Instructors

Atissa Banuazizi

Lecturer, WAC, 12-111, 617-324-3081, atissa@mit.edu

Karen Boiko

Karen Boiko

Lecturer II, PWHS & WAC, 14N-328, 617-253-2408, boiko@mit.edu

Teaching and Research interests include Nineteenth-century Literature, non-fiction writing, the Victorian novel, literary biography, Rhetoric, genres and film. In 2008 Karen co-edited, with Lucy Marx, the first edition of Angles, the new online magazine dedicated to exemplary writing from the Introductory Writing Courses at MIT.

Subjects:
*21W.012 - Writing and Rhetoric
*21W.775 - Writing about Nature and Environment Issues

Publications

  • "Reading and (Re-)Writing Class: Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters" - Victorian Literature and Culture (Spring 2005), "Samuel Smiles: Preaching the Gospel of Self-Help" Leeds Working Papers in Victorian Studies, Vol. 3 (Spring 2000)
  • "Finding an Audience: The Lecture Platform, the Political Platform, and Samuel Smiles's Early Career" Nineteenth-Century Prose, Spring 2001
  • Former editor of Heat Treating magazine.
Amaranth Borsuk

Amaranth Borsuk

Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow, 14N-213, 617-253-4532, amaranth@mit.edu

Amaranth Borsuk is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Comparative Media Studies and Writing and Humanistic Studies. A poet and scholar, she has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, where her work focused on the use of writing technologies by modern and contemporary poets to change their relationship to the page and their constructions of authorship. Her poems, collaborations, and translations have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Action Yes, Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, Colorado Review, Columbia Poetry Review, FIELD, and Denver Quarterly, among other journals. In addition to writing and studying poetry, Amaranth is a letterpress printer and book artist whose fascination with printed matter informs her work on digital media.

Subjects:
*21.762 - Poetry Workshop

Publications

Publications

  • Tonal Saw, a chapbook-length poem. The Song Cave, Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthan, eds. March 2010
  • "'There Have Been Pictures Here': Spirit Photography and Projective Mediumship in H.D.'s Tribute to Freud." Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 10.2 (2010), special issue, H.D. and the Archaeology of Religion:65-82
  • “‘Ma belle machine à écrire:’ Poet and Typewriter in the work of Blaise Cendrars.” Writing Technologies 2.1 (2008): n. pag. (24 pages). Web.

Links: http://amaranthborsuk.com/ >http://www.betweenpageandscreen.com/

Harlan Breindel

Harlan Breindel

Lecturer II, WAC, 38-583, 617-324-1983, breindel@mit.edu

Harlan came to MIT in 2005, having taught scientific and technical communication, research, rhetoric, and interdisciplinary courses for 20 years. As a faculty member at The American University in Cairo, he helped establish the writing across the curriculum initiative and implement faculty training programs. He’s also been involved in developing a number of dynamic non-traditional educational programs, including creative writing as therapy program for a New York substance abuse center (with grant support from Poets & Writers Inc.) and ESL classes as part of an African refugee program in Egypt. Outside of the “academy,” Harlan has worked as a rare books dealer, process server, domestic violence shelter manager, fiction editor, and NYC taxi driver. He tries to bring all of these experiences to the table at MIT where his main goal is helping students develop the kind of communications fluency they’ll need to develop into top-notch scientists and engineers.

Harlan teaches in Civil and Environmental Engineering, Biological Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Management, Chemical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering.

Research Interests: Narrative & self, communicating across the curriculum practices, the application of cognitive models to the teaching/learning of rhetoric, and representations of disability.

Subjects:
*1.018/730 - Ecology I: The Earth System
*3.155/6.152 - Micro/Nano Processing Technology
*3.042 - Materials Project Laboratory
*15.301 - Managerial Psychology Laboratory
*10.467 - Polymer Science Laboratory
*20.380 - Biological Engineering Design

Publications

Publications

  • Include fiction, essays, and numerous book reviews.

