Tutors
When tutors are hired in the Writing Center, they begin a training process that involves familiarizing themselves with the Writing Center Handbook. New tutors then observe tutoring sessions between clients and senior tutors, reflecting on their experiences with fellow staff members. The Beren Writing Center conducts monthly staff development meetings to continually foster dialogue amongst tutors to share their successes and struggles in an ongoing process of learning. If you are interested in applying to be a tutor at the Beren Writing Center, please review our tutor application and submit your materials to Director Gina Grimaldi.
Writing Center tutors are available to help you generate writing ideas, refine your rough drafts, or simply have a conversation about writing. Writing Center tutors not only support fellow student writers, but they are also prolific writers themselves.
What will tutors do for you?
- Our tutors will help you with any type of writing assignment at any point in the writing process. We can offer you support in generating and clarifying your ideas, developing arguments, locating evidence, consolidating conclusions, and developing a cohesive structure.
- Tutors will enable you to hone and develop your own thinking and writing skills.
- Tutors will help you feel more comfortable with the writing process.
Meet our current tutors!
Naomi Handwerger is from Riverdale, New York. She is currently a sophomore at Stern and is majoring in biology in hopes of pursuing a career in medicine. In her free time, she loves reading, writing, and spending time in nature. She cannot wait to work with you this semester!
Tova Mehlman is from Silver Spring, Maryland. She is currently a junior at Stern majoring in Biology. Her goal is to pursue a career in prosthetics and orthotics. She spent a year studying at Michlelet Mevaseret Yerushalayim. Tova is a certified scuba diver. She almost always prefers an essay to a test and cannot wait to work with you this semester!
Leora Muskat is from Oceanside, New York. She is currently a junior at Stern majoring in Jewish Studies and is pursuing a career in Jewish Education. She spent a year and a half learning in Migdal Oz. Leora loves singing, playing guitar, and of course writing! She is looking forward to working with you!
Rina Shamilov is a senior studying English and Art History. In her free time, she enjoys writing poetry, reading, and painting. Her recent obsessions include Malcolm in the Middle and collage art, and she is still figuring out what she wants to do after graduating. Rina is currently looking into MFA programs but is also thinking about pursuing a Master’s in Art History.
Rachel (Rachelle) Winokur is from Queens, NY. She is currently a junior at Sy Syms and majoring in Strategy & Entrepreneurship and Business Analytics. She spent a year studying at Shaalavim for Women and is hoping to pursue a career in consulting or product management after graduation. Rachelle loves to write and is looking forward to working with you this semester!
Michal Becker - bio coming soon!
Director
Gina Grimaldi
Writing Center Director
Instructor of English
Gina Grimaldi teaches composition and literature courses at Stern. After undergraduate study at Kenyon College and the University of South Florida, she attended the CUNY Graduate Center. Besides Renaissance drama and 20th-century fiction, she loves podcasts, documentaries, Brooklyn parks, and her little dogs, Ruby and Benny.
Her fantasy dinner-party guests would include: Christopher Marlowe, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Lucille Ball, Carl Sagan, and Margaret Atwood.
Teaching students to write with conviction is her perennial mission. One of her favorite pieces of wisdom comes from Annie Dillard in The Writing Life: "Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment."