Brock MacDonald

Brock MacDonald joined the staff of the Woodsworth College Writing Lab (as it was known then) as a part-time instructor in 1989, and became Director of the Academic Writing Centre (as it’s called now) and a full-time Lecturer at Woodsworth in 2004. Between the early Nineties and 2004, he also worked on writing initiatives for the Faculty of Pharmacy, taught at UTM’s Academic Skills Centre, developed and taught writing courses for both undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering, and was the Academic Coordinator of the Effective Communication Certificate Program at Engineering’s Professional Development Centre. More recently he has been involved in several initiatives in the Faculty of Arts and Science, including a two-year study of writing in the Department of Geography, a project to improve essay writing in 3rd-year Philosophy courses, and the Faculty’s Writing Instruction for TAs (WIT) program. 

Whatever his other activities, teaching in the Woodsworth Writing Centre has been a constant. “It’s always interesting and always rewarding,” he says, “because every student is unique, and in the Centre we work with students individually, one-on-one.” Since becoming the Centre’s Director, one of his major projects has been developing, in collaboration with Woodsworth’s IT Director, an online booking and record-keeping system for the Centre. His current research explores the system’s appointment records as a source of data on student perceptions of writing issues.