feldman@uic.edu (Ann M. Feldman)
Ann M. Feldman (feldman@uic.edu)
Wed, 28 Feb 1996 14:58:45 -0600
Ann Merle Feldman, Associate Professor of English, PhD, SUNY- BUFFALO, 1979
in Educational Research
I just published a textbook, Writing and Learning in the Disciplines
(HarperCollins, 1996) in which I introduce students to nine academic
disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Through
discipline-specific texts, interviews with teachers and scholars, and
through students' own personal connections with issues under study, students
can gain access to the academic community and develop a sense of authority
in their participation.
I have worked on these issues for the past 15 years, through teaching,
research, and service to provide gateways for all students to literate
academic practice. As Director of Composition at the University of Illinois
at Chicago, an urban campus with over 56% students of color, I face the
challenge of offering a first-year experience for students which will invite
them to enter and increase their participation in the academic community.
My approach invites the student to bring his or her "self" to the
institution and invites the institution to meet the student. In the best of
worlds, both the individual and the institution will be transformed.
In my early research on the writing process, I observed the processes of
high school writers as they planned and produces essays that engaged various
critical thinking skills such as explaining and generalizing. This interest
in how the mind works to produce writing evolved to other questions about
revision process and finally about collaborative work between peer tutors
and students. The questions for teachers of writing moved from thinking
about the internal, cognitive development of the student to the development
of the student as a social participant in a socio-historical setting. .
At the administrative level, providing a gateway to the academic setting
pushes us to test and refine these ideas. First, as Director of the Writing
Center and now as Director of the Composition Program she views peer tutors
and graduate students as cultural guides to the institution. The composition
program, which oversees required first-year writing classes for almost all
students is engaged in the study of on-line writing courses, the development
of a diversity task force, initiating portfolio placement as well as
continuing with portfolio evaluation. We consistently reexamine our training
classes for graduate students and their manner of apprenticeship in the
profession. My team here includes Nancy Downs, Jennifer Cohen, and Mary Zajac.
Ann Merle Feldman
Associate Professor of English
Director of English Composition
University of Illinois at Chicago
feldman@uic.edu