MENTORS
Pilar Cerón is a rising sophomore in the Gallatin School studying art, theatre, and social justice (and lots of other things!). She is a first-generation college student and an NYU Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar. On campus, Pilar does costume design for Gallatin theatre group Microtheater@NYU, is a mentor at NYU: Reaching Out, and works as an Admissions Ambassador for NYU’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions. In her (rare) moments of free time, Pilar loves doing photoshoots with her friends, crying happy tears at the sight of every dog, or scrolling through makeup tutorials on TikTok.
Dariely De La Cruz is a junior at Gallatin concentrating in Social Impact and Change through Activism and Civic Engagement with a minor in Social and Public Policy in the Pre-Law Track. She is the Chair of NYU’s World Changer Mentorship Program, a former Gallatin Global Human Rights Fellow and published on Gallatin’s Confluence page. She strives to advocate, guide and empower the underrepresented and aspires to be an agent for social justice in her future endeavors.
Charlie Dodge is a junior at Gallatin studying 21st Century Storytelling. She is originally from Southern California. She enjoys writing and editing and has aspirations for a future career in those fields.
Van Tingley is a senior at the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study where he is building his major around Art History, Literature, and Cultural Criticism. Van’s studies focus on decoding how viewers can look and think critically in order to better understand and articulate the world around them.
Moosa Waraich is a junior at Gallatin from Islamabad, Pakistan. He is currently concentrating in a mixture of History and Journalism but with a focus on postcolonialism and racial inequality. He’s been involved with the Gallatin Writing Program for the past two years, first as an editor for the Literacy Review, and now as a mentor for Great World Texts. While mentoring and teaching via Zoom has been a unique experience, it is one that he is truly grateful for.
Kristi Wong is a sophomore at Gallatin, with a concentration in Child Welfare and Literacy. She is studying the relationships between emotional literacy and English literacy, and socio-emotional support and academic support, as holistic approaches to education. This is her second time participating in Gallatin’s writing program—she was a student teacher for the adult ESOL writing program in Spring 2020.
TEACHERS AND FACULTY
Dannysha Diaz is a passionate educator with a commitment to providing accessible culturally responsive pedagogy. She has worked to support students by providing them with the necessary accommodations to access the curriculum, by creating student-centered lessons and activities and choosing culturally relevant texts. Dannysha is originally from Long Island, New York and her parents emigrated from the Dominican Republic. She began her career in education in 2015 as a Teaching Fellow and Special Education Teacher at Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. In 2016, she began working in Downtown Manhattan continuing to serve a diverse population of students.
Katie Silbereis is an English and Instructional Support teacher at University Neighborhood High School. She is passionate about tracking down culturally relevant texts that reflect her students’ diverse range of experiences and interests. As an educator, she takes a hands on, inquiry based approach to the English classroom, and likes to think of the published authors we read as mentors or fairy godparents influencing the students’ own writing. When she’s not teaching, you will find me reading every book in sight, cooking, trying to keep up with her 10 month old, and obsessing over true crime.
Vasu Varadhan holds a PhD in Media Studies from New York University where she is currently a member of the faculty at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She has taught a wide range of interdisciplinary seminars on media theory, identity in a multi-cultural world, ancient Indian literature and South Asian literature with a special focus on emerging Indian writers in the diaspora. She is the featured subject of the documentary, Knowing Her Place by Indu Krishnan which chronicles her struggle with “cultural schizophrenia” as an Indian American woman searching to forge her own identity. Her writing has been published in two of India’s leading newspapers, The Hindu and The Indian Express, in the South Asian Review and in the online publication, The Pythians. Her memoir, On My Own Terms: A Journey Between Two Worlds, was published in 2018. She lives in New York City.
Dave Whitman is an 11th and 12th grade English teacher and College Now instructor at UNHS. The goal of his classes and collaborations with co-teachers are for course content to be focused around intersectional identity. This is in the hopes that students can see themselves reflected and/or learn to be more inclusive by engaging in another’s experiences. In addition to teaching, he is the advisor of the school’s LGBTQ and allies organization, The Sexuality and Gender Alliance, as well as the equity and inclusion teaching team. Previously, he worked at two universities in counseling, advising, LGBTQ and diversity student services. Outside of school, he is a volunteer for The Trevor Project, the nation’s only LGBTQ suicide prevention hotline, enjoys nature, art, traveling when permitted, and time with his dog, friends, and niece and nephew.
GALLATIN WRITING PROGRAM
June Foley is the Senior Director of the Writing Program and Associate Faculty. She teaches writing and interdisciplinary courses, and a writing course for adult immigrants. She is the founder of and adviser to The Literacy Review, an annual compilation of the best writing by adults in literacy and ESOL classes throughout NYC, and the annual Literacy Review Workshops in Teaching Writing to Adults. She supervises the Great World Texts project, the writing mentors at New York City public high schools, and the Peer Writing Assistants at the Writing Center. She has won awards for administration, public service, advising, and teaching.
As Gallatin’s Writing Program Associate Director, Allyson Paty helps to plan and facilitate Writing Program events, serves as an editorial and visual consultant for the Literacy Review and the Gallatin Review, and oversees Confluence, an online platform for student writing, art, and research. She earned her MFA in Poetry from NYU’s Creative Writing Program, where she was a Starworks Fellow. Her poetry and criticism have appeared widely in print and online, and she is co-founding editor of Singing Saw Press.
Corinne Butta is the Graduate Assistant with the Gallatin Writing Program, where she assists with the Gallatin Review in addition to Great World Texts. She earned her BA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently earning her MA at NYU Gallatin. Since 2018, she has been Managing Editor at Wendy’s Subway, a reading room, writing space, and independent publisher in Bushwick, Brooklyn.