Design Editor. Literacy in Composition Studies, 2012-Present.

In my capacity as Design Editor at LiCS I am responsible for the digitization of content in .pdf and .html formats. I also run our website (powered by OJS) and am responsible for metadata creation and dissemination to a host of preservation and distribution services. Finally, I also evaluate articles, copyedit and participate in the governance of journal.

Literacy in Composition Studies is a refereed open access online journal that sponsors scholarly activity at the nexus of Literacy and Composition Studies. We foreground literacy and composition as our keywords, because they do particular kinds of work. Composition points to the range of writing courses at the college level, including FYC, WAC/WID, writing studies, and professional writing, even as it signals the institutional, disciplinary, and historically problematic nature of the field. Through literacy, we denote practices that are both deeply context-bound and always ideological. Literacy and Composition are therefore contested terms that often mark where the struggles to define literate subjects and confer literacy’s value are enacted. Orienting a Composition Studies journal around literacy prompts us to investigate the ways that writing is interpretive as well as persuasive; to analyze the connections and disconnections between writing and reading; and to examine the ways in which literacy acts on or constitutes the writer even as the writer seeks to act on or with others.

Webmaster.  The Citation Project, 2011-2013.

A project led by Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson, The Citation Project is a multi-institution research project responding to educators’ concerns about plagiarism and the teaching of writing. Although much has been written on this topic and many have expressed concerns, little empirical data is available to describe what students are actually doing with their sources. At present, therefore, educators must make policy decisions and pedagogy based on anecdote, personal observation, media reports, and the claims of corporations that sell “solutions.”

The Citation Project begins the process of providing descriptive data. Our team systematically studies student papers that were produced in college writing courses and that draw on sources. Our purpose is to describe how student writers use their sources. With this information, educators will be able to make informed decisions about best practices for formulating plagiarism policies and for teaching rhetorically effective and ethically responsible methods of writing from sources.

Preventing plagiarism is a desired outcome of our research, as the subtitle above indicates, but the Citation Project research suggests that students’ knowing how to understand and synthesize complex, lengthy sources is essential to effective plagiarism prevention. If instructors know how shallowly students are engaging with their research source—and that is what the Citation Project research reveals—then they know what responsible pedagogy needs to address.

Webmaster.  Syrguide Wiki, 2010-2013.

My work with SyrGuide ended toward the end of my graduate career. I installed, tweaked and maintained the site.  SyrGuide relied on MediaWiki software (the wiki that runs Wikipedia) to create a knowledge base for use in Dr. Kennedy’s classes. Her project continues to grow and I’m glad I had a part in its original design.

SyrGuide is an ongoing student-built site that seeks answers to one central question: “Where’s the good stuff?” We explore the communities and resources of the greater Syracuse, New York area with a special emphasis on the Hill. You’ll find all sorts of information here, including places to go, things to do, and information on campus life from a student perspective. We also offer a growing number of articles on curious and serious aspects of campus history.

Begun in the fall of 2009, the site has been developed by students in a number of Advanced Writing Studios at the Syracuse University Writing Program. This project will continue to transform as future classes contribute additional information and/or features for a more thorough overview of the area.

Webmaster/Project Coordinator.  wiki-comp, 2010-2013.

Wiki-Comp is an open-access, anonymous collaborative writing space that “unfreezes” classic CCCs texts, allowing us to reshape, remix, and revise them. This intertextual endeavor seeks to hear from all voices in the field–new and seasoned alike. The “product” will remain in “process,” as we collaborate to co-create composition’s future. To kick off this initiative, we are revisiting the first CCCCs Chair’s address, “A View From The Center,” given by Richard Lloyd-Jones in 1977. Clickhere to access the remix space, or locate it on the sidebar to the left.

We all know that composing is a collaborative process. But until very recently, our scholarship has been frozen in fixed products attributed to “authors.” Using Wiki technology, Wiki-Comp aims to make visible the networked realities of writing and knowledge-production, thereby opening new space to imagine and enact composition’s future. By remixing classic articles from “C’s,” and making them freely available to reshape for our current moment, we hope to show how writing and thinking in the field of Composition happens. Collaborate. Elaborate. Invigorate Composition’s future! Join the composition mashup movement!