Stephen Brophy

Lecturer, WAC, 12-116, 617-324-3039, stephbr@mit.edu

Susan Carlisle

Lecturer, WAC, 34E-566, 617-234-2363, sucarl@mit.edu

Mary Caulfield

Mary Caulfield

Lecturer II, WAC, 12-113, 617-324-3081, mcaulf@mit.edu

Before coming to MIT, Mary Caulfield had a career in the consulting and software industries as a researcher and technical writer. She received a Master of Liberal Arts in Creative Writing and a Certificate of Special Studies in Management from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Wheaton College. Her current interests include community education and teaching through arts and storytelling. Over the past three years she has consulted with a non-profit group in Brazil on training and support for teachers in poor and undeserved communities.

B.D. Colen

B.D. Colen

Lecturer, PWHS, 14E-303, 617-413-1224, bdcolen@mit.edu

B. D. Colen is Harvard’s Senior Communications Officer for University science, responsible for media relations and communications for the University’s interdisciplinary and inter-school science efforts, including the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. The editor of the HarvardScience website, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning medical writer, science editor, columnist, author and photojournalist with 23 years experience in daily journalism at The Washington Post and Newsday.

Subjects:
*21W.736 - News Writing
*21W.749 - Documentary Photography and Photojournalism
*21W.778 - Science Journalism

Publications

Publications

  • Author of ten books on medical subjects, including: OR: The True Story of 24 hours in a Hospital’s Operating Room (1993), Hard Choices: Mixed Blessings of Modern Technology (1986), Born at Risk (1980).

Links: http://www.bdcolenphoto.com

Jane Abbott Connor

Jane Abbott Connor

Lecturer, WAC, 54-1026, 617-324-3081, jconnor@mit.edu

Jane Connor came to MIT after 18 years in industry, where she worked with teams and individuals to improve collaboration. Her focus is on how to produce communication that is effective and authentic; in particular, how listening in its many guises guides the ways in which we write, speak, meet, lead, influence, and collaborate. Professional development: Emotional Intelligence Consortium; Interaction Institute for Social Change; Harvard Program on Negotiation. BA in English from Swarthmore College; MA in Languages, Literature and Communication, emphasis on Communication Theory, from Columbia University.

Jennifer Craig

Jennifer Craig

Lecturer II, WAC, 33-320, 617-452-3841, jcraig@mit.edu

Jennifer Craig, M.S., M.A, is a Lecturer II in the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. Since arriving at MIT in 2002, she has taught primarily in Course 16, the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In addition to teaching writing and oral presentation, she also addresses teamwork and collaborative issues in professional communication. Ms. Craig is also interested in ESL issues and has worked with non-native-speaking graduate students in an Engineering Manufacturing degree program based in Singapore. She also teaches ESL in community settings, most recently at Massachusetts General Hospital and Cambridge Center for Adult Education. Prior to teaching at MIT, Ms. Craig taught at the University of Maine in Orono where she directed a Minor in Professional and Technical Writing. She also collaborated with the Department of New Media and with the College of Engineering, integrating writing and communication into the curricula. Prior to teaching at the University of Maine, Ms. Craig was a freelance technical editor and writer. Ms. Craig has written poetry, non-fiction and memoir; her work has been published in a number of literary journals.

Publications

  • Craig, J. (forthcoming). “Using Writing-across-the-curriculum in a Globally Networked Learning Environment with Multilingual, Multicultural Graduate Engineering Students." In WAC and Second Language Writers: Research Toward Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices. Parlor Press.
  • Craig, J., Poe, M., and Gonzalez Rojas, M. (July 2010). “Professional communication education in a global context: a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico and Universidad de Quintana Roo, Mexico,” Journal of Business and Technical Communication.
  • Poe, M., Lerner, N. & Craig, J. Learning to Communicate in Science and Engineering: Case Studies from MIT. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. 2010.
  • Craig, J, & Lerner, N., & Poe, M. (2008) Three case studies in teaching science and engineering communication across the curriculum, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 51(3), 280-301.
    NB: Article was top five finalist (out of 244 submissions) for the 2009 McGraw-Hill–Magna Publications Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning Award. Article re-printed for the Teaching Professor Conference.

