The Department of English congratulates graduate student Keira Hambrick on her invitation to join the 2022 Summer Seminar for Composition and Research. Her dissertation project “Prior Knowledge and Transfer of Learning in First Year Composition” has been selected for inclusion in the 2022 cohort. 

Hambrick analyzes Teaching for Transfer and Culturally Relevant Pedagogy to explore ways writing programs, courses, and instructors’ practices may affect the kinds of prior knowledge that students successfully transfer through the FYC classroom. 

“I am so grateful to be invited to join the cohort of writing researchers for this year’s Summer Seminar,” Hambrick says. “I’ve surveyed, interviewed and collected teaching documents from college composition instructors across the U.S. This work has been a lot of fun for me and thanks to the generosity of my study participants, I have a lot of data to work with. I’m excited to learn better ways of understanding my data, and working directly with so many of the scholars whose work has already shaped my thinking.”  

Hambrick reflects on her journey so far: “I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Kay Halasek, and my dissertation committee members — Drs. Beverly Moss, Scott DeWitt, and Timothy San Pedro — for their support of my work.”  

Congratulations again to Keira Hambrick on this achievement!