Biography
I was the founding director of Northwestern’s Bobbie and Stanton Cook Family Writing Program from 1977 until 2019 and continued as a faculty associate of the program until 2022. I was also a professor in the Department of Linguistics, where I served as department chair from 2004 until 2007. Throughout my career, I taught extensively in both the Cook Family Writing Program and the Department of Linguistics. I became professor emeritus in September 2022.
Combining scholarly and practical interests in writing instruction and in children’s language development, I have long been engaged with questions related to how children learn to write and how people continue to develop writing ability through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. My essays have ranged from “Children as Writers: The Beginnings of Learning to Write,” “On the Nature and Development of Children Writing,” and “What It Means to Be Literate” to “Words and Lives: Language, Literacy, and Culture in Multilingual Chicago,” “The Future of Writing Ability,” and “Reflections on the Future of Writing Development.” Over the years, I have been a consultant, peer reviewer, or advisory board member for many organizations, including the National Institute of Education, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and the Center for the Study of Writing at the University of California-Berkeley. I also served on the editorial boards of the scholarly journals Written Communication and Discourse Processes.
On campus, I served in a variety of additional roles, including chair of the Northwestern University Press faculty editorial board; co-chair of the University Strategic Plan working group on teaching, learning, and assessment; adviser to an intensive English language summer program for international graduate students; associate director of the university-wide Center for the Writing Arts; and faculty chair of the Communications Residential College. From 2002 until 2022, I was Northwestern’s Faculty Athletics Representative to the NCAA and the Big Ten Conference. In this role, I served at various times as chair of the Big Ten Faculty Representatives, chair of the Big Ten Academics and Eligibility Subcommittee, and member of the NCAA Academics, Eligibility, and Compliance Cabinet. I also served twice as Northwestern’s Interim Director of Athletics and Recreation, first from January 1 until April 13, 2008, and again from May 13 until June 30, 2021.
Projects in progress during these emeritus years include an essay on “The Human Voice, Spoken and Written,” taking into account recent advances in artificial intelligence; essays and stories grounded in personal and cultural history; and “Why Sports Matter,” a wide-ranging collaborative series of reflections on the value and hazards of sports in people’s lives.