Dave Custer

Dave Custer

Lecturer, WAC, 24-611, 617-253-7787, custer@mit.edu

Subjects:
*21W.033J - Science Writing and New Media

Links: http://web.mit.edu/custer/www/home.html

Kathleen Delaney

CI-H Advisor, WAC, E34-566, 617-324-3813, kdelaney@mit.edu

Nora Delaney

Nora Delaney

CI-H Advisor, WAC, 12-116, 617-324-3081, ndelaney@mit.edu

Nora Delaney is a writing advisor at MIT and a lecturer in the Writing Program at Boston University. In addition, Nora is a founding member of the Boston Poetry Union and Pen & Anvil Press. She edits Sixty-Six: The Journal of Sonnet Studies and Charles River Journal. Her essays, poems, and literary translations have appeared in Fulcrum and Suptropics, amongst other publications. Currently, Nora is translating a novel by the Dutch writer Boudewijn Büch.

Elizabeth Fox

Elizabeth Fox

CI-H Advisor, WAC Lecturer, Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, emfox@mit.edu

Betsy works in MIT's Writing and Communication Center, in the WAC program, and as a freelance editor. She usually teaches SP.401, Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, and has recently been a Writing Advisor for Introduction to Contemporary Indian Culture and World Music, among others. She is on the Board of Directors of PSYART, a foundation that supports the psychological study of the arts and holds annual international conferences, and has been President and Secretary of the D. H. Lawrence Society of North America.

Subjects:

*SP.401 - Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies
*21F.011 - Introduction to Contemporary Indian Culture

Publications

Publications

  • Betsy Fox has published a number of papers on D. H. Lawrence and on psychoanalytic theory. Her most recent publication is Psychoanalytic Encounters: Interdisciplinary Papers in Applied Psychoanalysis, which she co-edited. Upcoming articles include book reviews and a paper on a Bollywood version of Othello.

Erica Funkhouser

Erica Funkhouser

Lecturer, PWHS, 14N-221C, 617-253-4065, ericaf@mit.edu

Erica Funkhouser is poet and holds a B.A. from Vassar College and a M.A. From Standford University.

Subjects:
*21W.762 - Poetry Workshop
*21W.771 - Advanced Poetry Workshop

Publications

Publications

  • Erica Funkhouser is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Earthly (Houghton Mifflin, 2008). Her dramatic monologue in the voice of Sacagawea (from Sure Shot, HM 1992) led her to become involved with the production of Ken Burns’ PBS documentary on the Lewis and Clark Expedition; her essay on Sacagawea appears in Burns’ and Dayton Duncan’s book Lewis and Clark (Knopf, 1997). Her short fiction has appeared in The Massachusetts Review and an essay on war poetry was published in The Harvard Review. Funkhouser’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. One of her poems is sand-blasted into the wall of the Davis Square MBTA Station in Somerville, MA.

JoAnn Graziano

Lecturer, WAC, 14N-407, 617-253-3581, graziano@mit.edu

Gay Haldeman

Gay Haldeman

Lecturer, Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, haldeman@mit.edu

Gay Haldeman (Mary Gay Potter Haldeman) has a Master of Arts degree in Spanish Literature from the University of Maryland and another in Linguistics, from the University of Iowa. She has taught in the Writing and Communications Center at MIT every fall for more than 25 years, specializing in English as a Second Language. The rest of the year she resides in Florida, where she manages writer and professor Joe Haldeman's career, dealing with editors, answering correspondence (in Spanish and French as well as English), serving as travel agent, answering the phone, typing and filing, arranging publicity, selling Joe's out-of-print books, etc. She's a regular correspondent for the Spanish science fiction news magazine BEMonline and has taught with Joe at the Clarion SF Writing Workshops at Michigan State and Seattle. She's also an avid bicyclist who has ridden her bike from St. Augustine, Florida, to San Diego, California, as well as across England and Holland.

Louise Harrison-Lepera

CI-H Advisor, WAC, E34-566, 617-324-3813, lhl3@mit.edu

Louise Harrison Lepera is a Writing Advisor for C-I Humanities classes.

