Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders (CWCAB)

Anna Sophia Habib, Editor

I am currently the Associate Director of Composition, at both the George Mason University home campus and at the branch campus in Songdo, South Korea & coordinator and instructor in the Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines courses for INTO Mason, Mason’s pathway program for graduate and undergraduate international students.

I was born in Beirut, Lebanon, during the civil war to a Lebanese father and American mother. When I was four years old, my family fled to the neighboring island of Cyprus where I grew up in a community of refugees from surrounding countries. As a bi-cultural, bi-national child from a post-colonial context, I grew up with English, Arabic, and French as native languages and Greek as a second language. These intercultural, translingual experiences inspired me to pursue a BA in English with a concentration in Cultural Studies, and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at George Mason University. I graduated from the MFA program in 2006. My thesis, which I hope to continue working on someday, is titled “A Block from Bliss Street: Growing up as a child of the Lebanese civil war.” I am currently pursuing a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric also at Mason, where I served as the Associate Director of the Writing Center for five years until I transitioned to my current position as Associate Director of Composition for Multilingual Writers.

My research and publications have focused on the experiences of multilingual writers adapting to the expectations of the U.S. academy, faculty perceptions of writing by multilingual students,  and designing writing courses that are attuned to the diverse needs of this population. I am currently working on an autoethnography that aims to explore and theorize individual experiences of trauma and displacement.

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Esther Namubiru, Associate Editor (focus on African region)

By the time I graduated from the University of Virginia with a Masters in Linguistics, I had been tutoring writing for 10 years. I am interested in the role writing centers play to support multilingual and international writers who speak English as a Second language while recognizing and honoring their linguistic and cultural identities.

Currently, I teach Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines with INTO Mason where I get to work with writers from different cultural, linguistic, and academic backgrounds. Being a Ugandan multilingual who learned English in a polylingual post-colonial culture, I am grateful to continue collaborating with other multilingual writers.

I am also pursuing a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric at George Mason University. My research focuses on the writing center and its potential role in literacy and language policies in non-Western contexts.

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Brian Hotson, Consultant/Editor Emeritus 

I was first paid for sentences in the mid-1980s, and it has worked out since. I worked for many years in educational publishing (including Pearson and Nelson Publishing) as a developmental editor, editor, writer, copy editor, and indexer. Spent ten years working in public educational television at TVOntario as a writer, director, and producer. I have a BA in History and a Master’s of Theological Studies from Queen’s University, Kingston.

I began working in writing centres at Queen’s in 2008 and was hired as director of the Saint Mary’s University writing centre in 2010. Currently, I’m director of Academic Learning Services for Saint Mary’s Studio for Teaching and Learning.

I am a past-president of the Canadian Writing Centre Association (CWCA), past International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) board member, former board member of the Canadian Association for the Study of Language and Learning (CASLL), member of IWCA, CCCC, and the Canadian Association for the Study of Discourse and Writing (CASDW), as well as a founding member of our regional writing centres association, ACWCA. I’m also on the editorial board for Inkshed Publications.

 

 

 

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Josh Ambrose, Consultant/Editor Emeritus

I graduated from George Mason University with a MFA in creative nonfiction, where I also helped direct a writing center. After five years as the writing center director on campus, I now serve as the Associate Dean of Campus and Community Engagement. In that role, I do a lot of work with our burgeoning entrepreneurship program on campus, advise Fulbright applicants, help foster internships and community engagement, and help support global initiatives any way that I can…amidst many other responsibilities!

I’ve enjoyed taking students to Europe and to Peru. I’ve also spent academic time abroad in India, Turkey, and Jordan, as well as working at McDaniel’s sister campus in Budapest, Hungary.

My family and I live in the small town of Westminster, MD–where a lot of surprisingly big things are happening. We also like to travel throughout the US, whenever we have the slightest excuse.