Graduate Writing Center
Meet the Graduate Writing Consultants
Our writing consultants are graduate students who have extensive experience with graduate-level writing, as well as teaching and tutoring. Feel free to make an appointment with the writing consultant in the academic area most similar to yours, but all writing consultants have been trained to help graduate students with general writing issues in any field.
Scott Arno
Scott is a second year doctoral student in the interdepartmental program in neuroscience. His areas of research include electrophysiology, neural engineering, and theoretical neuroscience. Prior to his matriculation at UCLA, he was a masters student in biomedical engineering at Tufts University and an undergraduate in biomedical engineering at Boston University; as undergraduate, he won thesis of the year for his senior capstone project. Scott has also worked in industry; as an associate bioengineer in clinical research, he oversaw clinical trials for a nationwide study, and he authored both internal and external company documents. He has co-authored several scientific papers as well. In his spare time, he enjoys running and complaining about traffic. He has always been fond of the saucy tilde.
Netta Avineri
Netta Avineri is a fourth-year graduate student in the Department of Applied Linguistics/TESL. She focuses on discourse analysis, conversation analysis, and institutional talk and her current research interests include medical interaction; language, gender, and media; and moral reasoning in religious schools. Netta earned her BA in Anthropology with a minor in French from UCLA in 2001. In addition to working at the Graduate Writing Center, she teaches ESL, Applied Linguistics, and Sociology classes, serve as the Coordinator for OID's TOP Program, works as the ESL Tutor Supervisor at Covel Tutorials, and is on the executive committee of the ASUCLA Board of Directors. In her free time, Netta enjoys salsa dancing, playing flute, and traveling. Netta's favorite punctuation mark is the ellipsis...
Allison Crumly
Allison is a fifth-year graduate student in the Department of Comparative Literature. She is currently studying domesticity and transnational circulation in contemporary Black European fiction. Allison grew up in Boise, Idaho. After earning a B.A. in English and French at Stanford University, she spent two years editing and writing elementary math textbooks. In graduate school, she has taught writing and literature courses in the Comparative Literature department. She enjoys hiking, running, traveling, drinking tea, and reading novels. Her favorite punctuation mark is the comma.
Desmond Harmon
Desmond is a sixth-year doctoral student in the Department of Musicology. His dissertation is about melancholia in country music, and his research interests include American cultural history, psychoanalysis, and LGBT studies. He received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and an MA from the University of Pittsburgh. In whatever spare time he can carve out, Desmond likes martial arts, Islamic philosophy, video games, and raising reptiles. His life wouldn't be complete without question marks.
Mac Marston
Mac is a PhD candidate in the interdepartmental graduate program in Archaeology. He received his undergraduate degree in Archaeology, Classics, and Biology from Washington University in St. Louis in 2001. His research interests are inter- and multidisciplinary, ranging across the humanities, social, and biological sciences, and focus on how people interact with their social and natural environments. His recent research has been supported by an NSF Graduate Fellowship and Dissertation Improvement Grant. Mac has participated in archaeological research projects in Turkey, Albania, Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Kenya, and the United States. Away from UCLA, Mac enjoys cooking for friends and napping on the beach. His favorite typographical symbol is the pipe - so hot right now.
Jeannine Murray-Román
Jeannine has recently graduated from the Comparative Literature department with a dissertation entitled "Writing Rehearsals: The Uses of Performance in Contemporary Caribbean Writing." Jeannine has been a Writing Assistant and Tutor since an undergraduate at Dartmouth College where she worked at the Composition Center. She has also taught writing for many years in the Comparative Literature department, developing courses around rhetoric in literature. One of her main goals in these courses is to drain some of the frightening mystique out of the writing process and help students develop concrete strategies for writing an academic, argumentative paper. She is also part of several writing groups on and off campus, and finds the peer review process invaluable to her own work. Jeannine's favorite punctuation mark is the exclamation point.
Andrea Olinger
Andrea is a master's student in the Department of Applied Linguistics and TESL. She received her BA in English with a minor in Linguistics from Dartmouth College, where she tutored for the Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology. Andrea spent two years at the American Institutes for Research, working on studies of adolescent literacy, adult ESL literacy, and adult numeracy, as well as on issues in high school reform. She has also taught adult ESL and English for Academic Purposes. In her spare time, she is compiling an (informal) list of the best pastry shops in LA. Her favorite punctuation mark is the em-dash.
Jessica Preece
Jessica is a sixth year PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science. Relying primarily on quantitative data, she analyzes the role that ideology plays in politicians' patterns of party switching in South Africa, New Zealand and Italy. She takes nerdy pleasure in bragging about her Italian dataset with 3 million observations and fifty variables. Jessica grew up in Hawaii and received a BA in political science from Brigham Young University with a minor in organic chemistry. In her spare time, Jessica enjoys skiing, reading, cooking and Appalachian basketry. Her favorite punctuation mark is the semicolon.
Rob Sullivan
Rob Sullivan is a second year graduate student in geography. He graduated from UCLA in 2007, Magna Cum Laude, with a major in philosophy. His journalism has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, LIFE Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune. He wrote four docu-drama plays for various groups of workers, including Lady Beth: The Steelworkers’ Play. With financing from rock star Bruce Springsteen, Lady Beth toured the United States in 1986. He was a playwright-in-residence at Cal State University Northridge and has taught writing at CSUN, UCLA Extension, UCLA, and the Chino State Prison. Mr. Sullivan’s short stories have appeared in The Sun and Between C&D. The one punctuation mark I adore: the colon.
Bright Yuan
Bright is a PhD student in the history department. She specializes in U.S. history, with research interests in immigration, Asian American history, and women's history. Bright received a BA with a double major in English and history from Dartmouth College, where she tutored at the Center for Research, Writing, and Information Technology. She also spent a term at Trinity College, Dublin, where she studied Irish literature. In her free time, Bright enjoys puns and photography. Her favorite punctuation mark is the ampersand.
