Dr. Aurora MacRae-Crerar is a lecturer in Penn’s Critical Writing Program. Skilled at making complex and technical topics accessible to mainstream audiences, “Dr. Mac” has written extensively for mainstream media on everything from the signals of blue whales and double-crossing ants, to the engineering design process, along with presenting and publishing scientific research in such journals as Nature and Science. She earned her doctorate in biology from Penn, where she studied soil microbes and climate change in Mongolia. She is the recipient of NSF, EPA, and AAAS Fellowships, and has shared her research with diverse audiences, from preschoolers to prison inmates. A skillful writer and teacher, Dr. Mac has taught writing and conducted writing workshops on and off Penn’s campus. An experienced author of a wide range of genres, from grant proposals and academic papers to science news stories for the NPR station of Northern California, she is known for her inspiring teaching as she draws upon her writing and science background to present the fundamentals and subtleties of writing for a range of audiences and venues.
Faculty