MAWRD alumni and current PHD candidate Madeline Crozier started working in DePaul’s Writing Center in 2017 as an undergraduate student and garnered a sense of purpose that she has taken with her throughout her career. During her time at DePaul, she found an understanding of the power of mission minded work and scholarship. “I found [at the Writing Center] shared values, beliefs, a core understanding of learning, and a sense of shared mission.”
Through her current role as the Graduate Assistant Director of the Writing Center at the University of Tennessee (UT), MAWRD alum Madeline Crozier is fulfilling a sense of vocation and purpose, a sense that she also attributes to her time at DePaul.
At UT, Crozier works primarily with undergraduate students in a Journal Club reading scholarship in Writing Center studies. She also supports tutor training with a focus in linguistic justice, and still tutors herself any chance she can get. “I wouldn’t want to do any of it if I couldn’t still work one on one with writers,” she shared.
Her other work includes research in composition pedagogy, which she presented recently at the Conference of College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Baltimore with current DePaul faculty and students. Her presentation focused on innovative responses to first-year writers and the power of the reflective self assessment. Her research gives educators practical approaches to interpreting success of work through utilizing the reflective self assessment. Her previous scholarship includes cross-cultural, first-year composition with goals to have “intercultural communication skills become part of the learning outcomes of the class.”
In the fall, she will have completed her PHD program at UT, in Philosophy, Rhetoric and Composition/Writing Studies, and take on the roles of Assistant Professor of the Practice of Writing Studies and Assistant Director of the Thompson Writing Program Writing Studio at Duke University. Her experience speaks to her ability to succeed in this new position, but Crozier attributes her time at DePaul in readying her for this new chapter.
“I learned at DePaul the value of Liberal Arts. It is worthwhile going to college to become a better person, global citizen, and to develop oneself. [The WRD program] made me love the study of writing and rhetoric and conducting academic inquiry. My work in the Writing Center traces back to DePaul. I learned to become a writing instructor at DePaul even though I was not a writing instructor at DePaul. I was really influenced by the way I was being taught so well and intellectually challenged. I could not be any more prepared for a Ph.D. program after going to DePaul.”
Crozier even quoted Saint Vincent de Paul in her dissertation, asking its readers an important question: “What must be done?” She is responding to that question by contributing to writing pedagogy education through important scholarship in the Writing Center and beyond.
Hear more MAWRD alumni perspectives in the WRD Blog’s Alumni News section.