New faculty join Warner School

Meg Callahan, assistant professor, teaching and curriculum
Meg joins the department with special interests in media literacy and in the writing process. Callahan is a graduate of Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, and the University of Buffalo Graduate School of Education where she earned a Ph.D. concentrating in English education and was a four-year Presidential Fellow. She taught 9-12 English in Clarence, New York. As a Writing Project fellow in western New York with the National Writing Project, she helps to design professional development opportunities in which teachers share their knowledge of writing education with other teachers.

This year she is collaborating with high school teachers in an action research project designed to help teachers at the Greece Central School examine and reflect more deeply on their teaching practices and those of their peers. She is currently developing a new Warner School graduate course tentatively titled “Analysis of Production." The course will examine television and rum as well as the production of newspapers, print advertising, and Web site design, and is designed to help students meet new state and NCATE media requirements.

Douglas Guiffrida, assistant professor, counseling and human development
Doug is a member of the counseling and human development faculty. He comes to the Warner School from Syracuse University where he recently earned a doctorate in counselor education and received CACREP accreditation. His bachelor's and master's degrees were awarded at Plattsburgh, State University of New York, where he was also CACREP accredited in school counseling. Guiffrida has extensive counseling experience. He worked with disadvantaged youth for three years in the federally funded Upward Bound program and was Site Director for a YMCA after-school program.

At the Warner School Guiffrida teaches counseling theory and practice, as well as counseling skills for teachers, administrators, and other helping professionals. He has also taught courses in human development across the life span, family systems theory, and group counseling. His principal research interests include minority students, their retention in primarily white institutions of higher education, and their general perceptions of the experience, and in examining and redesigning the way counselors learn entry-level skills.

Bronwen Low, assistant professor, teaching and curriculum
Bronwen Low has a passion for youth and popular culture and the insights they offer into the evolution of language, poetics, and multiple literacies. She received her doctorate from York University in Toronto, a master's degree in English from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and her bachelor's degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, where she received the Senator Frank Carrell Scholarship. Her interests include cultural and literary studies, postcolonial theory, and the teaching of academic writing. She has published on subjects such as slam poetry, rap music, youth video production, and Caribbean language debates. She is currently exploring youth engagements with new technologies through popular culture, and developing a Warner School course entitled "Critical Literacies, Technology, and Popular Culture," which examines the challenges popular culture poses for pedagogy and curriculum.

Karen Mackie, assistant professor, counseling and human development, and counseling outreach coordinator for the Warner Center for Professional Development and Education Reform
In addition to the delicate and complex job of establishing relationships between the Warner Center for Professional Development and area school districts and their counseling staffs, Karen is working on her doctoral dissertation and teaching "Introduction to Community Counseling" and "Counseling and Communication Skills for Teachers, Administrators, and Other Education Professionals." As if that weren't enough, she supervises students' practicums as they begin their initial counseling experiences. Mackie holds permanent National Certified Counselor status and has maintained a private psychotherapy practice since 1985. She has also counseled adults and youth through Parkridge Chemical Dependency, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Threshold Center for Alternative Youth Services. She graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in psychology from Geneseo State College, University of New York, and earned her master's degree at the Graduate School of Education and Human Development, the Warner School's predecessor at the University of Rochester.

Mackie is particularly interested in studying the impact of social class on the counseling process. Her dissertation research examines whether the sociology of professions holds theories that are useful to the counseling profession.