More than fifty students submitted their work to the Dialogues@RU Journal, which is indicative of the pleasingly high standard of work in the 201 Research Writing classes, since students must receive an 'A' for the course to be considered eligible to submit. And our choice as to which of these extremely good research papers to publish was a tough one. I am indebted to Brad Farberman, Elizabeth Madden-Zibman, and Letizia Schmid, who each teach 201, in helping me make this hard choice, and for generously giving up a large amount of time to read through these papers. Each paper was read twice and we then discussed our findings. Brad, Elizabeth and Letizia were superb colleagues with whom to work.
In addition to them, I would also like to thank all the other 201 professors, who were so terrific to work with throughout the year, and who did such fine and inspiring teaching. In particular, I would like to mention the following 201 teachers as they had students whose work is published in this journal (and whose names are displayed in brackets alongside the student's name in the Table of Contents, and on the student papers themselves): John Abrams, Ann Alter, Debbie Borie-Holtz, Donna Cantor, Ben Fisher, Elizabeth Gardner, Jason Gulya, Elizabeth Madden-Zibman, Amanda McDonnell, Jeff Robbins, Joanne Sills, Laura Smith, Brook Stanton and Karen Thompson. Congratulations to these teachers for inspiring their students and helping them achieve so much.
My thanks also extend to Jeris Cassel, who had worked scrupulously and impeccably as the Rutgers Research and Instructional Services librarian, and who played a large part not only in library instruction for the 201 classes, but also who helped me in so many ways in organizing the Poster Fair wherein students created posters visually displaying their research. Jeris has now retired from Rutgers, and she is missed.
Thanks are also due to Randi Gonnelli for her attractive cover design to this edition of the Dialogues@RU Journal, and to Alessandra Sperling and Jessica Homer for the immaculate layout of this journal. And hearty thanks to Charlie Piparo and his team at Mariano Press, for the beautiful end product of this journal.
Tisha Bender, Ph.D.
Past 201 and Hybrid Coordinator
Project Director of Online International Teaching
November 20, 2012
