Meet Our Staff

Administrators

Randy Donowitz (Director) arrived at Pratt from The Borough of Manhattan Community College in 1995 and has led the development and growth of the WTC for nearly 30 years. He simultaneously served as co-coordinator of the Core Humanities Program for over 20 years and has served on numerous department, school and Institute-wide committees. He holds an M.A. in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaii, Manoa and a Bachelor’s degree from SUNY Oneonta. An internationally recognized authority on marine aquariums, Randy is the Co-Founder and Senior Editor at Reefs.com and Reefs Magazine and, logically, is the Faculty Advisor to Pratt’s aquarium club. He widely shares his knowledge with students and the Pratt Community.

Randy’s administrative interests lay in continuing to build the Writing Center into a supportive, multidisciplinary, learning community offering students not only high quality academic support, but a welcoming space for unplanned informal education and exploration.

Brian Cook (Operations Coordinator) came to Pratt in 2007 as a History of Art and Design student, was hired as a peer tutor in 2010, and worked as a regular part-time tutor from 2011-2017. He has been in his current position of Operations Coordinator since 2018.

Brian can almost always be found at the front desk, coordinating most of the day-to-day operations of the WTC. He’s gone to great lengths to make sure the space is organized and efficient, as well as warm and accessible. He’s known as a natural born problem solver and a jack of all trades – with experience in woodblock printmaking, graphic design, building PCs, gaming, aquarium keeping, cat rescue, and a recent foray into filmmaking. He is also the staff advisor to Pratt’s Dungeons and Dragons student club.

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Tutors

Lara Allen is an interdisciplinary artist with roots in experimental music. She has an MFA in painting from Yale University, a CELTA from University of Cambridge, and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2018, she began teaching undergraduate and graduate students in Pratt’s Intensive English Program (IEP) and in 2023, she was appointed Academic Coordinator. Before joining Pratt, she taught performance at Bruce High Quality Foundation University – a free, experimental art school in New York City.

Her current solo performance work as Sailor Beware combines sound collage, spoken word, illustration and vaudeville in a kaleidoscopic portrayal of coming of age in institutions that characterize “the troubled-teen industry.” Select exhibitions, performance venues, and collections include Artists Space, NYC, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Café Korb, Vienna, AUT; Museo de Bellas Artes, Havana, CU; SFMOMA, CA; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH; Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb, HRV;  Queens Museum, NY; City Hall, San Francisco, CA; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; and Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, PA.

Her teaching approach is to help students understand that language is involved in every aspect of life and that it is integral to practices in art and design. Her interdisciplinary background gives her familiarity with different processes involved in public speaking and writing and this helps her connect to students who may not have a lot of formal training in these areas. She enjoys helping students articulate their ideas across diverse requirements and assignments. As an artist she helps students connect to their assignments creatively, even as there is a focus on learning the ins and outs of working in an academic setting. She encourages students to recognize the ways that writing and speaking can produce new ideas that only come about through practice.

Olivia Batker Pritzker is a writer, editor, educator, and HMS instructor. She works with undergraduate and graduate students to develop and hone their writing, research, and critical thinking skills, and implements an intersectional, inquiry-based approach to her tutoring sessions. Olivia is the cofounder of Creature Publishing, an independent press curated around feminist horror, and works as a freelance developmental editor as well. Her professional and creative interests include the craft of fiction writing, queer and body horror, fairy tales, and reimaginings of traditional narratives. Olivia holds an M.F.A. in writing from Otis College of Art and Design, a TEFL certificate in ESL language instruction, and a B.A. in psychology and comparative literature from Brandeis University. Her love of travel has sent her around the world, exploring and working in over 20 countries. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. 

