Category: 2026 Newsletter

As I write this in August 2026, I look ahead with anticipation to a new academic year, and I reflect with pride on the past year.

The Workshop’s goal is to participate in fostering a culture of writing on campus; as such, it is our mission to serve all University of Illinois writers, from the first-semester undergraduate to the visiting faculty member. In the last academic year, we provided writing support in about 6,500 individual sessions and reached almost 29,000 students in presentations, writing groups, and resource fairs. The students and staff who comprise the Writers Workshop’s community are diverse, and many of our appointments were with first-generation students (22%), students from underrepresented and minoritized groups (38%), international students (32%), and multilingual writers (42%).

Research conducted at our writing center received national recognition in the last year. Antonio Hamilton, a long-time Writers Workshop consultant, assistant director, and graduate student in Writing Studies, received the 2025 International Writing Centers Association’s Future Leaders award in recognition of his service and potential to positively impact the field. I was honored to receive the 2025 IWCA Outstanding Article Award for “Generous Audience, Activist, Evaluator: Tutor-Teachers’ Knowledge, Practices, and Values for Response to Writing,” published in the Journal of Response to Writing. We also proud had several of our current consultants attend and present at the IWCA conference, where we caught up with several of our alums (shout out to Allison Kranek at OSU, María Carvajal Regidor at UMass Boston, Evin Groundwater at UC Irvine, and Neal Liu at Washburn University). Additionally, we have continued to be active in research in our local context. Undergraduate students in WRIT 300: Issues in Tutoring Writing, conducted original qualitative research on topics like discursive tutoring strategies, GenAI, disciplinary expertise, and multilingual students’ writing experiences, and six of our students presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium.

In the past year, the Writers Workshop has continued to take an active role in campus conversations about Generative AI, and we have developed presentations and resources to foster students’ critical, ethical use of writing with GenAI. We also undertook a digital accessibility review, ensuring our website, presentations, and other resources are accessible for all our users. In the spring, we were proud to be a featured unit in Orange and Blue Week, where we raised nearly $800 to support our services. 

As always, I extend my thanks to our outstanding current and former consultants, our reception and admin team, and the writers who help us learn about their amazing research and creative work. The Writers Workshop is passionate about the work we do, knowing that we provide an inclusive and collaborative environment where we and our writers feel safe to take risks and try out new ideas and skills.

The articles that follow were proposed and written by current consultants. I read these pieces as a joyful celebration of the community we’ve built, and I hope you enjoy their reflections on this work.

With best wishes,

Dr. Carolyn Wisniewski

Senior Director, Writers Workshop

When asked as a child what she wanted to be when she grew up, Hilary often replied, “Not bored and not boring!” Years later? So far, so good. Starting as a graduate writing consultant in 2017, Hilary is not just one of our longest-tenured consultants; her graduate and professional careers also make her stand out as anything but boring. 

Graduating with her Ph.D. in musicology in 2026, Hilary is a Himalayan lute specialist (lutes being any stringed instrument with a body and a neck). Her research has taken her not just to Illinois, but to Indiana as a Traveling Scholar, to Nepal as a Fulbright researcher, and to New York City as a Research Fellow at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Musical Instruments. Hilary’s dissertation reflects these experiences, treating instruments as archives that can be read like texts through a maker’s perspective, much like historical documents or artifacts. Throughout her work, Hilary cites these lutes-as-texts; accompanying her dissertation is what she calls her “Luteography,” displaying the 265 cited lutes as a combined image gallery and bibliography-like source list.

In addition to her doctoral work, Hilary works as the repair technician at the Music Inn World Instruments in Greenwich Village. Established in 1958, the store is so iconic that it was actually featured in the first season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Hilary’s fateful pursuit to purchase a dranyen (a Tibetan lute) from the store led her to apprenticing at the shop after finding out the instrument was in need of repair. Hilary’s background as an artist, fieldwork focused on the making and construction of instruments, and expertise in ethnomusicology facilitated her quick graduation from this apprenticeship, and she now has an apprentice of her own.

At the Music Inn, Hilary has repaired over 100 different types of instruments (so far). Some of her most notable projects include transforming a three-foot long spiraled Kudu antelope horn into a shofar, performing an emergency repair on a theorbo for an off-Broadway play (and getting free tickets to the show!), and restoring a client’s inherited concert zither, which was carried through exile in World War I and chronicled in their family memoirs. For Hilary, this work is so meaningful not just because she excels at it, but because she can “give[] instruments their voices back.”

