Nicole B. Wallack (B.A., McGill University, 1988; M.Sc., University of Edinburgh, 1989; Ph.D., New York University, 2004), is the Director of Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, where she has worked since 2003. At Columbia, she teaches seminars on writing pedagogy, American literature and film, Creative Nonfiction, and undergraduate writing courses. She has been an Associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College since 1998, and leads workshops for educators across grade-levels, disciplines, institutional, and national contexts on a variety of topics related to writing-based teaching.
Her scholarship focuses on the history, pedagogy, and aesthetics of the American essay; rhetoric and composition; teacher education; educational history; standardized testing; and knowledge transfer. She also writes essays on the literature and film of city life. Her articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in several collections as well as Fourth Genre, Essay Daily, and Public Books. Her book, Crafting Presence: The American Essay and the Future of Writing Studies (Utah State University Press, spring 2017), offers theoretical and pedagogical arguments for rethinking the role of essay writing in high school and college in the age of the Common Core State Standards and the Framework for Success in Post-Secondary Writing. She is the Vice President of the Council of Writing Program Administrator’s Metro-Affiliate group in New York; she has served on the Committee for Contingent Labor in the Profession, and currently works with the Editorial Collaborative of The Profession for the Modern Language Association.
Advisory Board