Gretchen Henderson

Gretchen Henderson

Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, 14N-213, hendersong@mit.edu

Gretchen E. Henderson is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Writing and Humanistic Studies. Working at the intersection of literature, art history, museum studies, disability studies, and music, her creative and critical work explores aesthetics of deformity, museology as narrative strategy, poetics of embodiment, and literary appropriations of music. Her writings have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies (The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, The Southern Review, The &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing) with forthcoming novels including Galerie de Difformité (&NOW Books) and The House Enters the Street (Starcherone Books), a critical study of literary appropriations of music, On Marvellous Things Heard (Green Lantern Press), and a poetry chapbook engaging cartographic history, Wreckage: By Land & By Sea (Dancing Girl Press). At MIT, she is working on Ugliness: A Cultural History, while continuing the collaborative deformation of her Galerie de Difformité, which invites participation at:

Links: http://difformite.wordpress.com/

Philip Hilts

Philip Hilts

Director, Knight Science Journalism Fellowships, E19-623, 617-258-8249, philts@mit.edu

Philip Hilts is the Director of Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program. Formerly with New York Times and Washington Post.  Former Neiman fellow, Magee Journalism Fellow in Southern Africa. He teaches in the Graduate Program in Science Writing.

Subjects:
*21W.825 - Advanced Science Writing Seminar

Publications

Publications

  • Scientific Temperaments: Three Lives in Contemporary Science
  • Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation
  • Smokescreen: The Trust Behind the Tobacco Industry Cover-Up
  • Memory's Ghost: The Strange Tale of Mr. M and the Nature of Memory 

Links: http://www.philiphilts.com/

Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin

CI-H Advisor, WAC Lecturer, Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, irw@mit.edu

Robert A. Irwin studied philosophy at Princeton University and Antioch College and earned a Ph.D. in sociology at Brandeis University. He has taught at Tufts, Brandeis, and Holy Cross. Bob enjoys helping people and, as a would-be polymath, delights in the variety of Writing Center clients.

Publications

Publications

  • Dr. Irwin's publications include the entry on “Revolution” for Protest, Power, and Change (1997), an encyclopedia on nonviolent struggle. “Violent Disobedience and Civil Resistance,” “Nonviolent Success,” and other writings can be found on the Web, including (in both English and Turkish) “Why Nonviolence? Introduction to Theory and Strategy.” Of his book Building a Peace System (1989), Noam Chomsky has written: it “lays out the choices before us clearly and accurately . . . . If it stimulates thought and action, the possibilities for human survival will be enhanced.”

Nora Jackson

CI-Advisor, WAC, 14N-432, 617-452-3597, norajack@mit.edu

Education: A.B.D. University of Brussels, Belgium, Department of Language and Literature; completing dissertation on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s late poetry. B.A., M.A. Germanic Languages, double major in English and Dutch Language and Literature, University of Brussels, Department of Language and Literature, 1998. Thesis: “A Comparative Study of the Sublime in the Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Charles Baudelaire.” Interests: British Romantic Poetry and Prose, French Modernist Poetry and Prose, Dutch-language Poetry and Prose, Aesthetics, Editing and Translation

Publications

Publications

  • Publications: Meurs, Nora, “Resisting the Silence: Coleridge’s Courtship of the Sublime,” The Coleridge Bulletin ns 25 (Spring 2005): 40-45. Meurs, Nora, Review essay of Coleridge’s Writings, Volume 5 : On the Sublime, ed. Vallins, David, The Coleridge Bulletin ns 23 (Spring 2004): 91-100.

Sonal Jhaveri

Sonal Jhaveri

Lecturer, WAC, 46-6023a, 617-253-5717, sonal@mit.edu

Jane Kokernak

Jane Kokernak

Lecturer I, WAC, 12-113, 617-324-2494, kokernak@mit.edu

Jane Kokernak joined MIT as a CI-M lecturer in January 2008. Previously, she oversaw the writing center at Mount Ida College in Newton and coordinated a WAC initiative at Simmons College in Boston. Currently she is also a contributor to ASweetLife, an online journal for people with diabetes, and works with Storybuilders.org to help organizations make digital stories. Earlier in her career, she worked for over a decade as a researcher/writer in nonprofit development for organizations that included the Albert Einstein Institution, Harvard University, Walker Home and School, and Worcester Art Museum.

Her articles and essays have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Equally Shared Parenting, P•M•S poemmemoirstory, and Tomorrow's Professor. She is at work on a biography of Elizabeth Coleman White (1871-1954), a farmer and amateur botanist who introduced the first cultivated blueberry to the United States.

