Writing Fellows

The Writing Fellows Program offers support for faculty members as they work with the student-writers in their courses and helps build the wider culture of writing on campus. Fellows are experienced teachers of writing at the college level who:

• work with faculty as they compose assignments and other course materials, develop class activities involving writing, and respond to students' written work
• appear in classes to address specific issues connected to writing and assist with in-class writing activities
• work one-on-one with individual students at the request of faculty members
• help departments develop materials connected to writing (from common assignments to course or department style guides)
• consult (as time permits) with faculty on their own writing projects, both pedagogical and scholarly

Fellows also offer regular workshops for faculty each semester, maintain an ongoing faculty writers group, and coordinate special campus events and initiatives connected to writing.

The Writing Fellows assigned to each school or college are:

School of Business

Amanda Trainham earned her B.A. from SUNY Oswego in 2009 and her M.A. in English, with a concentration in African-American Literature, in 2013. She is curently doing doctoral work in Writing and Literary Studies at Binghamton University. Since 2015, she has been an instructor at SUNY Oswego, where she teaches First-Year Writing in the English and Creative Writing Department. Amanda focuses her First-Year Writing courses on active-participation activities, workshops, and student-led activities to foster and facilitate growth in the writing process and confidence in producing academic texts. As a Writing Fellow, Amanda strives to forge a strong, active relationship with the School of Business that emphasizes the importance of rhetoric and analytical thought in student writing.  She holds conferences for writing development with both faculty and students and delivers presentations and workshops about writing.

School of Communication, Media and the Arts

Kenneth Nichols has been a writing instructor at SUNY Oswego since 2010. He began his undergraduate studies in the Dramatic Writing Conservatory at SUNY Purchase before earning his BA in English/Writing Arts at SUNY Oswego in 2004. He earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Ohio State in 2010 after defending his thesis: a full-length novel whose story is told through a series of diverse and disparate documents. His fiction and nonfiction has appeared in dozens of literary journals and magazines. His web site Great Writers Steal features hundreds of writing craft essays that isolate lessons from great novels, stories, poems, and other forms of writing. He publishes romantic comedies and Young Adult novels under the pseudonym Allison Rhodes. Kenneth’s long experience in the arts allows him to serve the teachers and students of SCMA. He particularly enjoys helping teachers and students branch out into new media and emerging ways of communicating and telling stories.

School of Education

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

For academic year 2022-23, Ken Nichols and Amanda Trainham will work with Fellows Program Director Stephanie Pritchard and WAC Coordinator Michael Murphy to provide Writing Fellows support for the School of Eduation and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

To schedule an appointment

Appointments can be scheduled directly with Writing Fellows by email — just click on the links above.

Some suggestions for working with Fellows

1. Let us know what you're hoping for

When inviting a Fellow to address one of your classes, we think you'll get the best results if you focus your request. Fellows can address a great range of topics — from citation issues to process considerations to grammar to general pep talks on the importance of writing in college and professional life. But we recommend that you request a talk on "fragments and comma splices" or on "strategies for quoting effectively" rather than on something very general like "grammar" or "citation." Make sure you let the Fellow you consult know what you're hoping he or she can accomplish, and expect him or her to invite you to have a conversation beforehand to make this clear.

2. Moderate expectations

Be realistic about how much a Fellow can accomplish in a single session. Fellows can't cure your writers of all the ills you see in their work at once, especially with respect to grammar. But we're happy to come back more than once to talk about issues you think need attention.

3. Be there

Please plan on being present when a Fellow addresses your class — and in fact, we'd love it if you jumped in during discussion should you have anything to add. We find that sessions are much more effective if faculty are part of the conversation.

4. Understand the limits on Fellows' time

We love working with faculty writers whenever we can, though please recognize that we give priority to work that directly affects classes and student experience. Also, be advised when requesting this kind of consultation that Fellows aren't expert readers in specific fields: they may very well not know the disciplinary conventions that govern your work or much of the language that appears in it. That said, feel free to contact us if you have manuscripts you need advice about or that you'd simply like to have a second set of eyes on.