Dan Zhang is a PhD candidate in the department of English and the Center for Writing Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

I grew up in Shenzhen, China, a huge city by the South China Sea. I came to study in the U.S. through an exchange program and decided to stay after the program. During my undergraduate years at Kansas State University, I became interested in working at the Writing Center. Also trained in secondary education (English Language Arts), I’m interested in both teaching in a class setting and working with students in a private setting. Looking back at my experience navigating between cultures and learning languages, I would like to investigate cultural influence on a person’s literacy development.