Consultant Bios

Lane Anderson is earning an MFA in Nonfiction from Columbia University. She has taught composition at Columbia and Yeshiva University, and has worked in their writing centers. Before returning to grad school, she worked as a journalist and writer for national publications in San Francisco. Lane's writing interests include subculture and the American West; she has been known to spend her summers trying to avoid tick attacks in the Dakotas.

Keri Bertino, Director of the Writing Center, holds a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. She has taught in Columbia’s Undergraduate Writing Program, and worked at both Columbia’s Writing Center and The Cooper Union’s Center for Writing and Language Arts. Before graduate studies, Keri taught high school English through Teach For America in Baltimore; she has also done freelance curriculum writing for Teach For America and KIPP Schools. Her interests include the use of narrative in scholarship, bridging secondary and post-secondary education, and urban education.

John Deming holds a BA in Journalism from the University of New Hampshire and an MFA in Poetry from The New School. His main areas of interest include argumentative essays, critical reviews, and literary analysis with a special emphasis on 20th and 21st Century American poetry. He has taught and tutored native and multilingual writers at Baruch College, The New School and Borough of Manhattan Community College. He is a published poet and journalist and edits the poetry book review journal Cold Front.

Garth Risk Hallberg holds a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from NYU. His areas of interest include English and world literature, history rhetoric, philosophy, and literary style. The author of A Field Guide to the North American Family, he is a 2008 Fellow in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and teaches at Fordham University.

Dawn Jordan received her MA in TESOL from Hunter College and her MA in Media Studies from The New School. Dawn brings an extensive background of teaching and tutoring multilingual students, in particular, from her work in academic programs at LaGuardia and Hunter Colleges. She has focused on teaching writing, from ACT exam preparation to writing skills for an MCAT review course. Dawn returns to Baruch’s Writing Center for her sixth semester.

Matt Lombardi holds a BFA from Emerson College and an MFA in Fiction from The New School, where he was a teaching fellow in The Riggio Honors Program: Writing and Democracy. Before graduate studies, he tutored and taught English abroad to students in Chile, Thailand and Hungary. His areas of interest include American literature and travel writing.

Chihping Ma is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the Graduate Center, CUNY and is currently writing his dissertation on John Milton. Chihping has taught English reading and writing at John Jay College and New York City College of Technology, and worked as a Writing Fellow at the Schwartz Communication Institute, Baruch College. He brings his experience of working with multilingual students of English and business-related majors to the Writing Center.

Kalpana Narayanan holds a BA from Georgetown University and is working toward completing her MFA thesis in Writing at Columbia University. She has taught academic writing to freshman in Columbia University's Undergraduate Writing Program. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Kalpana taught SAT verbal and math skills to high school students for Kaplan Test Prep as well as English reading and writing skills to multilingual students in Washington, DC. Her interests include the intersection between academic and creative writing, film theory, and fiction.

Jono Mischkot received his MA in English from San Francisco State University and his MFA from the New York University Writing Program.  He is currently a fulltime Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at NYU, but has taught a variety of subjects: Literature, Creative Writing, Grammar, and Basic Composition.  His areas of expertise are literary interpretation, essay organization, brainstorming ideas, and creative writing.

Jennifer Ostrega has an MA in TESOL from Hunteer College and a BA in Theater Arts from Rutgers College. Jennifer's main areas of interest and expertise are in playwrighting, essay writing, and business communication.  Prior to working with multilingual learners, Jennifer worked in Corporate Compliance for Pfizer and Research Stategy for Sesame Street.  She also teaches writing through role-play and improvisational theater classes for English language learners at Columbia University & Pratt Institute.

Michael Rymer received an MFA in nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College in 2006. A Baruch College Writing Consultant since 2005, he has taught nonfiction writing at Purchase College and English as a Foreign Language in Thailand. Rymer writes about education for The Village Voice. His writing has also appeared in GOOD, Hyphen, FLAK, The Villager, Sarah Lawrence, In the Fray, and Folk Art Messenger.

Heather Samples holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA from Columbia University. Her areas of interest include the relationships between writing and other scholarly disciplines; the interplay between memory, narrative and rhetoric; and Appalachian folklore. Heather has taught writing in both traditional classrooms and writing centers at Columbia University and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Art and Science, and is currently at work on a novel.

Zoltan Varga holds an MA in English, ancient Greek, and Gender Studies. He is currently working on his PhD in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has been teaching literature at Hunter College since 2007. He has extensive experience in teaching ESL and worked as a freelance translator for several years. His special interests include narrative analysis, semiotics, and music.

Alex Welcome is a PhD candidate in Sociology at CUNY's Graduate Center. He has taught Social Theory and Research Methods at Queens College. He has also taught Race and Ethnicity at City College. He specializes in critical reading, CPE preparation, APA formatting, and argumentative essays.

Franklin Winslow received his BA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas and is completing his MFA at Columbia University. He has taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and has led private workshops throughout New York City. Prior to graduate studies, Franklin was an AmeriCorps VISTA and worked with the city's street homeless. His areas of interest include the poetics of dislocation, the construction of narrative engines, and the interplay of linear and lyric thought. His fiction and reviews have appeared in The New Criterion, The L Magazine, and Art Asia Pacific.