Adjunct professor of anthropology
Email: jbilotta@drew.edu
Education: PhD student in Language Education at Rutgers University; MA in Linguistic Anthropology at University of South Carolina, 2017; BA in History and Anthropology from Drew University, 2013
Biography: American Folklore: Social Media and Communications, the course included in the Fall Forward curriculum, is Dr. Bilotta’s courseload highlight. A Drew alum, the academic focus of her undergraduate studies was on social constructions and shifts in historical interpretations of witchcraft in 16th and 17th century Scotland. After taking some time off from studies, she developed an interest in K–12 education, specifically as it concerns marginalized immigrant youth populations. At the University of South Carolina, she became more interested in exploring issues in language education which led to fieldwork in a New Jersey summer school, working with predominantly Arabic-speaking ESL (English as a Second Language) students. Based on this fieldwork, her master’s thesis looked at the ways in which teaching strategies can be improved for Arabic-speaking students from a linguistic and sociocultural perspective. She continues this research at the PhD level at Rutgers University, where she is currently enrolled.
Professor of psychology and an affiliated faculty member of the Women’s and Gender Studies program
Email: jcermele@drew.edu
Education: PhD, Clinical Psychology, University of Delaware, 1998; MA, University of Delaware, 1995; BA, Drew University, 1992
Biography: A Drew alum, Dr. Cermele’s research and teaching interests include gender violence and women’s resistance; outcomes and perceptions of self-defense training; feminist psychology and pedagogy and issues of gender in mental health. Jill is an avid Harry Potter fan and also teaches a course in the Psychology of Harry Potter. Read more about Dr. Cermele in the recent article “Office Hours with Jill Cermele: Self Determination, in Theory and Practice.”
Courses:
• Stress and Coping
• Psychology of Harry Potter (Drew Seminar for first-year students)
• Psychology Preceptorial (Writing in the Major)
• Abnormal Psychology
• Diagnosis and the DSM
• Seminar in Gender Violence & Women’s Resistance
• Seminar in Critiquing the Mass Marketing of Psychology
Select publications:
• Cermele, J., & McCaughey, M. (16 February, 2016). What’s wrong with the CDC’s public health model for rape prevention. Gender and Society blog (gendersociety.wordpress.com).
• McCaughey, M., & Cermele, J. (in press). Changing the hidden curriculum of campus rape prevention and education: Women’s self-defense as a key protective factor for a public-health model of prevention. Trauma, Violence and Abuse. Online preview version available at http://tva.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/10/15/1524838015611674.full
• Anderson, K. L., & Cermele, J. (2014). Public/private language aggression against women: Tweeting rage and intimate partner violence. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 2(2), 274-293.
• McCaughey, M. & Cermele, J. (2014). Special issue: Self defense against sexual assault (editors). Violence Against Women, 20(3).
Assistant teaching professor and is director of First-Year Writing
Email: jlloyd@drew.edu
Education: PhD, UC Irvine, 2018; MA, UC Irvine, 2012; BA, University of Washington, 2009
Biography: Dr. Lloyd’s interest in writing studies and, specifically, in helping others develop their capacities as writers and communicators took root when, on a whim, he applied to be an undergraduate tutor at a writing center at the University of Washington. From there, after briefly plying his writing, editing, and mentoring skills in both for-profit and non-profit settings, he enrolled in graduate school at UC Irvine. During his graduate studies, he focused on studying the complex connections that writers and communicators forge with the locations they inhabit. For instance, he researched and wrote about how LeBron James assumed the role of regional rhetor when announcing his return to the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2016, how students influenced a contentious debate in the 1980s about siting the Nixon presidential library at UC Irvine, and how students from underrepresented backgrounds adapt their rhetorical habits and abilities to college campuses.
Since arriving at Drew in 2018, he has continued exploring the relationships that students have with campuses, including the recent sanctuary campus movement, and has also branched out into travel writing, publishing a piece on teaching the travel sketches of Matsuo Bashō. Reflecting these interests, he teaches courses that involve place-based writing, archival and ethnographic research, and opportunities for students to think capaciously about their development as writers and communicators in college and beyond.
His scholarly writing appears in Literacy in Composition Studies, Present Tense: A Journal of Rhetoric in Society, and Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric, as well as in Bordered Writers: Latinx Identities and Literacy Practices at Hispanic-Serving Institutions, an edited collection from SUNY Press.