Meet the Co-Directors

Kirsti Cole and Roy Schwartzman are CWSP’s Co-Directors

Dr. Kirsti Cole is the Co-Director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program and Professor of English at North Carolina State University. Dr. Cole received her BA from the University of Montana (2001, English) and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University (2008, Rhetoric, Composition, and Literature). She studied at the University of London during her Bachelor’s program, and at St. Catherine’s College, Cambridge University during her Ph.D. coursework. She was Professor of English at Minnesota State University from 2008-2022, and she served as adjunct faculty at Chandler-Gilbert Community College in Composition, adjunct faculty at Mesa Community College in Gender and Women’s Studies, and a Teaching Associate and Instructor at Arizona State University, Tempe and Polytechnic campuses.

Dr. Cole’s teaching interests include online writing instruction, faculty development and instruction in composition pedagogy, research methods, and graduate writing workshops. One of the driving components of her scholarly activity is collaboration, in an effort to identify and examine barriers disciplinarily, and in terms of identity, rhetoric, and online and digital spaces. In collaboration with her co-authors and editors, she has published multiple innovative and creative works in the field. Her area of focus tends to be, simply put, how people use language to create meaning. She has published 6 edited collections, as well as numerous articles and chapters including Women’s Studies in Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Feminist Media Studies, and College English. Dr. Cole examines this kind of language use in three distinct areas: digital technology and writing studies, feminism and gender studies, and labor in higher education.

Dr. Roy Schwartzman (Ph.D., University of Iowa) is Professor of Communication at NC State University. He earned his B.A. in Philosophy (summa cum laude) and M.A. in Speech Communication from the University of Georgia. Prior to his arrival at NC State, Roy spent 17 years at UNC Greensboro, where he directed the Communication Across the Curriculum program and served as Head of the Department of Communication Studies. He was part of the implementation team for a $1.8 million Department of Education Title III grant at UNCG that incorporated a digital communication center alongside the Writing Center and Speaking Center.

Roy’s wide range of research includes critical scholarship of teaching and learning; public communication concerning science, technology, and medicine; and the formation and remediation of propaganda and prejudice (especially antisemitism and Holocaust survivor testimonies). He has held a Holocaust Educational Foundation fellowship and was named a USC Shoah Foundation Institute International Teaching Fellow. A creative writer and researcher, Roy has published more than 150 scholarly articles (approximately 30 co-authored with students) and book chapters as well as more than 350 poems. His work has won more than 20 research awards and 60 literary awards. His article “Performing Pandemic Pedagogy” is the most cited article published in Communication Education from 2020-2023. A recipient of the 2023 National Communication Association (NCA) Presidential Citation for Outstanding Service to the Discipline, Roy was the Principal Investigator for Cultivate Resilient Communities (the largest grant in NCA history) that established the inaugural NCA Center for Communication, Community Collaboration, and Change.

Chris Anson, CWSP Senior Strategic Advisor

Dr. Chris Anson is Distinguished University Professor, Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professor, and Senior Strategic Advisor for the Campus Writing and Speaking Program, which he directed from 1999-2023.