Subjects:
*2.009 - Product Engineering Processes
*2.671 - Instrument and Measurement
*7.02 - Experimental Biology and Communication
*10.26 - Chemical Engineering Products Laboratory
*10.28 - Chemical/Biological Engineering Laboratory
*22.09 - Principles of Nuclear Radiation, Measurement, and Protection

Publications

Publications

  • Brave New World of Avatars, ASweetLife (2010)
  • Little Creatures, P.M.S. poemmemoirstory (2009)
  • Thethered to the Body, Bellevue Literary Review (2008)
  • Ways to Teach Peer Writing and Response, with Lowry Pei, Tomorrow's Professor (2009)

Links: http://leafstitchword.wordpress.com/

Marilyn Levine

Marilyn Levine

Lecturer I, Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, maynew@mit.edu

Marilyn Levine has worked for the past eight years as a teacher and editor of proposals, manuscripts, oral presentations, and numerous other written and oral academic projects undertaken by undergraduate and graduate students, post-docs, staff, and faculty at MIT. For the past 25 years, Ms. Levine has worked as a communications consultant to architects and as a newspaper journalist.

Publications

Publications

  • Ms. Levine has published non-fiction work in magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, including articles in Books and Bookmen (London) and Architectural Record (New York). She has also written and directed three films, including “Something to Do with the Wall” (aired on Cinemax) and “Life, Death & Baseball” (distributed internationally and screened at the Harvard Film Archive). Recently, her edited projects include books, grants, and scholarly articles written by Israeli architect Dr. Tali Hatuka, including two recent books: Revisioning Moments: Violent Acts and Urban Space in Contemporary Tel Aviv, and Urban Design and Civil Protests: A Contemporary Mediation, both published by the University of Texas Press. During this same period, she has edited professional articles in the fields of art history, economics, chemistry, music, business, urban studies, media studies, and political science. Ms. Levine is currently at work on a collection of non-fiction essays.

Shariann Lewitt

Lecturer, PWHS, 14N-212, 617-452-3215, slewitt@mit.edu

Subjects:
*21W.023 - Writing and Experience
*21W.757 - Fiction Workshop

Publications

Publications

  • Ms. Lewitt is the author of 10 fiction novels, including: Rebel Sutra, Tor Books, September 2000, Interface Masque, Tor Books, March 1997 and Memento Mori, Tor Books, March 1995. She has over 40 short stories published in the following anthologies: The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Kaye, ed., St. Martin's Press, 1998 and Bending the Landscape, Griffith and Pagel, eds., Overlook Press 1998.

Lucy Marx

Lecturer, PWHS, 14N-221C, 617-258-6561, ltmarx@mit.edu

Lucy has taught writing at MIT since 1986. She has also taught at UMass Boston, Boston University, and in the Teachers as Scholars Program. In 2008, she co-edited the first edition of Angles, an online magazine dedicated to exemplary writing from the Introductory Writing Courses at MIT.

Subjects:
*21W.021 - Writing and Experience

Publications

Publications

  • Lucy's writing includes a play, The Devil Be Familiar, performed in Rowley, Massachusetts in 1992 to commemorate the tri-centennial of the witch trials; short fiction, including a story in Wavelength; poetry and prose in Venceremos (Simon & Schuster, 1971), and a novel in progress based on the stories of Genesis.

Janis Melvold

Lecturer II, PWHS & WAC, 14N-322, 617-715-5193, melvold@mit.edu

Subjects:
*21W.031 - Science Writing and New Media: Explorations in Communicating about Science and Technology

Publications

Publications

  • Author of scholarly articles in linguistics, neoropsychology, and neurology in Clinical Neurology of Aging, Cortex, Boston Globe, Brain and Language, Aphasiology, and other publications.

Marilee Ogren-Balkema

Marilee Ogren-Balkema

Lecturer II, WAC, 68-102B, 617-253-3717, ogren@mit.edu

Marilee has been teaching scientific communication in the WAC program for over 10 years. She teaches primarily in biology and BCS but also chemistry, and in chemical and biological engineering. Her PhD and scholarly publications in the neurosciences, and her former work as a journal editor and staff writer provide a rich background for this teaching. Marilee has also maintained a freelance medical/scientific writing/editing business since the mid 1980's.

