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Biography

Jenn Tharp has been Assistant Director of Graduate Academic Services since 2023, but has been working with graduate students to support their final steps towards graduation since June 2019. She holds a Masters in Writing from Rowan University, and has an academic background in composition studies and in writing center theory and practice. She worked for several years as a Professor of Composition with Rowan's Department of Writing Arts, teaching undergraduates the ins and outs of academic writing, information literacy, and the rhetorical situation. Those foundational concepts lent themselves well to her transition to working with graduate students on their large-scale writing projects.

Jenn is passionate about supporting graduate writers using the many tools available to the university, from working with the Rowan Writing Center bolstering one-on-one graduate writing consultations, to creating brand-new programs focused on writing self-efficacy and productivity. She runs Hootcamp, Rowan's thesis and dissertation "bootcamp," a three-day writing retreat offered to graduate students every semester in order to give them a quiet space and supportive community in which to work on their thesis or dissertation. She also runs the 3 Minute Thesis competition, in which students compete to communicate the core aspects of their research (and why it is important!) to a general audience. She works every day to build the foundations for more graduate student-focused academic support, and is excited and determined to work with graduate programs across the univeristy to make these very stressful grad school years as navigable as possible for any and every Rowan graduate student.