Writing Arts Department Graduate Faculty
Dr. Jeffrey Maxson, Department Chair
Dr. Maxson teaches Integrated College Composition I and II, Writing for Electronic Communities, and Writing Difference. His research interests include computer-mediated composition, writing of linguistic minorities, and alternative discourses.
Dr. Jennifer Courtney, Graduate Coordinator
Jennifer Courtney is the Graduate Coordinator for the Master of Arts in Writing program. In addition to teaching Seminar I and II at the graduate level, she regularly teaches Introduction to Writing Arts, Evaluating Writing, and Sophomore Engineering Clinic I. Her research interests are curriculum development in stand-alone writing majors, writing program administration and cultural studies; her work has been published in several books and journals including Rhetoric Review, Design Principles and Practices, and Composition Forum.
Dr. Sanford Tweedie, Undergraduate Coordinator
Sanford Tweedie teaches in the first-year writing program, undergraduate major, and M.A. in Writing. He has taught at the University of Erfurt in Germany as a Fulbright Scholar and received Rowan's Lindback Distinguished Teaching Award. His research interests include students in transition, classroom-based research, genre-stretching writing, and pedagogy that matters. His writing has appeared in College Composition and Communication, English Journal, Exquisite Corpse, and Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, among others.
Ron Block
Ron Block’s books include The Dirty Shame Hotel and Other Stories and a collection of poetry Dismal River. His work has also been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Epoch, Prairie Schooner, Iowa Review, and Ploughshares. In addition to being a two-time winner in the Minnesota Voices Project, he received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Nebraska Arts Council in 2000. In 2002, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fiction Fellowship.
Lisa Jahn-Clough
Lisa Jahn-Clough has an MFA from Emerson College, and has been writing, illustrating, publishing, and teaching for eighteen years. She was a Writer-In-Residence at Emerson College, the Interim Chair of Illustration at the Maine College of Art, and has taught in the MFA Writing for Children and Young Adult Low-Residency programs at both Vermont College of Fine Arts and Hamline University before coming to Rowan University as Assistant Professor in 2010. At Rowan she has taught Fiction Writing, Writing Children’s Literature and Writing the Graphic Novel to graduate students.
Lisa specializes in writing for children and young adults, and has a thriving publishing career. She has written and illutrated over a dozen picture books and has written two young adult novels—all published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her work has won awards from Child Magazine, Parent’s Choice, Children’s Choice, Bank Street, Raising Readers, Independent Bookstore Review, and Entertainment Weekly. Her latest young adult novel, Nothing But Blue is forthcoming with Houghton Mifflin in May, 2013, and she is currently working on the text of a series of early-reader graphic comic books called Petal and Poppy, due to be published in 2014. Lisa also speaks to elementary, middle and high school students and their teachers, and at library and writing conferences as a visiting author. Many of Lisa’s former students have gone on to have highly successful careers as authors, illustrators, editors, or agents.
See www.lisajahnclough.com for more about Lisa.
Lisa specializes in writing for children and young adults, and has a thriving publishing career. She has written and illutrated over a dozen picture books and has written two young adult novels—all published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Her work has won awards from Child Magazine, Parent’s Choice, Children’s Choice, Bank Street, Raising Readers, Independent Bookstore Review, and Entertainment Weekly. Her latest young adult novel, Nothing But Blue is forthcoming with Houghton Mifflin in May, 2013, and she is currently working on the text of a series of early-reader graphic comic books called Petal and Poppy, due to be published in 2014. Lisa also speaks to elementary, middle and high school students and their teachers, and at library and writing conferences as a visiting author. Many of Lisa’s former students have gone on to have highly successful careers as authors, illustrators, editors, or agents.
See www.lisajahnclough.com for more about Lisa.
Dr. William Wolff
Bill Wolff is an assistant professor of Writing Arts where he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes that consider the intersections of new media communication technologies and writing. These classes include Writing, Research, and Technology; Technologies and the Future of Writing; Visual Rhetoric and Multimodal Composition; and Research Methods for Writers. His assignments ask students to compose video essays, engage in video oral history research, and leverage social networking spaces to enhance qualitative research. He has been the recipient of two Rowan University grants: an Innovations in Teaching using Technology grant, which provided funds for 20 Flip Video cameras, and a Non-Salary Financial Support Grant to investigate new literacies that are emerging as a result of the proliferation of Web 2.0 applications. He is currently working on designing the first usability study of Web 2.0 applications, with a special on cognitive transfer of information across domains.
