Biography

Elizabeth J. Ciner has been at Carleton since 1982. She earned her B.A. with honors in English from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of Washington. Her dissertation was entitled “The Problem of Freedom in Richard Wright’s Fiction,” and most of her teaching has been in the area of American multicultural literature. She has served as Associate Dean of the College and Senior Lecturer in English at Carleton College since 1987. Prior to that, she ran the college writing center, directed the writing program, supervised the tutoring office and Math Skills Center and coordinated a Student Observer Program. For the past twenty years, she has had oversight responsibilities for the off-campus and international studies office, the Registrar’s Office, academic advising, and the college writing program. As a standing member of both the college’s Education and Curriculum Committee and Academic Standing Committee, she has been deeply involved in the assessment of academic programs and in students’ academic progress. She is a member of Carleton’s Integrated Learning Project, funded by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the AAC&U, and she is also involved in a mid-east studies initiative. She is the principle investigator for the Collaborative Assessment for Liberal Learning (CALL), a four-college consortial grant funded by the Teagle Foundation to explore and evaluate a variety of value-added assessment instruments.

Dean Ciner was a fellow at the first Institute on Writing, a joint project of The National Endowment for the Humanities and The University of Iowa designed to train a new generation of writing program directors. She was also one of the first Midwest representatives to the Academic Affairs Assembly of The College Board. In addition to reading AP English exams, she has served as a test consultant for ACT, an evaluator for The Collaboration for the Advancement of College Teaching and Learning and a consultant on writing programs, learning disabilities services and faculty development. She recently collaborated with Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Studies Kathleen Galotti on a project studying decision making and students’ choice of major. She is also involved in an on-going research project concerning students with language learning disabilities.

Bibliography

With Scott Bierman, Jacqulyn Lauer-Glebov, Carol Rutz and Mary Savina. "Integrative Learning: Coherence out of Chaos." Peer Review, Summer/Fall 2005, 18-20.

"A Major Decision." Advising and Learning: Academic Advising from the Perspective of Small Colleges and Universities, Martha K. Hemwall and Kent C. Trachte, eds. NACADA Mongraph Series, 2003, 8: 25-30.

"Richard Wright's Struggle With Fathers." James Trotman, editor. Richard Wright: Myths and Realities. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1988.

"Writing Across the Disciplines: A Faculty Development Program." Carl Klause and Nancy Jones, editors. Courses for Change in Writing. New Jersey: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc., 1984.