Troy Hicks, Director

Troy Hicks is an assistant professor of English at Central Michigan University and director of the Chippewa River Writing Project. He teaches classes and conducts professional development workshops related to writing and technology. He is author of The Digital Writing Workshop (Heinemann, 2009) and writes the blog Digital Writing, Digital Teaching, which explores issues related to teaching writing with new media for K–12 teachers and teacher educators.

Penny Lew, K-12 Co-Director

Penny Lew has been with Farwell Middle School since 2000, teaching primarily 8th grade English Language Arts, with experience in 5th grade Health Education, 7th grade Careers, 7th & 8th grade Diversity Education, and High School Alternative ELA. Her teaching focus is on literacy with an emphasis on young adult lit, and she recently participated in the Red Cedar Writing Project 2008 summer institute.

She received the MCTE teacher leadership award in 2004, and is her school’s department chair, building union rep, and yearbook advisor.

Kathy Kurtze, K-12 Co-Director

Kathy J. Kurtze is a high school teacher at Carson City-Crystal Schools.  She teaches 9th grade English and 10th-12th Creative Writing. She has also been involved in several committees for the Michigan Department of Education, assissting in authoring several MRA publications as well as the Michigan Genre Project.

Elizabeth Brockman, CMU Faculty Co-Director

Elizabeth Brockman came to the English Department at CMU in 1996. Before that time, she taught middle and high school English (grades 6-12) in public schools for nearly a decade in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. As a public school teacher, Elizabeth mentored student teachers, served as host teacher for field experiences, and worked with countless students from a broad range of ethnic, religious, and socio-economic backgrounds.

Since coming to CMU, Elizabeth has taught primarily composition and composition methods courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and she has served as Director of Composition, supervising for three years the ENG 101 graduate assistants who teach nearly half of the first-year composition courses at CMU. Elizabeth is the author of several pedagogical books and articles and has been published in such journals as English Journal, The Writing Instructor, Willa, Journal of Business Communication, Language Arts Journal of Michigan, The Ohio Journal of English Language Arts, and In Command.

Susan Steffel, CMU Faculty Co-Director

Susan Steffel, a former high school teacher of 18 years, has been a professor at CMU since 1991 and teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in English education and young adult literature. Specialty areas include the teaching of writing, the teaching of reading, teacher mentoring, and young adult literature.

Dr. Steffel’s list of numerous professional awards and honors includes: CMU Excellence in Teaching Awards in 1996 and 2006, the CMU College of Humanities and Social and Behavioral Science Excellence in Teaching Award in 2005, and the Michigan Council of Teachers of English 2006 Charles Carpenter Fries Award for teaching excellence, longtime service, and distinguished leadership to the profession at both the state and national levels. Most recently, she was named the Michigan Distinguished Professor of the Year by the President’s Council of the State Universities of Michigan.

April Sherman, CRWP Graduate Assistant

April Sherman is joining the Chippewa River Writing Project as a first-year GA of Central Michigan University, where she is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in English Language and Literature. A native of Escanaba, Michigan, she completed her undergraduate work at CMU in 2004, finishing her degree as an Honors Graduate, and went on to teach high school English and French for four years in Virginia. She divides her graduate assistantship between the CRWP and the CMU Writing Center.

Marcy Taylor, English Department Chair

Marcy Taylor is Professor and Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at Central Michigan University. She taught middle level Language Arts before returning to graduate school, where she specialized in rhetoric and composition and English education. She now teaches composition and language arts methods classes to pre-service teachers,and she is a co-PI on the Chippewa River Writing Project grant.

Her research interests focus on adolescent literacy–particular writing issues. She has recently been working with Liz Brockman, MaryAnn Crawford, and Melinda Kreth to interpret recent writing assessment data from CMU to help make changes to the university curriculum but also to make it easier for high school teachers to see what they can do to better prepare their students for college writing.

MaryAnn K. Crawford, Director of the CMU Writing Center

MaryAnn K. Crawford, Professor of English, directs the Central Michigan University Writing Center and University Writing-Across-the Curriculum/Disciplines programs. She teaches composition, pedagogy, and linguistics, and researches and writes on a variety of language-learning and use issues, including writing center, discourse, and assessment.

Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, Technology Liaison

Sara Beauchamp-Hicks, a fourteen-year veteran special education teacher, is currently a graduate student in the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program at Michigan State University. A 2005 participant in the Upper Peninsula Writing Project summer institute, she served as their Technology Liaison from 2005 – 2009 and is also a Google Certified Teacher. Her interests include teaching with web-based tools, teacher professional development, and inquiry-based education. She blogs at “Connecting, Collaborating, Continuing to Learn.” <http://hickstro.org/cccl/>

Rita Maddox, Professional Development Coordinator

Rita Maddox began her teaching career as a high school English Language Arts and journalism teacher at Sacred Heart Academy in Mt. Pleasant. Following that she taught middle and high school ELA at Ithaca Schools in Ithaca, MI, where she also advised the newspaper and yearbook.  After returning to Central Michigan University for an administrative degree she worked as a consultant for the State Literacy Resource Center at CMU and later as an ELA Consultant at Gratiot-Isabella RESD. After participating in the Chippewa River Writing Project’s initial Summer Institute 2009, she brings her background and expertise to the role of CRWP Professional Development Coordinator. Her goal is provide relevant and teacher-friendly English Language Arts professional development.

Jamie Fockler, Administrative Assistant

Jamie Fockler has been with the English Language and Literature department since August of 2010 as the department’s Executive Secretary. Among her many duties in the English Department she handles financials for various English accounts and the Chippewa River Writing Project Grant; class scheduling; assists with curricular items; recruiting; and other duties as assigned by the department chair.