Dr. Simone Sessolo has generously stepped into the Associate Director position on an interim basis for the 2021-22 academic year, a role Dr. Naomi Silver occupied for the last dozen years. Dr. Sessolo holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Texas at Austin (2012). He joined Sweetland in fall 2012 and has contributed substantially to many initiatives. He has taught Writing 100, 200, and 201; as well as Writing 300 and 301 in the Peer Writing Consultant Program. He also offers classes at the graduate level and has been co-director of the summer Dissertation Writing Institute since 2018. He is also co-director of Sweetland’s Digital Rhetorical Collaborative. For the past few years, he led a group of colleagues in developing The Dissertation ECoach, a messaging tool that provides targeted feedback to writers. Last year, he won the Digital Studies Initiative inaugural teaching award—so he literally set the standard for pedagogical excellence in digital environments!
The Sweetland Director, faculty, and staff are delighted he’s willing to commit his considerable energy, clear thinking, excellent problem-solving skills, outstanding knowledge of writing pedagogy, and splendid organizational abilities to help administer the unit. He brings admirable efficiency and a well-informed perspective to administrative decision making, and we are all happy to work with him in this new role.
Jimmy Brancho completed his Ph. D. in Chemistry at the University of Michigan in May 2017 and joined Sweetland’s faculty in September. He hopes to use his formal training as a scientist together with experience writing for a more public audience to encourage versatility in science writers.
Dana Nichols was awarded the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts’ Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education award. This award recognizes faculty members who are exceptionally dedicated to the educational experiences of undergraduates, and who demonstrate this dedication through achievements and innovations in their own and others’ classrooms or academic programs.
Louis Cicciarelli received a Transfer Connections Awards for Mentor of the Year as an outstanding mentor to transfer students during the 2016-2017 school year. Transfer Connections brings together incoming transfer students with former transfer student and faculty mentors to support their transition to UM.
Jimmy Brancho was lead author on an article entitled “Urea-glass preparation of titanium niobium nitrides and subsequent oxidation to photoactive titanium niobium oxynitrides” in 
David Karczynski published two books, “Smallmouth: Modern Tactics, Tips and Techniques” (Stackpole Press) and “From Lure to Fly: Fly Fishing for Spinning and Baitcast Anglers” (Lyons Press).
Christine Modey, with co-editors David Schoem and Ed St. John, has published a new compilation of essays on integrative and engaged pedagogies entitled “Teaching the Whole Student,” from Stylus Press. She presented at the East Central Writing Centers Association conference in March with her collaborator Jeff Austin from Skyline High School in Ann Arbor: “Everything Counts: Accounting for the Emotional Labor of Community Building in Writing Centers.” She also presented her recent research on peer writing center session reports at the International Writing Center Association conference in Chicago.
Simone Sessolo was invited in November 2017 to join as affiliate faculty in the Program in Digital Studies. His article “Writing the Selfie” has been accepted for publication in the journal _Prompt_.
In her fourth year as GSRA, Anna V. Knutson has been contributing to the Sweetland Research Team’s efforts to publish the results of the Writing Development Study while continuing to support the development of the MWrite program. Anna, who is interested in digital literacies, learning transfer, and writing program administration, is in her fifth year in the Joint Ph.D. Program in English and Education. Through her dissertation research, Anna is exploring the transfer of writing knowledge between social media and academic contexts among feminist college students.
Naitnaphit Limlamai, a PhD student in the Joint Program in English and Education, studies high school writing. Specifically, she studies teachers’ beliefs about what high school students should write, how writing should be taught, and how writing should be assessed; she explores the ways teachers’ beliefs, instruction, and student work align with research on writing instruction. Before attending Michigan she taught high school English for 13 years in Florida, New York, and Georgia. She has earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in human development and philosophy from Boston College and a MA in education after completing the Alliance for Catholic Education program at the University of Notre Dame. At Michigan she has taught in the English Department Writing Program and in the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning.
Emily Wilson taught high school English for 11 years before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. here at Michigan. Her undergraduate degree is in elementary education, and she has a master’s degree in English literature and rhetoric from Colorado State University. Growing up in the Air Force gave Emily the chance to live all over the United States and also gave her a desire to study the links between military kids’ identities and their literacy practices.
Over the summer, interns Clint Rooker and Ashley Bishel had the opportunity to work with Sweetland faculty on projects aimed at better understanding and improving the Peer Writing Consultant Program and the Minor in Writing.