Coordinators
Linda Hirsch, Professor in the English Department at Hostos Community College/CUNY, has been coordinator of the Hostos WAC/RAC Initiative since its inception in 1999. Her areas of interest include language and literacy of both native and non-native speakers of English and children’s literature. She received her BA in English from City College/CUNY, her MA in English Literature from SUNY Stony Brook and her PhD in English Education from New York University. Her research on WAC and the language and cognitive needs of ELLs across the curriculum has appeared in journals and collections including Writing Programs Worldwide: Profiles of Academic Writing in Many Places; Language and Learning Across the Disciplines and Writing Across the Curriculum in Community Colleges. She is a former president of the CUNY ESL Council and Writing Centers Association and currently hosts EdCast, a TV program airing throughout New York City on CUNY TV that examines issues in education. She has been co-coordinating the Hostos WAC/RAC Initiative with Professor Andrea Fabrizio since 2009.
Sean Gerrity received his Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2017 and joined Hostos as Assistant Professor of English that same year. He was formerly a Writing Fellow at Hostos from 2014-2016 while completing his graduate studies and joined Prof. Hirsch as WAC Co-Coordinator in Fall 2022. At Hostos, Sean has helped lead the English department’s redesign of its developmental courses and curriculum and serves as a course manager and a member of the department curriculum committee. Sean is also a senator, serves on the senate admissions and retention committee, the POINT committee, and was a member of the Middle States working group on ethics and integrity. He has also previously served as a faculty advisor to the Hostos Writing Center. His research on slavery and literature has been supported by grants from CUNY and from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and has appeared in various academic books and journals.
Current Fellows 2024-2025
Nina Beeby is a PhD candidate in biological anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center and Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter College. Her research focuses on behavioral, nutritional, and metabolic responses to habitat disturbance in non-human primates, with a specific interest in the lemurs of Madagascar. As a WAC Fellow at Hostos, she is interested in the application of WAC principles to improve writing in STEM.
Cathy Cabrera-Figueroa is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She holds an M.A. and an M.Phil. in History from the CUNY Graduate Center and an M.A. from the Liberal Studies program at Lehman College. Her academic research focuses on the policies and interventions implemented in Puerto Rico and the United States that created opportunities and the need for the migration of Puerto Rican women in the early 20th century. As a WAC Fellow at Hostos, she feels privileged to learn how WAC pedagogy can be used for teaching and learning.
Valerie Fryer-Davis is a PhD Candidate in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her specialty is in decolonial, trans, and Black literature and theory, with an emphasis on Subsaharan Africa and the Caribbean. She has published in Memory Studies on the renegotiation of memorialization after the Rwandan Genocide and has also recently published a digest on queer pedagogy for the Hostos WAC Reader. Her current research for her dissertation focuses on how trans and Black love and rage can redress queer and racial violence since the 1960s, with a specific focus on Africana literature.
Diana Maron is a PhD candidate in Musicology at the Graduate Center CUNY and an adjunct lecturer at Queens College (Writing about Music – History of Recorded Sound) and the School of Visual Arts (Opera History). Her PhD research interests are Opera and Early Audiovisual Technology/Media. In her time at the Graduate Center, Diana received an advanced certificate in Film Studies, taught Music History at Brooklyn College, and now is working as a WAC Fellow for Hostos Community College. Passionate about teaching and pedagogy, Diana is also part of the Pedagogy Interest Group (PIG) in the Music Department at the Graduate Center. Diana also gave lectures about opera for the MetOpera Guild, where she had experience with public musicology. Dancer and actor turned academic, Diana holds a Master’s degree in Music (Interpretive Practices), a BA degree in Voice/Operatic Singing, and a BA degree in Audio Engineering.
Past Fellows
2023-2024
Nina Beeby
Cathy Cabrera-Figueroa
Maggie Fife
Valerie Fryer-Davis
Diana Maron
David Santamaría Legarda
2022-2023
Carlos G. Espinal
Maggie Fife
Pamela Franciotti
Tamara Maatouk
Casandra R. Murray
Teófilo Reis
2021-2022
Pamela Franciotti
Maggie Fife
Casandra Murray
Nic Rios
Shweta Deshpande
2018-2019
Dainy Bernstein
Janine DeFeo
Dagmawit Getahun
Patrick Lee
Sara Rychtarik
Kate Wojkiewic
2017-2018
Eylul Fidan Akinci
Dainy Bernstein
Shelley Buchbinder
Nora Goldman
Sara Rychtarik
Yuko Shiratori
2016-2017
Jennifer Hamano
Elliott Liu
Jessica Mahlbacher
Lauren Spradlin
Rose Tomassi
Nicole Webb
2015-2016
Sean Gerrity
Jennifer Hamano
Elliott Liu
Evangelia–Lydia Manatou
Rebecca Salois
Danielle Stewart
Mercedes Vega Villar
Nicole Webb
2014-2015
Janne Gillespie
Emmy Williamson
Rebecca Salois
Fang Xu
Ryan DeChant
Sean Gerrity
2013-2014
Jeremy Greenfield
Pablo Guerra
David Houpt
David Monaghan
Preeti Sampat
Rebecca Traynor
2012-2013
Mary Hubbell
Stephen Ruszcyk
Laura Paskell-Brown
RobertCastle
Elan Abrell
Emily Curtin
2011-2012
Shana Lessing
Monica Steinberg
Ryan Bazinet
Sophia Bishop
Kendra Brewster
Edwin Mayorga
2010-2011
Mark Alfano
Angelina Tallaj
Sarah Archino
Christopher Swift
Elisa Legon
Tudor Protopopescu
2009-2010
Mark Alfano
Adriana Perez
Sarah Archino
Christopher Swift
Elisa Legon
Tudor Protopopescu
2008-2009
Adriana Perez
Anamaria Flores
Dave Pier
Kate Wilson
Mayida Zaal
Roderick Graham