We’re lucky to have had Hilary work with us amongst her many pursuits as one of our most sought-after writing consultants. She told me that she continued to work at the Workshop because she loves the work of one-to-one writing consulting. Hilary notes:

What the Writers Workshop offers is distinct and special because we give writers a space to be seen and heard and to help them grow. As they grow as writers, they cannot help but also grow as people and thinkers. As a consultant, I appreciate the opportunity to bear witness to and facilitate that process.

Hilary also sees many of the skills that make her a successful repair technician reflected in her consulting practice, including the brainstorming and creativity needed for problem solving. In doing this work, Hilary finds the feedback of Dr. Wisniewski invaluable, and understands her to be an exceptional model of what a good leader is.

Those of us at the Workshop will miss Hilary greatly, especially her recurring writers. However, we’re elated for Hilary to have time to pursue more of her dreams, including speaking about her research at three international conferences this past summer, returning some attention to her visual art practice, and exploring  more of New York City, especially among the Tibetan community in Jackson Heights.

As Hilary often ends her meetings with a joke, it’s only appropriate that I leave you with the same one she told me:

                What was the shy pebble’s only wish?

                That she could be a little boulder. 🙂

By Emily Mendelson, Communication, PhD candidate

Stephanie Filtcheva, junior pre-law student

Stephanie Filtcheva is an executive board member for Justice Under Restorative Youth (JURY), which is a student organization on campus that works with the Champaign County Youth Assessment Center. As a whole, JURY seeks to promote restorative justice practices, empower middle and high-school students, and keep these students out of juvenile detention. Stephanie leads JURY’s outreach branch, where she coordinates programming that teaches students about their legal rights and the repercussions of illegal behavior. So far, she has worked with the mayor of Champaign county, the superintendents of the Champaign school district, and the local YMCA and Boys and Girls Club. Stephanie loves seeing students’ confidence grow throughout the presentations she gives, and she’s inspired by how much students are willing to discuss difficult topics, such as current immigration policy.

Darby Elo, senior in political science and Spanish (Class of 2026)

As an Ignite Fellow for Teach for America, Darby Elo has been tutoring under-resourced elementary students over the past school year. In Spring 2026, she tutored three second-grade students four days a week to help them in their English classes, and the previous semester, she tutored two fourth-grade students. As someone who comes from a family of educators, Darby was interested in honing her teaching practice through the work involved in this fellowship. She finds it extremely rewarding to build relationships with students and watch them progress over the course of the semester, and this experience had led her to become more creative and patient while teaching. Darby finds many of the skills she learned in Dr. Wisniewski’s WRIT 300 class are applicable to both this role and her work as a consultant in the Workshop, especially motivational scaffolding.

Maris Daleo, veterinary medicine student and PhD from the Program for Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology

The Veterinary Medicine Scholars Program at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine requires students to enter veterinary school, acquire a PhD, then come back to finish veterinary school and obtain a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine. As a third-year vet student, this means Maris Daleo is undergoing her clinical rotations in vet medicine while having already defended a dissertation (and consulting at the Workshop!). For her PhD in wildlife epidemiology, Maris researched how to best care for confiscated turtles that were being transported through airports as part of illegal wildlife trades. This research reflects her passion for wildlife health, which drives her veterinary practice in pursuit of solutions that help both animals and people. So far, her favorite rotation has been with farm animals, which she prepared for by taking classes in regulatory medicine, clinical reasoning, and surgical skills. After receiving her DVM, Maris hopes to work in free-ranging wildlife health research, which would build upon skills she gained while writing her dissertation, her current work with bison herds in the Midwest, and her work over the summer engaging in wildlife medicine in Alaska.

By Emily Mendelson, Communication, PhD candidate

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

At the Writers Workshop, we proudly say that a “research university is a writing university.” Each day, groundbreaking discoveries are made across every corner of the University of Illinois. Less appreciated, however, is how these discoveries are shaped and facilitated through writing.

From freshmen composing their first research papers to doctoral students honing their dissertation proposals, writers are constantly questioning, reflecting, and extending the boundaries between known and unknown. Through individual and group writing consultations, the Writers Workshop functions as a central space to support this ongoing work.

At the undergraduate level, research and writing processes often begin with uncertainty. Lydia, a senior majoring in Spanish & speech and hearing science, reflects that her work as a Writers Workshop consultant often involves translating expectations and reinforcing writers’ efforts. “Many RHET 105 students that come in are concerned about genre expectations. A lot of them are lost and anxious and confused,” Lydia observes.

