About the Writing Without Borders Project

Writing Without Borders is an innovative, cross-community literacy initiative that links writing instructors in the University of Arizona Writing Program with students and staff of the Tucson High Magnet School (THMS) Writing Center. Drawing on the pedagogical expertise of local teachers, UA writing specialists work with staff at THMS to design and implement professional development workshops, curricular support, and multimedia services for campus-community writing center activities. The purpose of this pilot project is to grow sustainable literacy awareness and literacy-related curricula across local and institutional borders in order to close the gap between high school and university-level writing.

About the Literacy Outreach Assistants

Katie Silvester is a PhD student in Rhetoric, Composition and the Teaching of English (RCTE) at the University of Arizona. She is the literacy coordinator for the Tucson High Writing Center. In addition, Katie co-manages a UofA Community Connections grant project called Writing Without Borders which works to bring students and teachers at Tucson High and the UofA Writing Program together in collaborative literacy workshops and events.

Sarah E. Harris recieved her MFA in fiction from West Virginia University in 2007, and is currently a doctoral candidate in RCTE at the University of Arizona. She designs web and print texts for Writing Without Borders, and assists in the planning of workshops and other events. For more about her writing and research, you can contact her at her website.

Ashley J. Holmes earned her BA and MA in English Education from NC State University, and she is currently a doctoral candidate in RCTE at the University of Arizona. In addition to planning workshops for Writing Without Borders, she teaches a variety of writing courses in the UA Writing Program. For the past two years, she has served as a Graduate Assistant with the College of Humanities Instructional Computing and an Academic Transfer Assistant for the UA Writing Program. Ashley has also volunteered to teach technology workshops and tutor adult English language learners at the Literacy Volunteers of Tucson.

Faith Kurtyka is a doctoral candidate in RCTE at the University of Arizona. Faith teaches writing at the University of Arizona and helped to develop the Wildcat Writers program, and serves as a literacy outreach assistant for Writing Without Borders. Among other honors, she recently received the Difference and Inequality Teaching Award from the UA Writing Program.