The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Sometimes our graduate students like it so much at Villanova that they decide to stick around and work here, using the skills they’ve gained as students to further the mission of the university as employees. Christoforos Sassaris, who graduated with his MA this past spring, is now working as a distinctive collections coordinator at Falvey Library, and he was nice enough to share with the YAWP some reflections on his experience as a student transitioning into an employee. As a distinctive collections coordinator, Christoforos handles a wide variety of tasks. He works with “preservation and digitization of rare books and archives, digitizing a lot of books and old newspapers, photographs and other items.” Christoforos added, “I work on a GIS project, a digital map project, essentially. I’m currently taking part in curating an exhibit, which will be up during the fall semester, and will relate to military and illustrated maps over the last hundred years or so.” He writes blog posts for F...

  Sometimes our graduate students like it so much at Villanova that they decide to stick around and work here, using the skills they’ve gained as students to further the mission of the university as employees. One such former student and current employee is Amanda Piazza, who earned her MA in English this past spring. Amanda is now working as an administrative assistant for the office of financial assistance, where she assists the director with special projects, supports students and parents, tracks the department’s budget, and more.   Amanda noted that her English skills have proven useful in her new role. “At the moment, we’re getting a lot of very emotional parents and students who will call; learning the art of rhetoric, you kind of know what to say and what not to say. I have to phrase it in a way that says that we’re working on it and you’ll hear from us.” She also took a page from our department’s book, borrowing our idea of a regular departmental newsl...

 Are you an alum of our program, and are you interested in adjunct teaching for the fall? We regularly place updates about opportunities with local universities in our LinkedIn group; reach out to Mike Malloy for more information!