Terri Bennett began working at Pratt while studying Cultural Geography at CUNY Graduate Center almost 15 years ago. She is currently a tutor at the Writing and Tutorial Center as well as a Visiting Instructor in HMS. She has taught courses ranging from Core Humanities and Intensive English Program courses for International Graduate Students, to Graduate Thesis Writing. She also taught in the HEOP Summer Program for 6 years. Today she teaches two HMS classes in conjunction with the School of Architecture, in which she is “embedded” in thesis courses to provide research design and writing support. Terri is a part-time faculty member at Pratt and a full-time Emergency Response and Disaster Relief consultant. In this “other life,” she founded a nonprofit to help communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy and worked in Haiti as part of a humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake and 2011 cholera outbreak. She also conducted research in Thailand, where she lived with agricultural communities negatively impacted by environmentally destructive infrastructure projects. 

Currently she works alongside mayoral staffers as the First Deputy Director of the Asylum Application Help Center, a large-scale legal support operation that has served more than 10,000 asylum seekers and has become an unprecedented model for supporting new immigrants. She is grateful to have the opportunity to wear several hats, which allows her to combine her interests in policy, public service, and education.

Tom Buechele is a social theorist and educator. He received his MPhil from the CUNY GraduateCenter where he is a PhD candidate in Sociology. He has taught undergraduate courses in sociological theory, cultural studies, and media theory since 2008 and has advised thesis work for the Critical and Visual Studies, B.A. He joined Pratt’s Writing and Tutorial Center in 2017, mentoring students across curriculum on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, helping them with critical thinking, close reading, and thesis development and organization. He has participated in the pilot “Tutor in the Classroom” program, wherein he partnered with faculty to make in-class visits to provide one-on-one consultation for students developing essays and other writing assignments. As a tutor, he elicits students to actively engage with their writing by articulating, writing through and organizing their thoughts. He helps students to think through their writing and write through their thinking.

Channing Burt has taught Literary and Critical Studies and advanced level English as a Second/Foreign language in a wide variety of academic institutions in New York City and in Germany. She combines extensive practical classroom experience with a strong theoretical pedagogy and applied linguistics background from her undergraduate and graduate studies at Columbia University.

In collaboration with Pratt’s Center for Teaching and Learning, Channing co-hosted a workshop series titled “Resilient Teaching Online” in the summer of 2020. Also at this time, she researched and co-authored the remote learning faculty handbook Online Teaching Practices, which was distributed within Pratt’s Intensive English Program. As a tutor at Pratt’s Writing and Tutorial Center, she has advised students throughout the research, writing and revision of their graduate thesis papers.

Sean Cleary was born and raised in Queens, New York. He attended Pratt Institute, graduating with a B.F.A. in Writing for Performance, Publication and Media in 2005. Afterwards, he moved to Taiwan, ROC and taught English there for seven years. While there, he instructed classes for students ranging in age from kindergarten to adult, though he primarily worked with teenage and college-level students. During his time in Taiwan, he had the opportunity to help his students develop their English skills from rudimentary to conversational levels. 

Sean returned to New York City in 2013, and began work at Pratt’s Writing and Tutorial Center, and he has worked there continuously for ten years. He is highly sought after as a tutor in the Writing Center, and has developed relationships with professors who seek him out for his reliability in helping students with writing assignments. He has also worked in conjunction with Pratt’s Learning/Access Center, assisting students who have a range of special needs, especially relating to academic writing and organizational struggles relating to Attention Deficit Disorder. He also serves on Pratt’s Academic Integrity Standing Committee.

Sean is an active illustrator and writer of graphic novels and stories in sequential art, and works primarily in the independent comics scene. His work can be found online at www.DarklineSparrowline.com. 

Don Doherty first came to Pratt as a student of Fine Arts in 1983, later finishing his B.A. in Political Science at Hunter College of the City University of New York and his M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. He is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Humanities and Media Studies Department at Pratt, and an Adjunct Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College in the English Department. He has three decades’ worth of experience as a classroom instructor at the college level, and has been a tutor at the Writing and Tutorial Center for the same duration, making him one of our longest-serving staff members. Don is also a photographer and fine artist with a special interest in New York City, and his book Winter in New York won the HP Inkspiration Award for Publishing in 2018.