Macy, an undergraduate consultant studying brain and cognitive science, adds that many undergraduate writers believe that they are simply “bad writers.” In Macy’s experience, this is hardly ever the case. “When you come across as much writing as I do, it kind of stops being good and bad and just starts being different.” Her role, she explains, is to help writers recognize that distinction and build confidence in their abilities to develop their ideas.

As students move beyond introductory courses, writing becomes more specialized, and challenges evolve. Maris, a veterinary student who earned her PhD in the Program for Ecology, Evaluation, and Conservation Biology, describes working with writers in disciplines like computer engineering and biology, recognizing the distinct conventions and expectations of each field. Still, Maris emphasizes the importance of communicating research beyond one’s discipline. “At the end of the day, that’s what we’re going to be doing anyway. Not all of your committee members may be familiar with what you’re working on,” she explains. Maris draws on her role not only as a writing consultant, but as a reader and researcher, to guide writers toward greater clarity and impact.

For graduate students, writing also involves learning to recognize and articulate one’s own research contributions. August, a consultant and PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology, notes, “it’s really striking just how opaque and how confusing grad school can be,” acknowledging the unwritten disciplinary expectations and discourse practices graduate students must navigate. Hilary, a fellow graduate consultant and PhD candidate in musicology, highlights that it is increasingly important for graduate students to own their knowledge and experiences in writing. “Some of the things that I love about the job are recognizing original thought, celebrating it and being like, ‘hey, you just made some knowledge that didn’t exist before!’”

Knowledge flows both ways at the Writers Workshop. August and Hilary share a unique working relationship, serving as both consultants and writers for each other. In reflecting on what they’ve learned from each other’s work, there is an overwhelming sense of admiration and intellectual exchange. Hilary notes that August “threads so much social theory with their lived experiences and with these vignettes and moments of calm and rupture,” appreciating the craft and skill August brings to their research. August explains that “Hilary’s dissertation and her research is incredibly rich in a visual and artistic dimension,” sharing that her creative endeavors have inspired them to “try to represent some things more visually” through the incorporation of photography into their writing.

Similarly, Lydia recalls working with an upper-level sociology student on research about social deviance, describing the session as “definitely more of a co-creation of what was going on.” August adds:

“I don’t think I could have appreciated the breadth of knowledge-production and exchange that’s happening at this university before working here.”

Across disciplines and academic levels, writers and consultants alike contribute to a larger process of discovery. At the Writers Workshop, research is carried out through exchanges between students learning, questioning, and writing alongside one another. Every consultation is a reminder that a research university is truly a writing university.

By Ekangika Mahanti, Neuroscience major, Political Science minor

As a neurodivergent graduate consultant at the Writers Workshop, my practice entails extending access and flexibility as well as practicing creativity to tutor writers with different access needs and bodyminds, Margaret Price’s term on the interconnectedness of the body and mind. During my sessions, I ask writers what they would like to accomplish and what their needs are to make the sessions accessible and useful for them. My strategies entail reading their writing out loud, color-coding or bolding texts, typing notes while they verbally voice their thoughts, moving slowly and pausing to explain my suggestions and to hear their intentions, to name just a few. Writing studies and disability studies scholars, such as Noah Bukowski and Mel Y. Chen, write about the benefits of slowing down, connected to Alison Kafer’s crip time, when it comes to consultations and writing processes because listening to our bodyminds welcomes time for reflection and writing.  

Inside the Writers Workshop’s room at the Main Library, the space encapsulates a feeling of community for writers to feel comfortable and supported to express their ideas and work on their writing. Adorning the walls are visual art pieces from previous students, a large whiteboard, photos of the consultants along with their bios, a clock, and a screen. Snake and cacti plants sit on the windowsill, and sunlight and moonlight pour in through the large windows. The room has desktop computers, rolling chairs, three round tables, and two rectangular tables that can be adjusted accordingly to height for writers who are wheelchair users or for those who would like more space for their work. Additionally, the organizer and bookshelf hold handouts, pens, scratch paper, books, and other supplies. With these supplies, the Writers Workshop encourages multimodality: for consultants to tutor by leaving feedback on the computer or handwritten notes and for writers to express their thoughts either digitally or on pieces of paper.

Along with the physical space, the Writers Workshop also thinks about access in the digital spaces of the website, the appointments, and presentations. The website has accessible navigations, and the online appointment form provides the option for writers to share what they need for the session and disclose their disability if they choose. Through our multiple appointment modalities and online presentations, writers can pick their preferred form to receive writing assistance.