Karen Pepper

Lecturer, WAC, 12-111, 617-324-2218, kpepper@mit.edu

Kym Ragusa

Kym Ragusa

Lecturer, PWHS, 14N-221C, 617-253-4532, kragusa@mit.edu

Kym Ragusa currently teaches Nonfiction in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and in the Writing and Humanistic Studies Program at MIT.  She is the recipient of a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and an Ida and Daniel Lang Award for Excellence in the Humanities. She has taught Creative Writing at City College, Queens College, and Eugene Lang College in New York, and at Josai International University in Japan.  The Skin Between Us was the winner of the 2009 John Fante Prize and was named a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Foundation's 2007 Legacy Award in Nonfiction. It was published in Italy in May, 2008.

Subjects:
*21W.023 - Writing and Experience
*21W.742J - Writing about Race

Publications

Publications

  • Kym Ragusa is the author of The Skin Between Us: A Memoir of Race, Beauty and Belonging, published by W.W. Norton and Company in 2006.
  • Her films Passing and Fuori/Outside have been shown on PBS and at festivals throughout North America and Europe. Her video, Demarcations, had its premiere at the Whitney Museum of American Art. 
  • Her essays have appeared in the anthologies Are Italians White: The Making of Race in America, The Milk of Almonds, and About Face: Women Write What They See When They Look In the Mirror, as well as the journals Leggendaria and TutteStorie.

Profiles: September 2010

Leslie Ann Roldan

Leslie Ann Roldan

Lecturer II, WAC, 12-113, 617-324-2401, lroldan@mit.edu

Leslie Ann Roldan, PhD, is a Lecturer II with Writing Across the Curriculum, and Executive Director of the Cell Decision Process Center, an NIH Center of Excellence in Systems Biology. She holds a BA in English from Stanford University, and a PhD in Biology from MIT, where she trained in biochemistry with Tania Baker. Prior to coming to MIT's WAC program in 2005, she was a scientific editor who commissioned and edited biology college-level text and articles for the web. She currently teaches primarily in the Biology department, and her scholarly research focuses on how students develop scientific communication skills through oral presentations, including journal clubs and discussion leading.

Subjects:
*7.02 - Introduction to Experimental Biology and Communication
*7.16 - Biotechnology II
*7.18 - Topics in Experimental Biology
*9.85 - Infant & Child Cognition
*20.109 - Laboratory Fundamentals in Biological Engineering

Publications

Publications

  • From 2001-2005, Leslie Roldan was a scientific editor for a web-based publishing company (www.ergito.com), where she developed college-level textbooks and articles in introductory biology, neurobiology, and structural biology

Thalia Rubio

Lecturer I, WAC & Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, trubio@mit.edu

 

Susan Ruff

Susan Ruff

Lecturer II, WAC, 2-374, 617-253-7948, ruff@mit.edu

Susan Ruff has been teaching technical communication at MIT since the spring of 2003. Most of her teaching has been in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Mathematics, although she has also taught in Courses 2, 6, 7, and 20. Her research interests include mathematical communication pedagogy and the communication of software engineers in industry.
When not at MIT, she is often traveling to climb rock and ice.

Subjects:
Susan supports the teaching of mathematical communication in all of the CI-Ms in the Department of Mathematics. These subjects include Real Analysis, Principles of Applied Mathematics, Project Laboratory in Mathematics, and about 10 undergraduate seminars.

Publications

Publications

  • Boston Rocks, 2nd ed., R. Doucette, S. Ruff, Eds. Cambridge: MIT Outing Club, 2003, Copyright update 2008; a guidebook to rock climbing in the Boston area.
  • Ruff, Susan and Michael Carter, "Communication Learning Outcomes from Software
    Engineering Professionals: A Basis for Teaching Communication in the Engineering
    Curriculum" 39th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference 2009, W1E: 1-6. See: http://fie-conference.org/fie2009/papers/1290.pdf.

Links: http://web.mit.edu/ruff/www/

Juergen Schoenstein

Juergen Schoenstein

Lecturer, WAC, 12-113, 617-324-2401, juergen@mit.edu

Juergen Schoenstein is a geographer and a journalist; in two decades as a New York City-based correspondent for several major German publications, he has covered business and politics, as well as science and technology. He is currently a freelance writer for the German edition of WIRED, as well as the editor-in-chief of ScienceBlogs.de, a science-themed blog portal in German language, which is part of the National Geographic network.

