Meet the Fellows

Writing Fellows are a select group of graduate students recommended by their departments for their demonstrated mastery of writing in their disciplines and their aptitude for peer review. Oral Communication Fellows are all advanced graduate students from the Communication Department. In ongoing training with the GSWC Director, fellows develop an understanding of writing and oral communication in the disciplines and theories of peer support, among other topics.

Learn more about the work our fellows do in this feature article, "Meet the Writing Center Fellows."

Linda Macri, Ph.D. (Director)

Dr. Macri is the Director of Academic and Professional Development in the Graduate School and has directed the Center since 2014. From 2005-2013, she served as the director of the Academic Writing Program in the English Department. Her interests are in composition studies and rhetorical theory, graphic novels and comic studies, and women’s literature. She has taught a range of courses from "English 101" to "Writing for Non-Profits" to "The Rhetoric of Fiction." According to Dr. Macri, directing the Center is "the best job on campus because everyday I get to learn about the amazing research that our passionate, committed graduate students are engaged in." 

Rasha Alkhateeb (Education)

Rasha Alkhateeb is a PhD student in Literacy Education at UMD's College of Education. She received her BA in English and MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Baltimore, where she taught college composition and remedial writing in the University Writing Program. Her research interests are in reflexive writing identities, or how secondary preservice and inservice teachers understand their identity as writers and teachers of writing. Rasha is a poet and loves recommending books in all genres!

Shonini Banerjee (Bioengineering)

Shohini is a PhD candidate in the Department of Bioengineering. Her research focuses on invasive cell behaviors in endometriosis, a prevalent gynecological condition. Her recent work on developing in vitro models for estrogen-mediated cell invasion in endometriosis has been the focus of NIH F31 proposal applications, conference presentations, and a pending first-author research publication. Prior to graduate school, she earned her BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State University. Shohini spends all her free time as an avid dancer; her main forms are Indian classical dance, bollywood, standard ballroom dances, bachata, and zouk.

Patrick Banner (Physics)

Patrick is a doctoral candidate in Physics, studying atomic and optical physics, using Rydberg ensembles for quantum optics and quantum networking applications. He also enjoys teaching, with specific interest in students' metacognitive and epistemological reactions to quantum mechanics, and is a member of a grad student mental health advocacy group on campus. He earned his B.S. from Denison University in central Ohio. He is a passionate writer, with written work in genres from yearbook copy to news articles to peer-reviewed journal articles; he has also reviewed for various physics journals. He looks forward to building confidence and enthusiasm in grad student writers!

Chia-Shuan Chang (Behavioral & Community Health)

Chia-Shuan (Shuan), a second-year PhD student in Behavioral and Community Health at the University of Maryland, is currently a Teaching Assistant and actively engaged in multiple independent research studies. Her research primarily focuses on adolescents' and young adults' mental health and sleep behavior. Her research has been published in journals such as Sleep and European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. Shuan holds a Master of Science in Health Behaviors and Community Sciences from National Taiwan University, where she received the School of Public Health Master’s Thesis Excellent Award, along with multiple scholarships and awards for her academic excellence and research presentations. Outside of her academic responsibilities, Shuan is passionate about dance. She loves to dance during her leisure time and teaches dance fit classes at the gym during the summer and winter, combining her love for physical activity with community engagement.

Declan Daly (Physics)

Declan Daly is a doctoral student in Physics. They have expertise in both experimental and theoretical applications of quantum sensing and quantum photonics. Their current work focuses on the development of novel experimental protocols and data analysis. Declan has felt firsthand the positive impacts of welcoming professional mentorship and strongly believes in the similar mission of the Center. In their free time, Declan can be found working on musical composition, playing board games, and engaging in various artistic or nerdy endeavors.

Sam DiBella (Information Studies)

Sam (he/him) is a PhD student at the College of Information Studies, where he researches privacy and surveillance using anthropological, historical, and digital-humanities methods. He previously worked as an assistant editor for the Birkhäuser Mathematics imprint at SpringerNature; a copyeditor for Citywire, a financial newsroom; and as a freelance editor on art writing for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Triple Canopy, and SNAP Editions. His writing has appeared in the International Journal of Communication, Public Books, Surveillance & Society, and the LSE Review of Books. He received his MSc in media studies from the London School of Economics and BA in philosophy of language from New York University. He translates articles from the Italian Wikipedia, often has to fix his bike, and wishes he had a platen press with all his heart.

