Phil Sandick is an Associate Teaching Professor of Writing and English at Georgetown University. Since 2022, he has served as Director of the Creative Writing Minor. Beginning in July 2026, he will serve as Director of the MA in Engaged and Public Humanities.
He holds a PhD in English (Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy) from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from UW-Madison. His research examines how podcast pedagogy and multimodal composition transform students’ relationship to writing: turning audio composition into a catalyst for understanding writing as an ongoing, public practice. He has been teaching with podcasts and digital media since 2010, developing assignment sequences that ask students to compose for audiences and communities beyond the classroom. His teaching practices and scholarship are centered around the concept that the most significant writing occurs when students shift from writing for a static “audience” and toward writing for present and real communities. His published work includes contributing a chapter on creative writing pedagogy in Can Creative Writing Really Be Taught? (Bloomsbury) and he has presented his research on audio composition and accessible pedagogy at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and Computers and Writing.
At Georgetown, Phil helped develop and teach a Writing for Others course that partnered students with campus and DC-area organizations to complete real writing projects for real clients. The course syllabus and design itself was co-created by a team of students, faculty, and Georgetown Cawley Career Education staff. He teaches the graduate seminar, Digital Humanities and Rhetoric (English 6932) and has directed four MA English capstones. He has mentored undergraduate honors theses in fiction writing and served as the Interim Director of the Georgetown Writing Center.
Before Georgetown, Phil served as Assistant Director of the Writing Program at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he was the Fiction Editor for The Carolina Quarterly. He worked in a variety of roles, including Assistant Director for Development, at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received the Kerry Sherin Wright Prize–awarded for the proposal that best represented the idea of literary community. He’s been building toward that vision ever since: one in which programs and classrooms are better connected, student writers become genuine resources for one another, and the work made and practices learned outlast the semester.
Academic Appointment(s)
- Primary
- Associate Teaching Professor, College - Department of English
- Secondary
- Director of Creative Writing Minor, College - Department of English