanVoorst

Complete C.V. Available Upon Request