Rate My Professor Sarah DeCapua

Sarah DeCapua is an Associate Professor in Residence in the First-Year Writing Program within the Department of English at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. She assumed this role in 2018 as Assistant Professor in Residence and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2024. Prior to UConn, DeCapua served as Visiting Assistant Professor and Assistant Director of First-Year Composition at Texas Woman’s University from 2016 to 2018. Her career includes extensive teaching as an adjunct instructor and full-time instructor at Southern Connecticut State University, University of New Haven, Fairfield University, and Pikes Peak Community College, as well as a high school teaching internship at Shelton High School. She began her academic journey with a PhD in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2016, where her dissertation titled "Student Response to Written Teacher Feedback in First-Year Composition: Defining What Students Find Useful & Whether They Believe It Improves Their Writing" explored student perceptions of feedback. DeCapua also earned an MAT in Secondary Education (English) from Sacred Heart University in 1993 and a BS in English and Secondary Education from Springfield College in 1990. Earlier, from 1992 to 1999, she held editorial positions at Grolier Children’s Publishing, The Millbrook Press, and Newfield Publications, and worked as a freelance editor and independent author.

DeCapua's research centers on second language writing, with particular attention to students' identities as writers, multilingual writers' experiences, responses to instructor feedback, and the integration of technology such as screencast video to improve feedback and revision processes. She co-edited the book Global and Transformative Approaches Toward Linguistic Diversity (IGI Global, 2022) and authored chapters including "(Not) Lost in Translation: Multilingual Students, Translation, and Translanguaging in First-Year Writing" (2022), "Second Language Writing Skills: A Novel Look at Identity" (2020), and "Rhetorical Evolution in Crisis Times: A Writing Teacher’s Self-Investigation" (2021). Notable peer-reviewed work includes "Transforming Feedback Practices through the Use of Screencast Video Feedback in L2 Writing Classrooms" with Heon Jeon (Journal of Response to Writing, 2024). She has published opinion pieces in Inside Higher Ed, such as "The Day No Students Came to Class . . . Or Did They?" (2023), and presented on feedback practices at conferences like the Conference on Writing and Well-Being and the University of Connecticut Writing Center. Between 2002 and 2013, DeCapua authored over 20 non-fiction children’s books on civics, American history, colonies, abolitionists, and Native American tribes for publishers including Scholastic, Lerner Publishing Group, and Marshall Cavendish.