Institute Leaders
Chloé Diepenbrock, University of Houston, Clear Lake
Chloé Diepenbrock has been involved in writing center work since 1983, when she entered the
Ph.D. program in Rhetoric, Linguistics, and Literature at the University of Southern California
and was hired as a writing center tutor. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Writing at
the University of Houston-Clear Lake, where she has taught writing and acted as writing program
convener since 1992. She also created a Master's-level concentration in Composition Pedagogy and
founded the University Writing Center at UHCL in 1993. Her writing center has moved twice in its
13 years of operation, so she has learned to manage change and growth as a natural part of the
development process. Chloé has mentored several writing center start-ups in the Houston area
and served as Vice President and President of the South Central Writing Centers Association (SCWCA).
She also chaired the SCWCA 2002 conference held in Houston, Texas. Chloé has presented on writing
center topics in many venues—CCCC, The Watson Conference, IWCA, SCWCA, and PCWCA.
Lisa Ede, Oregon State University
Lisa Ede has directed the Center for Writing and Learning (CWL)
at Oregon State University since 1980. She has presented at both regional writing center conferences
and the IWCA conference. OSU's CWL hosted the 2006 Pacific Northwest Writing Centers Association
Conference in April. Ede's article "Writing as a Social Process: A Theoretical Foundation
for Writing Centers" was awarded the 1990 National Writing Center Association Award for
outstanding scholarship on writing centers. Ede is the author, coauthor,
editor, or coeditor of six books. Her most recent publication is
Situating Composition: Composition Studies and the Politics of Location.
Lauren Fitzgerald, Yeshiva University
Lauren Fitzgerald has worked in New York City area writing centers for over fifteen years,
starting with her first visit as a graduate student to the Expository Writing Program Writing Center
at New York University. After serving as a professional tutor at Nassau Community College and Writing
Center Director at Barnard College, she moved uptown to Yeshiva University, where she has directed the
Yeshiva College Writing Center for nearly a decade and is Associate Professor of English. Her writing
center publications have appeared in
Composition Studies,
The Writing Center Journal,
The Writing Lab Newsletter, and several edited collections. She served on the Northeast
Writing Centers Association Steering Committee, helped to found the NYC Metro-Area Writing Centers
Group, was a member of the Council of Writing Program Administrators Executive Board, and, in 2005 and
2006, co-led the annual WPA Summer Workshop. Her research interests include the influence of institutional
cultures on writing centers, the relationship between directing writing centers and writing program
administration, and roles writing center workers might play in addressing the plagiarism "crisis."
Dodie Forrest, Yakima Valley Community College
Dodie Forrest has been a writing center director since 1999 at Yakima Valley Community
College, where she also teaches writing courses from basic writing to college-level
composition, as well as courses in women's literature, introduction to plays, and tutor
preparation. A long time writing center enthusiast and practitioner, she has been involved
in writing center work since 1985, when she was an undergraduate English major at Oregon
State University. She is an active member of
PNWCA and
PNW-TYCA, having served as former coeditor of
Pacific View, the regional TYCA
newsletter. She has presented with colleagues and writing consultants at national and
regional conferences and recently coauthored an article to appear on McGraw-Hill's
Teaching Basic Writing listserv. Dodie and her writing consultants soon will be
happily boxing up their belongings and moving into a new writing center which they
helped design.
Cinthia Gannett, Loyola College in Maryland
Cinthia Gannett is Associate Professor of Writing and the Director of the Writing Center
and Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) at Loyola College in Maryland. She came to Loyola
from the University of New Hampshire, where she helped direct the linked UNH Writing Center
and WAC Program with Robert Connors for nearly ten years. Before that she founded the
Learning Center and WAC Program and coordinated the Writing Program at UNH at Manchester.
As a graduate student at UNH in the early 1970s, she tutored in a much earlier incarnation
of a writing center, "The Grammar Workshop," though she didn't know what it was at the time!
Gannett is the author of
Gender and the Journal (1992) and various articles on diaries,
journals, and portfolios and has been working with writing centers and WAC programs for more
than twenty years. Her current research and professional interests include the development
of discursive competence of graduate students in communication sciences and disorders,
graduate student administrators in writing center/ WAC programs, the uses of current
international translation studies as theoretical models and metaphors for writing center
and WAC work, and the development of WAC/WID/Writing Center Archives. She is co-editing a
collection with Tom Pace on Jesuit rhetoric and pedagogy. With Dr. Peggy O'Neill, she is
co-editing a customized Loyola writing handbook with disciplinary style guides contributed
from every department.
Patricia Melei, Lemont High School
Patricia Melei designed The Bridge, Lemont High School's Writing Center in 2006 and has 20
years experience as a high school English teacher. She began her career in writing as a
member of a family of eleven when she recognized writing was the best way to be heard
among all those voices! She has built a strong WAC-based Writing Center and technology
is a main anchor. She uses tablet PCs to make writing and research more possible with
reluctant writers. Two staff members assist in the Center and peer tutors who are
enrolled in a class called Rhetoric and Composition. The Bridge's theme, developing a
community of writers, produced strong results which Patty looks forward to sharing with
her colleagues. Though new to the setting, Patty recognizes writing centers in the K-12
setting are key for academic success and a strong sense of self.
Clyde Moneyhun, Stanford University
Clyde Moneyhun has taught writing for nearly 30 years. He has directed three writing programs
and four writing centers and is currently Associate Director of the Program in Writing and
Rhetoric and also Director of the Writing Center at Stanford University. He has published
essays and reviews in CCC, JAC, Rhetoric Review, and WPA; his most recent essay,
"Literary Texts as Primers in Meaning-Making," will appear in Integrating Literature and
Writing Instruction in First-Year English (edited by Judith Anderson and Christine Farris,
MLA Press, 2006). He is the author of
Living Languages (with Nancy Buffington and Marvin Diogenes,
Prentice Hall, 1996),
Crafting Fiction (with Marvin Diogenes, McGraw-Hill, 2001), and
Arguing
With Power (McGraw-Hill, forthcoming in 2007). He has served as an executive committee member of WPA
(2000-04) and CCCC (2006-2009) and was local chair of the annual WPA conference in 2004.
He had the honor of serving as a co-chair and workshop leader at last year's IWCA Summer Institute.
He tutors, joyfully, every week.
Leigh Ryan, University of Maryland
Leigh Ryan has directed the Writing Center at the University of Maryland since 1982. In addition to
articles on mentoring, writing, and writing center theory, practice, and administration, she is the
author of
The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors (4th edition with Lisa Zimmerelli). She has
presented at regional, national, and international writing center and composition conferences. Former
secretary of the International Writing Centers Association and president of the Maryland
Association of Teachers of English, she currently serves as president of the Mid-Atlantic Writing
Centers Association and on the IWCA Executive Board. She has consulted on writing centers at institutions
in the United States, South Africa, and the Netherlands. In addition to her writing center work,
Ryan volunteers at a plantation house museum, and was instrumental in securing the reversal of an
1894 dishonorable discharge for Henry Vinton Plummer, a former slave and the first African American
chaplain in the regular U.S. Army; she is writing his biography. Leigh is excited to collaborate
with her colleagues for this upcoming summer institute.