Pamela Siska

Pamela Siska

Lecturer, WAC & Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, pjsiska@mit.edu

Pamela has been with MIT's Writing and Communication Center for 18 years. She is also a lecturer in WAC and was a contributor to The Mayfield Handbook of Technical & Scientific Writing . Pamela has an MA in English from Boston University, where she taught writing and literature courses before coming to MIT. She is currently writing her doctoral dissertation on Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Subjects:
*6.033 - Computer System Engineering
*2.671 - Measurement and Instrumentation
*21W.794 - Graduate Tech Writing Workshop
*6.021 - Cellular Biophysics

Publications

Publications

  • “Going off in Warm Blood Like Romeo”: Theatricality and Representations of the Body in Keats’s Letters." Paper presented at the 17th Annual Conference of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, October 2011.
  • "'The Things I So Indispensably Needed': Material Culture as a Reflection of Mary Shelley’s Life.” In Material Women: Consuming Desires and Collecting Objects, 1750-1950, eds Beth Tobin and Maureen Goggin. Ashgate Publishing, 2009.
  • Joseph Kozikowski and Pamela Siska. “Effective Governance of Global Market Clearance Management Operations.” Regulatory Focus. February 2009.
  • Conroy, Thomas; Lerner, Neal; Siska, Pamela, 2009 “Graduate Students as Writing Tutors: Role Conflict and the Nature of Professionalization.” In Weaving Knowledge Together: Writing Centers and Collaboration, eds Carol Peterson Haviland et al. NWCA Press, 1998.
  • “The Owl or the Nightingale? Need Debate Mean Opposition?” English Language Notes, September 2001

Amanda Sobel

Amanda Sobel

Lecturer I, WAC & Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, asobel@mit.edu

Amanda Sobel holds degrees in Sanskrit and Indian Studies and in Celtic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. She is interested both in how people form interpretations of the world around them and in how people choose to express their interpretations and relate their experiences. As a ceramicist, writer of personal essays and polyglot, she often thinks about translation--from one language to another language, from verbal communication to visual, musical and other forms of communication.

Susan Spilecki

Susan Spilecki

Lecturer, Writing Center, 12-132, 617-253-3090, spilecki@mit.edu

Susan Spilecki received her MFA in writing and literature in 1994. She has published her essays and poetry in journals such as Quarterly West, Frontiers, and Quarter After Eight. Since 1995, she has worked at MIT’s Writing and Communication Center, where she specializes in helping writers working on application essays, theses/dissertations, and creative writing. She also does technical editing for private clients. Through her company, Flying Pig Coaching, she provides strategies for people with procrastination problems, particularly professionals and dissertation writers. She is currently pursuing an MA in theology at the Episcopal Divinity School.

Jessie Stickgold-Sarah

Jessie Stickgold-Sarah

Lecturer I, WAC, 12-112, 617-324-2302, jmss@mit.edu

Jessie Stickgold-Sarah '97 is a Lecturer with Writing Across the Curriculum. She holds a BS in EECS from MIT and a PhD in English from Brandeis University, where she studied the use of genetic language in fiction. Previously, she worked as a network engineer in Silicon Valley research labs. She also taught courses in writing, literature and science writing at Brandeis. Her research focuses on the use of scientific language in literature and in public policy.

Linda Sutliff

Linda Sutliff

Lecturer, WAC, 12-112, 617-324-2371, lsutliff@mit.edu

Linda L. Sutliff, part-time lecturer in Writing across the Curriculum. Drawing on approximately 20 years of energy experience, Linda Sutliff specializes in strategic planning, financial analysis and economic analysis of power systems. She brings to MIT more than 20 years of full- and part-time college teaching experience in English. She is the owner of a management consulting firm and has co-authored Cambridge Energy Research Associates papers on advanced combined-cycle systems and the influence of low precipitation periods on power price and supply reliability. In-progress work includes an analysis of wind power economics and of New York State power generation. She is a former assistant secretary of energy for the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Ms. Sutliff holds a BA from Baldwin-Wallace College, an MA from Bowling Green State University, and an MBA from the Carroll School of Management, Boston College. She is a member of the American Economic Association, the International Association of Energy Economists, the Association of Energy Engineers and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Cynthia Taft

Lecturer, PWHS, 14N-316, 617-715-5194,
cbtaft@mit.edu

Cynthia Taft's honors include American Associate of University Women Doctoral Fellow.

