Neal Lerner is Lecturer in Writing Across the Curriculum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he supports undergraduates in classes that fulfill MIT’s communication-intensive requirement. While his primary teaching assignment is a scientific communications workshop attached to a sophomore biology lab class, he also has worked regularly with MIT students in a junior-level biology lab, in political science research methods, in a management psychology class, in an electrical engineering lab, and with graduate teaching assistants in architecture and chemistry. He also teaches a first-year writing class with an emphasis on the relationship between literacy and technology. All of his teaching is in computer-networked classrooms.

Previous to coming to MIT, Lerner was a faculty member and Writing Program/Writing Center Director at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

Lerner is co-editor (with Beth Boquet) of The Writing Center Journal , a peer-reviewed bi-annual journal of research and theory on writing centers, and co-author (with Paula Gillespie) of The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring , 2 nd ed. He has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the history, theory, and assessment of teaching writing, and is a three-time recipient of the International Writing Centers Association Outstanding Scholarship award. Lerner also presents his work regularly at regional and national meetings and has been a keynote or featured speaker at six conferences. Lerner’s current research focuses on the history of teaching both writing and science via “laboratory methods.”

Professionally, Lerner has long been involved with the Northeast Writing Centers Association as treasurer, vice-chair, and chair, and with the International Writing Centers Association as board member and treasurer. He is also a consulting board member to the Writing Centers Research Project at the University of Louisville and a member of the Conference on College Composition and Communication Research Committee. Lerner was also a leader at the first Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors and Professionals at the University of Wisconsin , Madison , and a co-host of the second Summer Institute at Clark University in Worcester , MA . He has also consulted on writing program review at DePauw University and Leslie University .

Lerner has led faculty workshops on writing across the curriculum at MIT, Louisiana State University , Loyola College in Baltimore , Knox College , the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, Wheelock College , Newberry College , Frederick Community College , and the University of Maryland University College.