Claire Fisher has a B.A. in History and M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. She has taught, tutored, developed curricula for, and managed programs in ESL since 2013. She has extensive experience with writing, researching, and presenting in professional, academic, and informal contexts. In addition to tutoring at Pratt, Claire is a Virtual Educator through the U.S. State Department. She has also taught or tutored at The New School, Columbia University, Pace University, Passaic County Community College, and private language schools. Outside of work she runs the “Dead Fictional Girlfriends Report”, a feminist media analysis blog. Claire also had the honor of competing in Jeopardy’s 36th season.

Dominica Paige Giglio is an artist, writer, and educator. She is an alumna of Pratt Institute holding B.F.A. degrees in Photography and Art History, and an M.F.A. in Photography, Film and Related Media from Parsons School of Design. Dominica has been teaching photography, art history, and English at the collegiate level for 14 years, and is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Pratt in the Humanities and Media Studies Department. She has also been the Institute’s Art History tutor at the WTC since 2006.

Outside of academia, she works in publishing, specifically relating to artists’ books. She is the senior editor of Conveyor Magazine and a contributing editor for Mercuria Magazine. Works from Conveyor Magazine and its imprint, Conveyor Editions, are held in the permanent collections at MoMA, the Met, Tate Modern, Yale University Library, among many others. Dominica lives in Brooklyn with her Golden Retriever, Wally, and she has only ever lost at Scrabble once — by three points.

Nada Gordon has worked at Pratt since 2003 as both a teacher and an administrator. From 2005 to 2020, she coordinated the English language certificate programs, the CEP and the SCP. She served as Acting Director of the Intensive English Program for one year before becoming an Assistant Professor in the Humanities and Media Studies Program. In addition to her work as a teacher and administrator, Nada is a well-known, much anthologized poet. She has also worked as an editor and writer of English Language Learning materials.

Kwame Heshimu has been a valuable member of the Pratt community for over 25 years. He has taught Intro to Literary and Critical Studies I & II and Creative Writing for Art and Design. He has also worked as a senior tutor in the Writing and Tutorial Center where his ability to listen thoughtfully and interact adaptively across a wide range of disciplines is of central importance, allowing students to maintain their sense of personal authorship while exploring fundamental aspects of their work. He is also an accomplished songwriter, producer and arranger who has worked with dub pioneers Lee Perry and Augustus Pablo and Jazz musicians Brian Landrus and Peter Zummo. His latest project is a collaboration with Lorna Goodison, the poet laureate of Jamaica, and a leading figure in world literature.

Sahar Khraibani is a writer, artist, designer, and educator, currently Associate Professor and Acting Assistant Chair at Pratt Institute. Born and raised in Beirut, Sahar currently lives in Brooklyn, and is interested in the intersection of art and geopolitics, cyber landscapes, poetic computation, and the digital/aesthetic reproducibility of generational trauma. Sahar’s writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, The Poetry Project’s Footnotes, Hyperallergic, Al Hayya Magazine, FOMU’s Trigger, Nightboat Books, Bidayat Mag, Magnum Foundation, The Poetry Foundation, among many others, and is the recipient of the Montez Press Writer’s Grant (2020) and a fellowship from Asia Contemporary Art Week. Sahar’s writing and work have been nominated for the United States Artists Fellowship, and she has exhibited in Berlin, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Amman, Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, and Beirut. Sahar received the AREEN award for Excellence in Graphic Design along with numerous honors over the years.

Current pedagogical interests include “teaching as collaboration,” a new radical approach, theory, and series of experiments to push against power structures in the classroom, borrowing from systems of blockchain and the holobiont: an attempt to redistribute authority in a way that helps see beyond the hierarchies and structures we currently inhabit. This stems from the belief that one must always be “in study” (Fred Moten) and pedagogy/academia must be flexible to accommodate for our rapidly changing world. Teaching as Collaboration is also concerned with inclusivity, access, ableism, power, and slowness as a retaliation against the rapid speed of production and capitalism.