The consultants read research and have access to articles by scholars like Allison Harper Hitt and Julie Neff as well as the “Dis/Ability in the Writing Center” special issue on tutoring students with disabilities. The articles discuss directed tutoring approaches, but also, as Kerri Rinaldi writes, “to apply the same non-hierarchal, collaborative, student-centered approach” for all writers.

The Writers Workshop’s ethos consists of ensuring all writers in UIUC’s community receive writing assistance to continue their scholarly and personal writing endeavors. Disabled writer-activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha writes, “when you work to make spaces accessible, and then more accessible, know that you can come from a deep, profound place of love.”

By Hannah Charity, English PhD candidate, Asian American Studies minor

Works Cited

Bukowski, Noah and Brenda Jo Brueggemann. “Writing Center Research and Disability Theory.” Theories and Methods of Writing Center Studies, edited by Jo Mackiewicz and Rebecca Babcock, Routledge, 2019, pp. 68-78.

Chen, Mel Y. “Chronic Illness, Slowness, and the Time of Writing.” Crip Authorship: Disability as Method, edited by Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez, New York University Press, 2023, pp. 33-37.

Hitt, Allison Harper. “Resisting Diagnosis and Creating Avenues for Agency in the Writing Center.” Rhetorics of Overcoming: Rewriting Narratives of Disability and Accessibility in Writing Studies. National Council of Teachers of English, 2021, pp. 63-81.

Kafer, Alison. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press, 2013.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leah Lakshmi. Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018.

Spitzer-Hanks, Thomas and James Garner, editors. Dis/Ability in the Writing Center, vol. 13, no. 1, Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 2015.

When discussing the benefits of writing centers, the focus is often on the support we offer student writers. But the Writers Workshop also provides transformative learning experiences for the students who work with us as peer consultants. Research has identified peer tutoring as a “high impact practice,” an experience that enriches students’ learning and engagement and contributes to their future success (Bell et al., 2025). At the 2026 Student Success Symposium, the Writers Workshop presented results from a survey of our consultants—both undergrad and graduate students—that helped us learn more about how working in the Writers Workshop has influenced their educational journey here at Illinois.

According to Writers Workshop consultants, working as a peer tutor allows them to:

Become better writers: “We help writers think of themselves as writers, and encourage intentional reflection and targeted growth. In doing that, we can’t help but to do that for ourselves as writers, too.”

Feel a sense of belonging on campus: “It took me quite a while to figure out how I fit in when starting college, and becoming a part of this community helped me find my place. I was very intimidated by academia before I started working at the WW, but getting the opportunity to learn from and become friends with experienced and accomplished consultants who ranged from undergrads all the way to PhD candidates has demystified academia for me in many ways and shown me that I, too, can belong in higher ed.”

Learn about topics they otherwise wouldn’t: “I learned an immense amount about fields I never would have encountered otherwise…I learned about the health benefits of adzuki beans, ancient Byblos and its kings, and sociolinguistic knowledge and language testing. I read manuscripts about teacher-trainer AI models and had some sense of the decisions software engineers were making to train them well before ChatGPT 3.0 was released a couple years ago. I had read papers drawing on Critical Race Theory before it became politicized and pulled into the mainstream to manipulate public discourse.”

Prepare for graduate school: “I began to realize, throughout my time working here, that the aspect of the job that I found the most impactful and rewarding was the opportunity to help writers gain confidence: being there in their moments of doubt, stress or uncertainty and being the person that helps them understand their next steps and believe in their own abilities. These experiences were a major part of why I decided to pursue librarianship and have become interested in student success, and why I have decided to continue my education journey by pursuing another master’s degree in EPOL focused on higher education.”

Develop as mentors: “I became a better mentor through the repeat consultations with my regulars. Being a mentor is not a skill that is really taught to us as graduate students and there are a lot of amazing researchers who are completely sh*** mentors, in part because mentoring is rarely emphasized as a valuable career skill to have even though as academics we spend a lot of our time doing it.”

Prepare for future careers: “Being a consultant and having to interact with a different person every hour, sometimes once every 15 minutes, means I have gotten really good at talking to strangers… for my expected career in journalism, I am going to need to be extremely good at those things. The Writers Workshop has made me much more comfortable interacting with anyone of any age, and being confident in my abilities as a student, writer, consultant and journalist.”

These responses demonstrate the ways working as a peer tutor can enhance students’ time on campus, contribute to their personal development, and shape their future aspirations. We look forward to offering this unique transformative learning experience to many more students in the future!

By Meg Cole, Writers Workshop, Associate Director