Dr. Melissa Tombro is an Associate Professor of writing and literature in the English and Communication Studies Department at FIT. She received her PhD in English from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign where her research focused on the use of qualitative inquiry and personal writing in the English classroom. Dr. Tombro is the author of Teaching Autoethnography: Personal Writing in the Classroom published through Open SUNY Textbooks. Her creative writing has appeared in Litro, Eclectica, StepAway Magazine, and Crack the Spine. She is the recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching for her work at FIT in a wide range of courses from Creative Nonfiction to Theatre Arts. In 2015 she created the Women and Gender Studies minor at FIT and serves as its coordinator. Outside of FIT she runs volunteer writing workshops for at-risk and underserved populations through the New York Writers Coalition. In her writing, teaching and volunteer work, she encourages other writers to use self-reflection and community engagement as a way to create meaningful, informed, and inspiring prose.