Jon Pauley has been teaching at Pratt since 2010.  He holds an M.A. in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and a B.A. in film.  He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor and currently teaches Literary and Critical Studies I and II.  Jon has a great love of horror films and independent cinema and often incorporates these interests in his classes.  He is a patient and compassionate instructor and tutor who strives to assist students with advancing their ideas to fruition.  In 2020, he co-authored a remote teaching guidebook for Pratt’s Intensive English Program.  Additionally, he worked on developing curricula for undergraduate and graduate Non-Native English speaking students.  Recently, Jon participated in developing productive AI resources for instructors in the Humanities and Media Studies department.  Outside of academia, Jon considers himself to be a music connoisseur and creates a weekly thematic playlist for a local watering hole in Clinton Hill. 

Yani Perez, M.F.A / M.B.A, is a poet, playwright, translator and educator. She has over thirteen years of experience in academia. She has taught English, Theatre and Speech at various universities in New York City. She worked as the Reading and Writing Specialist at Long Island University for the Higher Education Opportunity Program. In this role, she led the academic support and curriculum department for students in the English program. She was also the Coordinator for the Student Writing Group Project, as well as a tutor and mentor at L.I.U’s Writing Center. Additionally, she worked in the Writing Across the Curriculum and Honor’s Departments. Her interest in combining technology and learning led her to pursue a degree in Instructional Design. When she is not working in academia, she is writing or engulfed in theatre. Yani’s plays have been presented in various theaters in the United States such as La Mama and Yale University as well as internationally in Bogotá, Colombia. She works at IATI Theater, one of the oldest Latinx theaters in NYC. She is currently working on translations of Latinx artists in hopes of introducing them to English speaking audiences. She is a theatre critic and the Editor-in Chief of “All About Solo.”  

Michael Sharick has mentored students at the Pratt Writing and Tutorial Center since 2016. Like many WTC staff, he works with students across all sectors of the Institute, from first-year undergraduates struggling with their first college paper, to second-year graduate students composing a 100-page thesis. Michael primarily meets with students online, from his custom-built remote teaching studio, accommodating the needs of students who can’t easily come to campus.

Michael is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Humanities and Media Studies. He teaches courses for first and second year students in the Core Humanities program, a required sequence for all undergraduates. Since 2022, he also teaches in the Communication Design MFA program. He has served on the Pratt Academic Senate, the HMS Curriculum Review Committee, and the Core Humanities Assessment Committee. He served as co-coordinator of Pratt’s Writing Across Curriculum program from 2020-2022.

Originally from the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, Michael holds a B.A. in Music Industry from the State University of New York, College at Oneonta, and an M.F.A. in fiction from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC. He is a published author, currently at work on a novel, and a memoir about the ten years he spent as a cable news audio technician. He is a musician, a meditator, a cook, a parent, and a partner. If you catch him in a rare moment of downtime, he’ll probably ask what kind of art you make, or if you like Star Trek. 

Isa Yehya is a writer, editor, and visual artist with a commitment to education, cultural criticism, and decolonial feminism. Having graduated from Pratt Institute with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Critical and Visual Studies, she has focused her studies on Japanese popular culture, international cinema, aesthetics, countercultural practices, and feminist media theory. Her thesis, “The Kawaii Revolution: The Power of Cuteness, the Hyper-Feminine, and Hello Kitty”, is in the process of being prepared and edited for publication. Based out of Pratt Institute’s Writing and Tutorial Center, she provides mentorship, support, and educational resources for undergraduate and graduate students who seek to improve their academic and oral communication skills with a hands-on and interdisciplinary approach. She has worked at the Writing and Tutorial Center for six years, initially as a peer tutor and, as of 2021, as a senior staff member. She is heavily influenced by her multi-cultural background (Mexican, Puerto Rican, Syrian, and Lebanese) as well as her upbringing in New York City. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her African fat-tailed gecko, Oni.