March 28, 2019
Meet the Spring 2019 Writing Across Communities Faculty Collaborations – Dr. Jie Xu, Dr. Robin Wellington, Dr. Lequez Spearman, Dr. Seung Eun (Sunny) McDevitt, Dr. Kirstin Munro, Dr. Liz Chase, and Dr. Latoya Sawyer!
Dr. Jie Xu is collaborating with two Assistant Directors Tina Iemma and Sonia Singh to create writing prompts, which demystify the process of writing a literature review in a graduate criminal justice course. Simultaneously, they are gathering students’ feedback to develop a new plan of writing and assessment for the future. Dr. Xu is a tenure-track faculty in Criminal Justice, Legal Studies, and Homeland Security of St John’s University. She earned her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Rutgers University. Her research mainly focuses on spatial and temporal dynamics of offender’s decision-making, policing, evidence-based risk assessment and prediction, geographic information systems, and big data analytics. She has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses such as research methods, theories of crime, correctional systems.
Dr. Robin Wellington is collaborating with two Undergraduate Writing Coordinators, Justin Melendez and Cheyenne Ross, to improve the level of student participation and engagement with her Social Psychology course by bring Twitter into her psychology class. So far, encouraging students to use Twitter as a way to foster discussion outside of the classroom has been a large success; students are discussing the material and even relating it to contemporary events (#psy3320). Dr. Wellington is currently an Associate Professor in the department of psychology. She earned both MS and PhD at the University of Pittsburgh in Psychology - cognitive neuroscience. Certificate from the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (Pittsburgh). She completed her Post-Doctoral at the University of Chicago Hospitals in Neurology and Surgery. Faculty/ Director of Scientific Communications, department of Neurosurgery at Rush University Medical Center (Chicago IL).
Dr. Lequez Spearman is working with Undergraduate Writing Coordinator Cheyenne Ross for his Managerial Aspects of Sport Management course in the fall semester. The two are collaborating on a project aimed at developing writing assignments that engage with interviews conducted by Spearman with professionals in the field by incorporating research skills, critical thinking, and personal voice. Dr. Spearman, a native of Milwaukee, Wi, is an assistant professor in the Division of Sport Management here at SJU. His research interests include, sport management education, the decline of African Americans in baseball, and the intersection of fashion and sport. Currently, Dr. Spearman examines how fashion stylists help Black NBA players adhere to the sartorial rules in fashion as well as find a space for individuality and personhood in the age of mass production. In his leisure time, Dr. Spearman likes to collect vinyl, repurpose his classroom lectures, and dance mambo on 2at salsa clubs in Queens and Uptown, Manhattan.
Dr. SeungEun (Sunny) McDevitt is collaborating with Undergraduate Writing Coordinator Maya Gwynn and Doctoral Fellow Sarah Glessner on a project called "Teachers as Writers." The goal of this initiative is to work with immigrant and international students in the School of Education as they develop their writer identities in English. Their roles are part workshop leaders, part activity facilitators, and part writing consultants and mentors whose goals include giving students the opportunity to explore translingual practice. Dr. McDevitt is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Special Education at St. John’s University. Her work explores the intersection of exceptionality and cultural diversity, with a particular focus on inclusive early childhood teacher education. She received her Ed.D. in Curriculum and Teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University. Before entering academia, she was an early childhood special education teacher in New York City.
Dr. Kirstin Munro is working with Undergraduate Writing Coordinators Jade Colon and Amber Reese to help develop writing assignments for her Economic History of the Western Community class that are empowering and relevant to the students. Dr. Munro is an Assistant Professor of Economics and Finance at St. John's University, Queens NY. The major theme of her research is the overlapping relationships between people, the economy, and the environment. An econometrician by training, she uses both quantitative and qualitative methods in her work. Her motivation is a belief that writing is both thinking and communicating, and that through writing students can begin to work through complex and difficult issues that lie at the heart of the social justice mission of the university.
Dr. Liz Chase’s collaboration includes two workshops with Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz from Teachers College. From now to May, Dr. Chase is facilitating a reading group with six faculty from four SJU colleges and the SJU Libraries, who applied to join the group, and two Undergraduate Writing Coordinators, Jade Colon and Maya Gwynn. This group of faculty and undergraduate writing coordinators have opted to do reading and thinking together in preparation for a May 16th workshop with Dr. Sealey-Ruiz entitled “Archaeology of the Self through Critical Literacies – Self Exploration and the Teaching of Writing.” The second session with Dr. Sealey-Ruiz that Dr. Chase is coordinating is a workshop on May 16th, from 1pm to 2:30pm, that will be open to the entire SJU community, entitled “Towards Racial Literacy and a Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy.” All of this collaboration is co-sponsored with the Academic Center for Equity and Inclusion. Dr. Liz Chase is an Assistant Professor in the School of Education at St. John’s University.
Dr. LaToya Sawyer is working with Undergraduate Writing Coordinators Jade Colon and Amber Reese to bring a student perspective to her Black Women's Rhetoric class and to her research assignment, which will be later presented at St. John’s University Research Month. Dr. Sawyer is an Assistant Professor of English. She earned her M.A. at S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and her Ph.D at Syracuse University.
Read more about Writing Across Communities.