His work with the Flip Video cameras has been profiled in ELearn Magazine and his use of new media technologies in the classroom has been featured on Rowan's Techcast. His work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Computers & Education, and Currents in Electronic Literacy (co-authored with two Writing Arts undergraduates). He is the technical editor of Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours (8th edition). He is regular presenter on new media and writing at national conferences, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Computers & Writing, the Thomas R. Watson Conference.
You can see his courses, assignments, and blogs by going to his web site at http://williamwolff.org.
His work with the Flip Video cameras has been profiled in ELearn Magazine and his use of new media technologies in the classroom has been featured on Rowan's Techcast. His work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Computers & Education, and Currents in Electronic Literacy (co-authored with two Writing Arts undergraduates). He is the technical editor of Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours (8th edition). He is regular presenter on new media and writing at national conferences, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Computers & Writing, the Thomas R. Watson Conference.
You can see his courses, assignments, and blogs by going to his web site at http://williamwolff.org.
Dr. Martin Itzkowitz
Martin Itzkowitz is an accomplished poet who also teaches College Composition, Writing with Style, Assessment of Writing, Semantics, Humanities, Creative Writing, and Special Topics Honors. He is an advisor of Glassworks magazine and has worked as the nonfiction editor of Asphodel magazine. He is also Associate Editor of New Jersey Journal of Communication.
Julia MacDonnell Chang
Julia MacDonnell Chang is a novelist, short story writer, journalist, essayist and book reviewer with graduate degrees in journalism from Columbia University, and one in creative writing from Temple University. She has published a number of short stories published in literary journals, among them: "Red Stain on Yellow Dress in Mangrove", spring 2004; "Weapons of War", Briar Cliff Review, spring 2004; "The Topography of Hidden Stories", Paper Street, fall 2004, and "Nativity", North Dakota Quarterly, Winter 2004. Her short story Whistle Stop is scheduled for publication in the Spring '05 edition of the journal Happy. She has recently completed her first story collection, Going South and Other Sorrows, which includes the titular novella.
A tenured associate professor, she teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs, specializing in fiction and creative nonfiction. She also teaches Writing Children's Stories, and serves as advisor to the undergraduate literary magazine, Avant. During her sabbatical this year, MacDonnell Chang is completing her second novel, Mimi Molloy By Herself, and beginning work on a third.
Her first novel, A Year of Favor, published by William Morrow & Co. in 1994, was called a "compelling debut" by Publisher's Weekly. Kirkus Reviews said it was "powerful first fiction...A convincing evocation of life in a Central American country and a compelling portrait of a gutsy, post feminist heroine."
A former newspaper reporter and editor, MacDonnell is the recipient of two fiction fellowships from the N. J. State Council on the Arts, two Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation fellowships for residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a Pulitzer Traveling fellowship, and numerous other awards for her journalism and fiction. A passionate reader with an abiding love of story, she lives in southern New Jersey with her three children.
A tenured associate professor, she teaches in both the undergraduate and graduate creative writing programs, specializing in fiction and creative nonfiction. She also teaches Writing Children's Stories, and serves as advisor to the undergraduate literary magazine, Avant. During her sabbatical this year, MacDonnell Chang is completing her second novel, Mimi Molloy By Herself, and beginning work on a third.
Her first novel, A Year of Favor, published by William Morrow & Co. in 1994, was called a "compelling debut" by Publisher's Weekly. Kirkus Reviews said it was "powerful first fiction...A convincing evocation of life in a Central American country and a compelling portrait of a gutsy, post feminist heroine."
A former newspaper reporter and editor, MacDonnell is the recipient of two fiction fellowships from the N. J. State Council on the Arts, two Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation fellowships for residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, a Pulitzer Traveling fellowship, and numerous other awards for her journalism and fiction. A passionate reader with an abiding love of story, she lives in southern New Jersey with her three children.
Dr. Deb Martin
Deb Martin received her PhD in Rhetoric from Texas Woman’s University. Prior to coming to Rowan Deb taught for 12 years at the high school and middle school levels in both urban and suburban districts. As the former Rowan Writing Center Director, she teaches Tutoring Writing and, at the graduate level - Assessment. Her research areas include writing assessment, writing pedagogy, and the rhetoric of disability. Her work has been published in various books and journals including Middle School Journal, Writing Program Administration, Disability Studies Quarterly, and Assessing Writing. Deb's professional duties also include directing Rowan's Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
