CAPTA’s 2017 Conference Keynote Speakers

The Capital Peer Tutoring Association is thrilled to announce our keynote speakers for this year’s conference CAPTA 2017: People, Purpose, and Passion to be held on Friday, December 8, 2017 in Arlington, VA!

We welcome Jeffrey Austin, founder-director of the Skyline High School Writing Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan and current IWCA Secondary School Representative, and Christine Modey, Peer Writing Consultant Program Director at the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan, to share with all conference participants their experiences around meaningful collaboration across secondary school and university writing center sites. We look forward to hearing from Jeffrey and Christine, both during their dual keynote address on Friday morning as well as in their interactive workshops for directors in the late morning and afternoon. Conference registration is now open here.

Past keynote speakers at CAPTA events include Dr. Jennifer Wells (CAPTA 2016) from New College of Florida and co-editor of The Successful High School Writing Center: Building the Best Program with your Students and Dr. Andrew Jeter (CAPTA 2013) from Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois and founder of the Chicagoland Organization of Writing, Literacy, and Learning Centers.

JEFFREY AUSTIN teaches Humanities and serves as the Writing Center Director at Skyline High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he was named a 2017 Washtenaw County Teacher of the Year. Jeffrey is also the current Secondary School Representative for IWCA.

His writing center life began as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan when his poetry professor nominated him to be a consultant in the Sweetland Center for Writing. Although he didn’t know it at the time, Jeffrey’s work at Sweetland would become an essential part of his teaching pedagogy, as he works to help his students multiply their funds of knowledge in their own writing through growth-oriented and process-minded dialogue. One of Jeffrey’s main goals in founding the Skyline Writing Center was to create a learner-centered space where peers could meaningfully dialogue with one another about any kind of writing at any stage of the writing process.

Since 2012, Jeffrey and his Skyline consultants have conducted thousands of sessions in their Writing Center, in classrooms, and online, organized three Writing Prize competitions to financially support emerging student voices, published five issues of Teen Spirit, an award-winning literary magazine, and formed an enduring collaboration with the consultants of the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan.

Jeffrey earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Education and Political Science and Master’s Degrees in Teaching and Educational Leadership and Policy from the University of Michigan.

DR. CHRISTINE MODEY is a lecturer in the Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan, where she teaches directs the Peer Writing Consultant Program and teaches courses in peer consultant training and new media writing. She has taught first-year writing courses on the themes of art and technology; suffering, justice, and community; physicians and their patients; and the history of the book. Her current research, conducted with colleagues at Sweetland, concerns the interactions between writers and consultants in Sweetland’s Writing Workshop.

She lives, gardens, reads, and cooks in Ann Arbor with her husband, children, Labrador retriever, and two cats.