Participating Faculty, Supported Courses, and Assistants

Course-based writing assistants work closely with faculty and meet one-to-one with students on writing projects, research, oral presentations, visuals, and more.

During 2011-12 writing and speaking assistants were attached to 49 different First-Year Seminars and Winter Semester writing-focused courses. They conducted more than 1,700 conferences with Bates students from across all disciplines and all class-years.

Winter 2013 Faculty, Courses, and Assistants

• Krista Aronson – EDPY 262 Community-Based Research Methods (W2): Danya Morris ’13
• Marcus Bruce - REL 247 The City on the Hill: Carlie Rice ’13
• Patti Buck - EDUC 240 Gender Issues in Education (W2): Libby Egan ’13 and Ashley Brunk ’13
• Jane Costlow – ENVR 205 Environment and Culture: Allie Balter ’13
• David Cummiskey – PHIL 213  Biomedical Ethics (W1): Ali Millard ’14
• Mollie Godfrey –  ENG 241 Fiction in the U.S.: Katie Ailes ’14, Mollie Kervick ’13, and Natalie Thompson ’13
• Joe Hall - HIST 241 The Age of the American Revolution, 1763-1789: Kristen Doerer ’14 and Katie Williams ’15
• Su Langdon – PYWS 343 Women, Culture, and Health: Elise Levesque ’13
• Arlene MacLeod – PLTC 243 Politics and Literature: Nick Sneath ’13
• Erica Rand – AVWS 287 Women, Gender, and Visual Culture (W2): Skye Ellement ’15, Linnea Fulton ’13, Grace Glasson ’14
• Michael Sargent – PSYC 261 Research Methods (W2): Adrienne Jaeger ’13
• Jason Scheideman – PLTC 225 International Security: Aung Myint ’14 and David Weinman ’15
• Susan Stark – PHIL 256 Moral Philosophy: Dan Peach ’13
• Sarah Strong – ASJA 125 Japanese Literature and Society (W2): Joanna Moody ’14
• Tom Tracy - PLRE 304 The Problem of Evil: Kate Fetrow ’13

Fall 2012  Faculty, Courses, and Assistants

• Jessica Anthony - FYS 413  Politics and Language: Zoe Fahy ’13
• Rachel Austin - FYS 398  The Chemistry of Color: Joanna Moody ’14
• Misty Beck – FYS 401  Reading the Wild in Film and Literature: Katie Williams ’15
• Aimee Bessire - FYS 381  Visualizing Identities: Erica Van Sciver ’15
• Gerry Bigelow - FYS 324  Archeology of the Celtic World: Helen Lober ’15
• Dennis Browne - FYS 297  The Idea of Europe: Kayla Hertz ’14
• Marcus Bruce - FYS 152  Religion and Civil Rights: Carlie Rice ’14
• Patti Buck - FYS 300  Exploring Education through Narratives: Ashley Brunk ’13
• Val Carnegie - FYS 242  Blackness/Whiteness in the Social Imagination: Brett Emmons ’15
• Gene Clough - FYS 84  Anatomy of a Few Small Machines: Danya Morris ’13
• Rebecca Corrie - FYS 135  Women in Art: Alanna Prince ’13
• Francesco Duina - FYS 249  The Global Economy and Nation-State: Tori Zapack ’14
• Xing Fan - FYS 386  Chinese Traditions, Great and Small: Nicole Huang ’15
• Margaret Imber - FYS 320  Trials of Conscience: Jeremy Cronon ’13
• Pallavi Jayawant - FYS 384  Seeing the World through Math: Matt Maley ’13
• Sharon Kinsman – FYS 354  Environment as Story: Gretchen Kaija ’14
• Su Langdon - FYS 395  The Sporting Life: Kelly Coyne ’13
• Gwen Lexow - FYS 271  Into the Woods: Rewriting Walden: Nick Kinnon ’15
• Hong Lin – FYS 274  Physics in the Twentieth Century: Joanna Moody ’14
• Arlene MacLeod - FYS 330  Moral Questions and Political Choices: Stephanie Wesson ’14
• Matteo Pangallo - FYS 415  Banned Books: Natalie Thompson ’13
• Jim Parakilas - FYS 361  Making Music Together: Shoshana Foster ’15
• Clarisa Perez-Armendariz - FYS 385  Power and Authority in Latin America through Film: Aung Myint ’14
• Theri Pickens - FYS 412  Constructing the Normal: Introduction to Disabilities Studies: Quincy Snellings ’15
• Melinda Plastas - FYS 419  Tobacco in History and Culture: Skye Ellement ’15

• Gary Rattigan - FYS 418  Drawing as Thinking: Allie Balter ’14
• Kirk Read - FYS 203  Family Values: Tales of Family and Kinship across Cultures:  Emma Timbers ’14
• Mike Retelle - FYS 190  The Changing Climate of Planet Earth: Eric Barry ’13
• Sherry Russell - FYS 408  Identity: Self and Community: Libby Egan ’13
• Susan Stark - FYS 288  Luck and the Moral Life: Dan Peach ’13
• Denis Sweet - FYS 414  The End of the World: Matt Bettles ’13
• Bob Thomas - FYS 410  Genetically Modified Organisms: Carla Tilchin ’13
• Lauren Vedal - FYS 416  Borders, Boundaries, Belonging: Mollie Kervick ’13
• Stephen Wessler - FYS 417  Religious Intolerance in the Contemporary U.S.:  Lauren Hadiaris ’13

Faculty comments

“Working with the writing assistant to my FYS has yielded some unexpected benefits. I’ve been able to talk through assignments with her in draft form and that’s helped me to fine-tune them before sending them out to the class. Based on our discussion of the assignment and its relation to the objectives of the course, the writing assistant in turn has been able to bolster the confidence of the first-years who already have good clear ideas for their papers when they meet with her but may be unsure of themselves.

“I think the first years all welcome having an additional sounding board for their ideas who is not quite the authority figure they see their professor as. Having a writing assistant makes it a lot more manageable to stage assignments in multiple stages… Going through these various stages helps students internalize the idea that writing is an evolving, processual thing.

“Having a writing assistant to meet with students and comment on their drafts also makes students more self-conscious of writing for an audience. It’s also great to have an academically focussed senior serving as a role model for the first years.”