Antonio Hamilton, Assistant Director August 2024 – May 2026
Antonio Hamilton began his academic journey in Alaska, attending high school on a military base and later enrolling at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). There, he quickly realized his biology major wasn’t clicking. Antonio’s father suggested he try English because he excelled at it in high school. He immediately fell in love with his first literature class, made the transition into Medieval Literature, and tutored in UAA’s Writing Center his senior year. After graduating, Antonio moved across the country to pursue writing center work as he completed an MA with a concentration in medieval literature at Florida State University (FSU).
Before his master’s, Antonio was unaware there were pathways other than literature and creative writing within the English umbrella; here, he was introduced to the field of rhetoric and composition studies but needed a break from school. Staying in Florida for another year, he tutored as a writing consultant at Tallahassee Community College, where Antonio worked with a variety of students, including a larger population of non-traditional students, like parents and those who came back to school after twenty or thirty years. He says “that experience helped me learn how to help different people from different backgrounds. I really liked that aspect of it.”
Then, Antonio applied to PhD programs and “Voila!” He ended up at the University of Illinois. In his second year, he applied to the Writers Workshop—his favorite writing center yet. After tutoring for three semesters, Antonio became an Assistant Director (AD) of the Workshop. One of his biggest goals for our writing center has been finding different ways to bring GenAI into our learning and encourage our writers to be more critical of the tool. He has sought to understand “how does a writing center space re-conceptualize themselves or deal with such an invasive technology” that is changing the way writing and writing tutoring is done. Typically, the AD position only lasts two semesters, but Antonio stayed in the leadership role for four semesters. While he loves administrative work and learning through the observations he conducts, he is eager to get back to tutoring and working with his regulars again. “I feel like I learn from helping other people and your knowledge grows and your ability to help people even better grows as well,” he said.
Outside of the Writers Workshop, Antonio’s research focuses on Generative AI in writing studies and the impact of GenAI on the writing process. He is currently conducting research observations, studying the ways in which students utilize GenAI throughout their writing and what types of assignments students are more inclined to use GenAI to complete. With an expected graduation of May 2027, Antonio hopes to become a director of his own writing center, continuing to tutor while overseeing the other consultants.
“While researching all that stuff is great and I love that, I still want to have some type of contact with students in a way that I can consult. So, I wouldn’t mind if it works out and if it doesn’t seem too laborious in terms of my job descriptions. We’ll see.”
Emily Mendelson, Assistant Director, January 2026 – Present
As a twin from Long Island, New York, Emily Mendelson started her undergraduate career at Binghamton University. Entering as a political science major, she swiftly transferred into the business school and graduated with a degree in business analytics—what she describes as essentially a degree in research—and a minor in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Most of her credits for the minor were from her research experience in the Binghamton Human Sexualities Lab. Since Emily was a first-year undergrad, she has been contributing to “hook-up research” and gender studies research. She was also a part of the competitive National College Policy Debate circuit at Binghamton where she learned about critical theory, and which led her to the communication studies pipeline.
After graduating in 2020, Emily’s two choices were Teach for America or get a master’s degree. Schools with policy debate programs often fund graduate assistants who did competitive policy debate in undergrad, so she followed one of her friends to Baylor University to earn a master’s in communication. In her second year, she decided she was going to get a PhD. Emily’s advisor suggested University of Illinois.
Emily has always loved writing and teaching and following her first year instructing CMN 111 and 112, she joined the Writers Workshop in the spring of 2025. Because she is good at administrative work and wants the organizations she is a part of to run well, she applied to the Assistant Director (AD) position.
As AD, Emily wants to make sure undergrad tutors feel supported in their work opportunities just as she was in her undergraduate research. A goal of Emily’s in this position is to do research surrounding the memorable messages writers take away from their sessions the Workshop; this includes what the memorable messages are, why, and how it affects their writing. She also wants to collaborate more with first-year undergraduate courses, like the intro-level communication courses, because they reach such a wide audience as a general education requirement and could bring more students into the Workshop.
“I just want people to feel supported in their writing. There are a lot of lofty goals I think are important long-term for the Workshop. But knowing that the AD position is typically two semesters, if while I’m here, people can feel more confident in their writing and their writing tutoring, then that is successful for me,” Emily said.
Outside of the Workshop, Emily’s research focuses on how mediated communication technologies, primarily smartphones, affect sexual consent for in-person sexual activity. She also researches how social media sites are places where collective norm-making occurs regarding, typically, heterosexual, romantic relationships, as well as critical disability studies and sexual health research. She is a managing editor of Sex and Psychology, an academic blog and podcast run by Dr. Justin Lehmiller. After her expected graduation in May 2027, Emily hopes to return to the East Coast to be closer to her twin and the rest of her family.
By Lyric Roy, Journalism major, Political Science and Studio Art minors, sophomore