View Profile Page

Profile

Seán McCarthy is Professor of Writing Studies at Montclair State University, working at the confluence of digital literacies, community engagement, and interdisciplinary teaching and research. His teaching sits within the writing-to-learn tradition, treating writing less as a fixed set of genres to be mastered than as a way of thinking, exploring, and connecting with others. He has deep experience designing holistic and portfolio-based models of assessment that surface the full arc of student development, and give faculty a richer picture of what students are actually learning. These approaches empower students to write about how they are learning alongside what they are studying, to collaborate with others, and to treat failure as a creative and necessary opportunity for growth rather than as an "F" grade. Seán's teaching and scholarship treat writing as a necessary tool for designing the future, and are transdisciplinary by commitment: he has collaborated with faculty across more than twenty disciplines and with government departments, national think tanks, local and global nonprofits, and campus partners.

At Montclair State, Seán was recruited as a targeted hire to build interdisciplinary programming and relationships between the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Science and Mathematics (CSAM). In partnership with CSAM leadership and Writing Studies faculty, he has led the redesign of general education writing courses that now serve more than 1,000 STEM majors each year. These courses have already produced a notable increase in student success metrics. Building on this foundation, Seán has designed a team-taught, problem-focused capstone course that completes a new Certificate in Scientific Writing and Design, launching in 2026, which equips students with writing skills that help them develop their personal and professional futures. On campus, he co-leads the Student Experience Project Community of Practice, a faculty initiative focused on strengthening student belonging in Montclair's classrooms, and serves on the board of Montclair's Community Engagement Council. Globally, he coordinates Responsible Futures, a study abroad program at the intersection of environmental studies and speculative design, developed in partnership with a global network of universities and The Design Lab at the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Seán joined Montclair from James Madison University, where he led internationally recognized initiatives in design, digital humanities, and community engagement. He was a founding member and associate director of JMU X-Labs, an innovation lab whose pioneering pedagogical approaches were the subject of a cover story in The Chronicle of Higher Education. While at JMU, he also co-directed Celebrating Simms and Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities, nationally recognized community engagement and digital humanities projects that explore Black history and culture. Celebrating Simms received the inaugural Best Community Project Award from the Coalition for Community Writing, and Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities received a special mention for the American Studies Association's Garfinkel Prize in Digital Humanities. His academic and engaged scholarship has appeared in books, journals, digital platforms, and exhibitions, in collaboration with scholars, professionals across several sectors, and community members.

With a team of experiential learning leaders from institutions across the United States and internationally, Seán has co-authored Leading Experiential Learning On Campus (Routledge, 2026), which draws together more than a decade of work on how higher education can sustain transformative learning. The book takes up one of the most urgent and difficult questions facing higher education: how to build resilient campus ecosystems for the kinds of hands-on, relational, high-impact learning that AI cannot replicate. It offers a practitioner-grounded account of how universities can sustain this work at scale. Building on the book's arguments, Seán is developing new research on critical and ethical approaches to AI, including transdisciplinary projects with urban New Jersey communities on the co-design of emerging technologies, and studies of how students mobilize evidence in experiential learning to articulate what they know.

At a moment when higher education is being reshaped by emerging technologies, widening inequality, and urgent questions about the purpose of education itself, Seán's teaching, research, and service are dedicated to adapting the craft of writing instruction to new contexts. The goal is to empower students to embrace the complex world they will lead, and to co-design creative, interdisciplinary environments where students, faculty, and community partners can flourish together. This is work grounded in an ethic of collaboration and experimentation, shaped by the belief that what we make together is greater than what any of us could make alone.

Specialization

Writing studies, with emphases on writing-to-learn pedagogy, portfolio-based assessment, and community-engaged scholarship. Interdisciplinary curriculum design and experiential learning in higher education, including critical and ethical approaches to emerging technologies.

Links

Montclair State University does not endorse the views or opinions expressed in a faculty member's webpage or website. Consistent with the principles of academic freedom, the content provided is that of the author and does not express the opinions or views of Montclair State University.

• Leading Experiential Learning on Campus (Routledge, 2026)
• Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities
• Celebrating Simms