The Director of the Writing Centers for St. John’s is
Dr. Harry Denny. Aside from being an Assistant Professor of
English, Harry collaborates on writing center programming, pedagogy
and practice with the wider leadership of the Institute for Writing Studies. The IWS represents
St. John’s campus-wide commitment to writing through First-Year Writing,
Writing across the Curriculum, and the Writing Centers. Harry also
teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in composition studies
with an emphasis on writing center theory and practice, social
justice and activist writing, research methods and post-critical
theories.
The Associate Directors of the Queens and Staten Island Writing
Centers are Tom
Philipose and Chris Leary,
respectively. As administrators for their campus writing centers,
Tom and Chris recruit, train, and evaluate writing consultants, and
they coordinate the wider curriculum for on-going staff development
with Harry and the consultants. Tom and Chris are also charged with
mentoring and leading outreach and research projects on both
campuses. They both often teach courses for the IWS or English
Department on writing center theory and practice, fiction writing,
and composition studies.
The Writing Center works closely with both the St. John’s
University Writing Across the Curriculum program and First Year
Writing, as all are under the umbrella of the Institute for Writing
Studies.
Dr. Derek Owens directs the Institute for Writing Studies as a
whole, while
Dr. Anne Geller directs the Writing Across the Curriculum
program and Dr. Carmen Kynard directs First Year
Writing.
Virginia Buccino and Connie
Desimone are the full-time Administrative Assistants for
the Writing Centers at Queens and Staten Island, respectively
(Dorothy Bukay is an Administrative Assistant for
the IWS on the Queens campus; her main responsibility is the FYW
and WAC programs). They maintain our WCOnline scheduling platform,
co-ordinate e-tutoring, handle the phones, assist clients when
signing in, and maintain all Writing Center files, supplies, and
expenses.