Courtney Douglass (Education)

Courtney is a doctoral student in the Minority and Urban Education program in the College of Education. She is a member of the Society of McNair Fellows and earned an M.A. in Special Education from The George Washington University. Her life's work has focused on building partnerships with resilient Black youth through education, advocacy, and workforce development. Courtney's research investigates unschooling, homeschooling and other forms of self-directed education as current and historical forms of Black fugitivity and refusal. Her work illuminates the liberatory education practices and decolonized parenting strategies engaged by Black families to help facilitate their children's autonomy, agency, and freedom. Beyond her academic pursuits, Courtney enjoys long walks, murder mysteries, and supporting families as a birth worker.

Chelsea Fowler (MEES)

Chelsea is a Marine, Estuarine, and Environmental Science Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES). Her research focuses on the effects of common environmental stressors on juvenile oysters in order to develop tactics to increase stress resliency in oyster aquaculture. Chelsea has pursued many opportunities to build community, help others, and perpetuate science-driven problem solving since her undergraduate days and has a passion for effective communication. She recieved her BS from the University of Tampa in 2016 and her MS from UMCES in 2023. You can learn more about Chelsea's past experiences from her website: chelseafowler.com She looks forward to working with graduate student writers, helping to build effective communicators in all disciplines.

Erin Green (English)

Erin Green is a doctoral student in the Department of English specializing in Language, Writing, and Rhetoric. Their research specifically engages issues of literacy education, composition pedagogy, community-engaged writing, and writing program administration. In addition to writing instruction, their research also consists of public contexts of writing regarding abolition praxes and critical race theory-counterstorytelling. They have several years of writing center experience, have taught academic and technical writing, and currently serve as the administrative fellow of the Academic Writing Program at the University of Maryland.

Valerie M. J. Hall (Anthropology)

Valerie Hall is a PhD student in Anthropology. Her research interests include exploring human-animal relationships, engendered tasks, and landscape change in the Chesapeake region through analysis of archaeofaunal remains and other proxy data. She is specifically interested in the use of stable isotope analysis and geometric morphometrics as tools to elucidate cultural and environmental shifts. She is a 1997 graduate of the Pennsylvania State University with a BS in Education and taught at the elementary level before becoming interested in archaeology. She received her MA in Anthropology and Archaeology from the Illinois State University in 2012. Valerie serves as an Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites. She is a voracious reader and dabbles in writing poetry and fiction.

Amber Johnson (Education)

Amber Chevaughn Johnson is a critical scholar pursuing the mundane and everyday invitations for personal and collective liberation and living. As a former middle school language arts educator for almost a decade and current Ph.D. student, she pursues a range of interests that center the ways Black communities render expressions of full, complex lives. Her aim is, thus, to produce work for Black folks who hold truths about their lives and their worlds in the bellies of their being, but whose souls forage for language in the dark places. Currently, her research explores the multidimensionality of Black folks' lives and ways they manipulate space, speculate the unmaterialized, and engage their spirits to increase their capacities to produce and share knowledge in Black liberatory learning spaces outside of state-sponsored schools. Her most recent work examines the roles Black women, particularly, play in this radical work. Outside of her academic interests, Amber enjoys museum hopping, reading under trees in a park, and a chilled bubbly water.

Umisha Kc (Communication)

Umisha KC (she/her) is a PhD student at the Department of Communication. Her research interests lie in Intergroup communication, media effects, and social identities in the classroom.

Danielle LaPlace (Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies)

Danielle LaPlace is a PhD student in Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. She received a B.A. in French (2010) and International Studies (2010) from University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Masters of Development Practice (2014) from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Following her Australian adventure she returned to her home country of St. Kitts and Nevis and served briefly as the Executive Officer in the Department of Gender Affairs. She completed a Masters in Women’s and Gender Studies (2019) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her research focuses on Black labor and US imperial public health in the Greater Caribbean at the turn of the twentieth century.

