Sean McPhail

Background

About Sean McPhail

In July 2021, I joined the University of Windsor as a Learning Specialist cross-appointed to the Department of English & Creative Writing and the Dean’s Office, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (FAHSS). Before concluding my contract in September 2023, I had repeated opportunity to work closely with students to create challenging and productive classroom environments. Together with my counterpart in the Effective Writing Program, my chief responsibility was designing and implementing FAHSS’ required, first-year academic writing courses. This entailed hiring, training, and supervising a team of more than fifty undergraduate and graduate Teaching Assistants; liaising with the Dean and Associate Deans, Student Accessibility Services, and campus resources like the Writing Support Desk and Career Development and Experiential Learning; and helping our 1200+ students set themselves up for success, both at the University and beyond. I also served on the teaching teams for the Gateway and Fresh Start Programs, where I taught and advised students in intensive study skills courses tailored to incoming students and students on academic probation, respectively. Since completing my PhD, I have also designed and delivered academic writing courses for multiple academic units at Windsor and beyond. In addition to teaching Professional Writing for the Communications and Media Studies Department at McMaster University (F23), I taught sections of Effective Writing I (I22) and Effective Writing II (S23) for the Dean’s Office, FAHSS, University of Windsor. Given my record designing persuasive writing courses and working productively with international students, I was approached to develop Effective Academic Writing for Scholarship in Education for Windsor’s largely international, incoming Master’s of Education students; I have now taught two iterations of this course (F23, W24). Meanwhile, I have created and executed a number of courses with Windsor’s Department of English & Creative Writing, including The First World War in Prose (W24), World Literatures in English (W24, F23), Later British Literature (W23), and The Viral Video Essay (W22). Finally, I have been a Writing Instructor with the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Robert Gillespie Academic Skills Centre since September 2023.