The new Writing Center Director is tasked with building up the current center. // Photo Courtesy of Hollyann Priesel
At the start of the fall semester, Hofstra University happily embraced new Writing Center Director Professor Genie Giaimo. With multiple years of teaching experience in writing and research, Giaimo hopes to be what this university needs.
“Most times, writing centers need a lot of work,” Giaimo said. “They haven’t been paid attention to and they’re underfunded or deprioritized.”
In previous years, the writing center faced a great deal of changes in faculty and challenges in operations. After spring 2023, the center was left with an interim director. Upon the long search for a new director’s position, Giaimo’s expertise and experience did not go unnoticed.
Assistant Director of the Writing Center, Marilyn Buono said that Giaimo’s specific research and interests in writing centers made her a successful new hire.
Giaimo earned their bachelor’s in psychology in English and her master’s in English at Clark University. They later earned their doctorate in English from Northeastern University. They also have over 17 years of teaching experience in higher education, over 40 peer-reviewed publications and three books, with another on the way.
What cannot be seen through her credentials on paper is her presence.
“I just want students to know how approachable they are,” Buono said. “I just really want to bring that home for students.”
Writing centers are a small community across the country and Giaimo was familiar with Hofstra’s.
“I felt like I knew the writing center intimately, but not like my own,” Giaimo said.
Giaimo was attracted to Hofstra because of the opportunity to engage in interdisciplinary work with other colleges and schools on campus. They intend to make this writing center better for both students and faculty by giving them a place to find new people and resources. This is important to them as a first-generation college graduate from a blue-collar family.
“All of this was very exciting to me because the more infrastructure there is in a university, the more of an opportunity there is to grow a writing center to meet that university’s needs,” Giaimo said.
Many of the college’s characteristics have made Giaimo’s decision more than worthwhile.
“What I like most about Hofstra is both the collegial atmosphere of colleagues and the opportunity for interdisciplinary work,” Giaimo said. “I was very excited about a robust program.”
So far, the tutors have appreciated Giaimo’s honesty and proposals about the writing center’s funding and marketing ideas. Giaimo desires to secure external funding for the writing center through endowments, foundational giving and corporate sponsorships.
“I think they do a great job of making sure that no one’s in the dark,” said sophomore English major Caroline Hempy, a tutor at the center. “Giaimo is very transparent about our financial issues and how they want to go about improving our financial situation by having all these tests with new hours and late policies.”
Sophomore English major Mikhaela Freitor, another new writing tutor, said that Giaimo has many new engagement ideas.
“I think there’s a lot of accessibility and ideas that we’re working on improving and expanding right now,” Freitor said. “I think that will be a good way to reach a wider audience and accommodate our students’ needs.”
Giaimo understands the importance of asynchronous tutoring and ongoing collaborations with the medical school and others to come. They intend to develop a marketing team for the writing center as well as alternative funding streams. In the words of Giaimo, “The sky is the limit, right?”
For more information about the writing center or the new director, visit Mason Hall in person or at https://www.hofstra.edu/writing-center/.
