​                     Dan Melzer
       Professor, University Writing Program                     University of California, Davis
​                                    he/him/his
                         [email protected]


​​About me
​
I'm a professor in the University Writing Program (UWP) at UC Davis. I've served as Director of First-Year Composition in the UWP and I was formerly the University Reading and Writing Coordinator at California State University, Sacramento, where I directed the Writing Across the Curriculum Program and the University Reading and Writing Center for tutoring in reading and writing. My research ​interests include writing across the curriculum, writing program administration, and response and assessment. On this website you can find my vita, teaching philosophy, teaching portfolio, and information about my consulting services. 

I've written two single-authored monographs with University Press of Colorado, Reconstructing Response to Student Writing (2023) and Assignments across the Curriculum (2014), and coauthored with Michelle Crow and Jeff Galin the book Sustainable WAC (NCTE, 2018) and with John Bean the third edition of the book Engaging Ideas (Jossey-Bass, 2021). 

​My new book, The Harms of Grading in Higher Education, was published by Routledge in June of 2026. The book discusses the impacts of grading (and not grading) on students, faculty, and institutions  through comparative institutional ethnographies of a university with a culture of harsh grading and difficult exams and a college that does not give grades and has a culture of robust student self-assessment.

You can visit my Research Gate webpage to view my current and past research.