Staff Spotlight: Get to Know AWA Cherri Brown

The WritingCenter’s AWAs (Administrative Writing Assistants) are Walden students with a mission and a desire to help others. When you email the Writing Center, chances are you'll be communicating directly with an AWA. This group assists fellow students with APA and writing questions, and seeks to bring about social change in their own communities and fields of study. From time to time on the blog, we will be spotlighting some of our very own Walden student AWAs to share the great work they're doing in the Writing Center and Beyond.

An entrepreneur, visionary, and teacher, AWA Cherri Brown clearly lives with a desire to live passionately and help others. She began her professional life working for the original Pan Am, which allowed her to visit at least 80 nations and develop relationships (which continue today) with people all over the world. When she later moved to Puerto Rico with her husband and family, she opened a catering and event planning business. She also wrote as a food editor for Scripps-Howard, performed a weekly CBS radio broadcast, taught at the island's only cook school, and “played with food” on television cook shows.

When life brought Cherri, her husband, and her children back to the United States and hurricane damage forced her business to close, Cherri was determined to pursue her dream of teaching. After divinity school, a program as a full-time student (living in a dorm and only visiting family on summers and holidays), and then a move to a program back home, Cherri completed her MBA. She later enrolled as a Walden student. She is currently teaching Introduction to Psychology as an adjunct professor for Andrew College and working on the final stages of her dissertation.

We asked Cherri to share a few tidbits about herself, her tips for students reaching out the Writing Center, and her plans for after graduation. Here are her responses:

Walden University Writing Center: What are your interests and hobbies?

Cherri Brown: Making water color paints from stuff around the property (flowers, red clay dirt, plants, tree bark, tree sap, just stuff), then painting (acrylic and oils, coffee and tea, mustard, ground peppers, all sorts of things); making some furniture from some of the trees that uprooted in a storm a few years back.  I write, I read, I write s'more; I record printed materials for others; photography (my Nikon is not functioning, it's old, and the newer model is horrid, Nikon refuses to service or even talk about my D70);  grow and preserve more foods. I love creating new dishes because that's the caterer in me (probably why I paint with food).

WUWC: What was your program of study here at Walden?

CB: Psychology, Education

WUWC: What drew you to want to study at Walden?

CB: Researched the online education offerings. I wanted just a click away, to stay home; one child and her children moved back in. Lots of family love and considerations. Click away was choice. Met with and random called many WU faculty. Checked credibility ratings with friends in big biz, people in high places: Results all positive, so WU it was.

WUWC: You worked as an Administrative Writing Assistant with the Writing Center for almost 2 years. What is the one thing students should keep in mind when emailing the writingsupport@waldenu.edu email with a question?

CB: Consider the e-mail a formal academic writing assignment. Clarity and detail are equally important. We're here to help, that's our only job, so help us help you.

WUWC: What are your plans once you receive your WaldenU degree?

CB: If Democrat President in 2016, then a chat with folks who know folks who introduced me to folks who I met with and asked me to return upon graduation to lend their ears to a pilot program I have for teaching English to non-English speaking immigrants to the U.S. with special attention to Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants.

To continue writing and publishing about all the background noise, to finish the book with three co-authors (they have been extremely patient), to buy a new chair and petrify the one I've been sitting in for too many years as a reminder of the price of goals and end visions.

To get folks with “bux” motivated to invest in properties with buildings for housing homeless female veterans and their children. We are a very dedicated group of women.

My friends still vote for me to run for the Senate or House. I think maybe they just don't understand that social change begins with the little steps when no one is looking and few know or care about who the changer might be or how the change was done, but it was, and the changer sleeps well.

Oh, and after Andrew College, I'd love to teach at WU because it's a good place to share.


Many thanks to Cherri for all her hard work!

Cherri Brown was born in California somewhere between Topanga Canyon and the Santa Monica Hospital. She and her family grow, harvest, and preserve a whole host of foods at home and live in a semirural area. She was a wonderful AWA and she will be missed as she moves on to bigger better things.  

Never miss a new post; Opt-out at any time