Dr. Janice W. Neuleib,
Director

Janice Witherspoon Neuleib, Ph.D., wrote the first grant for the Illinois State Writing Project in 1992. She has been director since that first summer institute. She has attended three Writing Project Directors Retreats, acting as one of the leaders at the most recent in the Catskills in June 2002. This year she read NWP grant proposals in Atlanta in February and attended the State Network meeting in Savannah in April. She has agreed to become State Network director for Illinois. She has been at ISU since 1969 and has taught in Illinois since 1966. She first taught high school before going on to teach at ISU. Her books include four junior high level texts, one college rhetoric, and a grammar book; her book chapters and articles cover a wide range of topics, including teaching, tutoring, and administration. She has presented over two hundred workshops and papers nationally and internationally and has worked with many grants, including NEH grants and the eleven Writing Project grants. She also serves as Executive Secretary for IATE the NCTE affiliate and Director of Writing Programs for the university.

Jan Wirsing,
Co-Director

Currently I teach junior high language arts at Trinity Lutheran School in Bloomington.  I joined the ISWP as a fellow in 1997 and as director in 2002.  Meeting teachers and sharing the teaching of writing is great!

The teaching of writing became much more fun for me when I became I writer myself by journaling—a practice my students now enjoy too.  This was a complete 180-degree turn for me from my formal training; ISWP helped me see myself as a writer and removed my fear of writing.  A nontraditional woman, I preferred playing baseball to playing with dolls as a child and have always embraced a challenge.  After 20 years of teaching I was invited to the ISWP, where I learned from other teachers how writing benefits the writer and the reader, no matter what age or subject area, and even I, a veteran teacher, can still learn and grow as I model writing with my students.

Jim Meyer
Co-Director

A well-spent youth (and early middle age) have included French study in Europe, a master's in linguistics and a doctorate in rhetoric/composition, and lots of teaching: all subjects to seventh and eighth graders at an English-language school in Africa, French to elementary students and college students, English to Congolese college students, English and social studies to sixth graders in the Boston public schools, writing workshops for adults in Mexico, and a wealth of language, writing, and education classes at a liberal arts college.

I'm savoring my role as the newest member of the directorate, as the Writing Project brings all of this together for me. In my teaching role in the English department at Milikin University, I work primarily with English education majors to prepare them for teaching in grades 6-12. My most significant research project is a National Writing Project initiative focusing on school-based teacher inquiry groups as an effective form of professional development. Dr. Ellen Spycher (ISU's Department of Curriculum and Instruction), two ISWP teachers (Carey Applegate and Sarah Parlier), a principle (Shawn Hoffmann of Trinity Lutheran in Bloomington), and a researcher from the Chicago Pipeline Project (Andre Couto), and I will be looking at about 8 schools over the next three years. It's an exciting project--I'm looking forward to what we can learn about teacher inquiry through our work.

Teachers are at the heart of it all, and the Writing Project provides a model for professional development that is more effective than anything else I've worked with. I am constantly amazed by the creativity that teachers and their students show when we provide a little support and let them begin to enjoy reading and writing, and that's what the Writing Project is (in my view) all about!

Carey Applegate
Technology Liaison

I began my teaching career in the Mississippi Delta, then migrated north to my Central Illinois home. My involvement with the Illinois State Writing Project began when I attended a summer institute five years ago; through my experiences with ISWP and the National Writing Project, I have had the opportunity to watch my students grow as writers and to learn my way around my own writing and teaching. In addition to teaching high-school English, I am earning my PhD in English Studies at Illinois State University.