Annual Graduate Student Colloquium

Friday, March 11, 2011

Keynote Speaker:

Dr. Terry Myers Zawacki

(George Mason University)

“Researching the Local/Writing the International:

Developing Culturally Inclusive Writing Pedagogies”

7:00 PM

Colson 130

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. and co-chairs the cross-university Writing Assessment Group charged with overseeing a state-mandated assessment of students’ writing competence across disciplines. Until stepping down this year, she also directed the University Writing Center.

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. She also developed a peer tutoring in writing in the disciplines course and a writing fellows program, which she continues to oversee. Her publications include Engaged Writers and Dynamic Disciplines: Research on the Academic Writing Life, co-authored with Chris Thaiss, along with articles on 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 need to learn from second language scholarship and practice to work effectively with multi-lingual writers. The latter was the focus of her keynote address at the 2010 Writing Across the Curriculum conference.

Prof. Zawacki is on the Consultants Board of the International WAC Network and a section editor for the Writing Fellows pages of the WAC Clearinghouse. She also serves on the editorial board of Across the Disciplines: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Academic Writing and is on the Publications Review Board for the Digital Books series on the WAC Clearinghouse. In addition, she is the WID specialist for the Diana Hacker series of handbooks published by Bedford/St. Martin’s, among these A Writer’s Reference and The Bedford Handbook.