Sandra Jamieson has been teaching at Drew University since 1993, first as Director of Composition (1993-2008), then as Director of College Writing (2008-2012), and now as Director of Writing Across the Curriculum. As WAC Director she founded and oversees a course-embedded undergraduate Writing Fellows Program, that is central to Drew’s vertical Writing Studies Program. Writing Fellows are embedded in the interdisciplinary first-year Drew Seminars [Directed by Lens Lloyd] and in Writing Intensive courses and Writing in the Majors courses across the curriculum, providing continuity of vision and approach for students as they develop their writing skills and supporting faculty. Sandra teaches writing at all levels and she and Jens anchor the English Department’s concentration in Writing and Communication Studies, where her courses include a popular upper-level Writing Intensive course, “Blogs, Tweets, and Social Media: The Art of Digital Communication.” She also team-teaches “Teaching in the Two-Year College” with Professor Philip Chase from County College of Morris (CCM), part of the Two-Year College Concentration of Drew’s Caspersen School of Graduate Studies Arts & Letters Program.  [See “Teaching“]

Sandra was the director of Drew’s New York Semester on Communications and Media, in its inaugural year (2014-2015), bringing the successful program from idea to implementation in Spring 2015 and then passing direction to Professor Lisa Lynch. In January 2016 and again in May 2017, Sandra and Spanish Professor Ada Ortuzar-Young lead a Drew Short-Trek to Cuba and Miami. The program, “A Tale of Two Cities: Havana, Cuba & Little Havana, Miami,” invited students to explore the culture, history, food, stories, and experiences of Cubans in Cuba and in Miami through lectures, visits, social encounters, and observation (see the student’s blog to learn more).

Since 1994, Sandra has been the Faculty Advisor of a student service program, the Drew Honduras Project, and regularly visits Honduras and the Dominican Republic with them. She served a three year term as chair of the English department (2008-2011), has held office in the NJ State Conference of the AAUP, and has also served on many College and University committees including the Curriculum and Academic Policy Committee, the Dean’s Council, and the Committee on Faculty. In January 2014 she was a Fellow at the IRTS Foundation in preparation for developing the New York Semester and new courses in writing and communication studies. Professionally, she served as chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC’s) Committee on the Major in Writing and Rhetoric, from 2007-2016 and served on the CCCC’s Executive Board from 2008-2010.

Her publications include The Bedford Guide to Writing in the Disciplines: An Instructor’s Desk Reference (with Rebecca Moore Howard), and three co-edited collections, Points of Departure: Rethinking Student Source Use and Writing Studies Research Methods (with Tricia Serviss–read reviews here), Information Literacy: Research and Collaboration across Disciplines (with Barbara D’Angelo, Barry Maid, & Janice R. Walker), and Coming of Age: The Advanced Writing Curriculum (with Linda Shamoon, Rebecca Moore Howard, & Robert Schwegler). She has published articles on the the writing major and the vertical writing curriculum, plagiarism, patchwriting, engaged reading, research-writing, writing across the curriculum, information literacy, textbooks, and multi-cultural education. Sandra and Rebecca Moore Howard are principal investigators in the Citation Project, a collaborative, multi-site, data-based study of college students’ use of research sources. With Howard she is at work on a book exploring the first phase of their research, Struggling with Sources: Teaching after the Citation Project. (See “Publications” for details]

Sandra says that what drives all of her work is the desire to learn to teach students how to write effectively, correctly, and creatively for many audiences including themselves. She is also interested in tracking the habits of mind we teach and model in and outside of the classroom, and the behaviors we unintentionally reinforce when we think we are teaching something else.

Check out Writing Studies Tree.

Oh, and then there are the cats–-the real reason compositionists first made websites…