Subjects:
*21W.034 - Writing and Experience: Perspectives on Medicine and Public Health

Donald Unger

Donald Unger

Lecturer, PWHS & WAC, 12-112, 617-253-3039, donunger@mit.edu

Donald N.S. Unger, MFA, PhD, is a lecturer in Writing Across the Curriculum and the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. Scholarly interests include tracking changes in the representation of men, masculinity, and fatherhood in both language use and in popular culture, and questions of mutual assessment in the writing classroom. He has done business writing for Knowledge@Wharton and its affiliated sites. His nonfiction work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Village Voice, among other places. He has done political commentary for the NPR affiliates in Amherst, Massachusetts and Albany, New York. His short fiction has been published in literary magazines in the US, Canada and Europe.

Subjects:
*21W.034 - Writing and Rhetoric: Introduction to Contemporary Rhetoric

Publications

Publications

  • Don's book from Temple University Press: Men Can: The Changing Image and Reality of Fatherhood in America has been published.
  • Don's next book in progress: How Can I Trust Him?: Men as Caregivers

Links: Temple University Press

Review of Men Can from Voice Male

Kim Vaeth

Kim Vaeth

CI-H Advisor, WAC, E34-566, 617-324-3818, kjvaeth@mit.edu

Kim Vaeth is the author of a book of poems, Her Yes. Her poetic texts for orchestra, in collaboration with Richard Danielpour, composer, include Elegies performed by the London Philharmonic, and American Requiem performed by the Pacific Symphony. Elegies premiered at Carnegie Hall with the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. She has had residencies at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony and has taught at Goddard College, Simmons College, Emerson College, Boston University and in Literature at MIT. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review and Grand Street, and The Boston Review, among other publications.

Subjects:
*CMS.100 - Comparative Media Studies
*STS.009 - Evolution and Society
*21L.004 - Reading Poetry
*21L.017 - Art of the Probable
*21M.011 - Introduction to Western Music<
*21L.421 - Comedy

Publications

Publications

  • Her Yes, Zoland Books
  • Elegies, London Philharmonic, Sony Classical
  • American Requiem, Pacific Symphony, Reference Records
  • "Again She Says Try To," H.D. and Others After, ed. by Donna Hollenberg, University of Iowa Press
  • "The House of Madame K," Carolyn Kizer: Perspectives on her Life and Work, ed. by Annie Finch, J. Keller and C. McClelland, CavanKerry Press

Lydia Volaitis

Lydia Volaitis

Lecturer, WAC, 12-112, 617-324-2302, lydiav@mit.edu

Lydia Volaitis is a full-time lecturer in the Writing Across the Curriculum Program. Prior to joining WAC.  She was principal and founder of Vox Informa, which provides human factors, usability, and program assessment consulting to private, government, and non-profit organizations. Dr. Volaitis was a Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research from 1995-2001, and was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at GTE Laboratories, Inc. from 1988-1995. She holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology (with focus on Speech and Language) from Northeastern University, and a BA from Columbia University in Language Science (Linguistics, Psychology and Computer Science).

Publications

Publications

Andrea Walsh

Andrea Walsh

Lecturer II, PWHS, 14N-214, 617-253-7894, aswalsh@mit.edu

Andrea Walsh, a historical sociologist, teaches in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies and in Women's and Gender Studies. She also is affiliated with the Comparative Media Studies Program. Her teaching and research interests center on gender, social movements, and media culture in the U.S.

Subjects:
*21W.011 - Writing and Rhetoric

Publications

Publications

  • Dr. Walsh's publications include "Women's Film and Female Experience: 1940-1950" and various articles on gender, visual media and aging. Most recently she published a piece on the “everyday justice” practices of 19th century American women’s rights activists who participated in dress reform, marriage reform and holistic health initiatives. She is also currently writing about the portrayal of the first wave of American feminism in documentary film

Jeanne Wildman

CI-H Advisor, WAC, 12-116, 617-324-3081, jwildman@mit.edu