Clark J. Lee (Public Health)

Clark, a PhD candidate in Behavioral and Community Health, has been a Writing Fellow at the UMD Graduate School Writing Center since the Fall 2014 Term. Outside of school, Clark works full-time professionally in the fields of public health, traffic safety, and emergency preparedness. He is currently a Research Associate with the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine supporting the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. A lawyer and public health professional by training, Clark's research interests focus on the use of legal and public policy interventions to address public health and safety issues (especially those related to societal sleepiness and fatigue). Clark is a former Notes and Comments editor for the Journal of Health Care Law and Policy and is currently a reviewer for several research journals in the areas of public health, sleep and circadian science, and traffic safety. He is licensed to practice law in the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia and is certified in public health by the National Board of Public Health Examiners. When not working for school or for pay, Clark struggles to stop his two pre-grade-school-aged boys from destroying his house.

Stuti Mohanty (Marketing)

Stuti (She/Her) is an MBA student specializing in Marketing. With a background in Management Consulting (Healthcare/Life Science), her interests lie in leveraging data-driven insights and strategic financial management to drive business solutions. As a Development Specialist Graduate Assistant with the School of Public Health and as the President of the Smith Data, Marketing and Technology Club, she focuses on collaboration, empathy, and adaptability in leadership. She graduated with a degree in Engineering and has worked extensively on digital transformations. Passionate about continuous learning, Stuti is dedicated to making a positive impact in her professional and academic pursuits. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, dancing and exploring new cusines.

Adway Patra (Electrical and Computer Engineering)

Adway is a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He completed his Bachelor's of Engineering in Telecommunications from Jadavpur University and his Master's of Engineering in Electrical from the Indian Institute of Science. As part of the Institute of Systems Research at UMD, he broadly works in the intersection of Information theory, Coding theory, and Network theory, trying to better understand the relationship between network connectivity and data recoverability. He is also active in mentoring both graduate and undergraduate students by serving as a TA for various courses. He has published in reputed conferences and journals of IEEE and served as a reviewer for these. Apart from being a trained guitarist and part-time street photographer, he likes to spend his spare time reading, hiking, or in the gym.

Elizabeth Pineo (Information Studies)

Elizabeth A. Pineo (she/her) is passionate about music and disability advocacy, and she has followed these passions to their intersection in the field of information studies. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park, Elizabeth's research focuses on representation of Disabled people in music archives. Outside of academics, Elizabeth works as a script writer for Together with Classical's YouTube series, Classical Bean, which focuses on making classical music accessible to all, and volunteers as a cataloger at the Vocal Music Instrumentation Index, a digital archive of Baroque vocal music. Elizabeth is a classically trained pianist, and, in her free time, she enjoys learning languages and caring for her ever-growing plant collection. She received her M.L.I.S. from the University of Maryland, College Park in May 2023 and her B.A. in Music from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania in February, 2021.

Niko Reed (Physics)

Niko is a fourth year Physics PhD candidate studying quantum technology in an interdisciplinary group that spans the intersection of physics and engineering. Their research focuses on characterizing defects in semiconductors for use as quantum sensors and single photon sources. They are a Joint Quantum Institute Graduate Fellow and a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Before enrolling at UMD, Niko completed a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics with a Spanish minor at the University of Delaware. Outside of work, Niko enjoys reading books of all kinds and tending to their houseplant collection. 

Elizabeth Reynolds (Education)

Elizabeth (she/her) is a PhD student in TLPL with a specialization in Teacher Education and Professional Development. She studies digital literacy and civic education. Her research explores how young people reason about information they see online and how this reasoning informs their ideas about social and political issues. A former middle school social studies teacher, Elizabeth earned her B.A. in Politics from Ursinus College and her M.Ed. in Teaching, Learning, and Leadership from the University of Pennsylvania.

Melissa Sturges (Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies) 

Melissa (she) is a fourth year PhD Student in the Department of Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies at UMD where she teaches courses that center public speaking, storytelling, and styles of performance. She is a scholar, educator, and practitioner of performance and dramatic literature. She has written for academic journals including Theatre Journal, Ecumenica, Shakespeare Bulletin, and Concept and has upcoming work in Contemporary Theatre Review and New England Theatre Journal. She has a BA in American Studies from NYU and a Master's in Theatre from Villanova. She is also an arts administrator working at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and writes freelance arts reviews for DCTrending, amongst others publications. She loves DC museums and outings, and is an advocate for adapting the archive through performative writing.