A boutique consultancy firm specializing in comprehensive writing curriculum design, interdisciplinary literacy integration, and the development of shared institutional languages for instruction and assessment.
Who We Are
Radius Literacy Group is a boutique firm built on 75 years of K-12 and higher education expertise. As composition and rhetoric professors, English teachers, writing program administrators, and published scholars, we bridge achievement gaps by translating research-based theory into innovative, sustainable programs that empower our clients and help students develop as writers and critical thinkers.
Meet Our Literacy Specialists
Alysa Robin Hantgan is an educator, writer, and curriculum consultant specializing in educational design and high-impact learning practices. She partners with educators and institutions to design and implement innovative curricula, programs, and professional development that strengthen teaching, learning, and student success.
Robert Mundy is an Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric and an award-winning writer and researcher who specializes in the transition to college-level literacy. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in English at Stony Brook University and Doctor of Arts in Composition and Rhetoric at St. John’s University.
Isaac Ramaawamy is a retired English educator with nearly three decades of experience leading curricular alignment across secondary education.
Current Literacy Challenges
Recent national headlines have brought public attention a “learning recession,” reflected in significant declines in student reading comprehension scores (Dewey et al., NAEP, 2024). In first-year writing classes, the trend continues. Students enter college with great difficulty reading complex texts, evaluating information, synthesizing sources, and developing critical perspectives, all of which impacts writing as well.
Students approach college writing with a deep sense of uncertainty, shaped in part by the current educational environment that prioritizes standardized performance over personal discovery, correctness over creativity, uniformity over authentic voice, and product over process. As a result, students understand writing as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a tool for expression and communication. In college classes, this tendency is often intensified: frozen by a fear of “getting it wrong” and overwhelmed by the freedom to experiment with language, form, and style, students retreat into a desire for certainty and security, asking instead, “Just tell me what to do,” “Just tell me how to get a good grade.”
A Solution-Oriented Approach
Addressing the need for improved literacy instruction requires a fundamental theoretical and pedagogical shift. Grounded in contemporary literacy research and writing studies best practices, our model treats reading and writing as interconnected practices best developed through a rhetorical and genre-based lens that emphasizes how meaning is shaped by purpose, audience, and context.
To translate these principles into practice, we focus on the following instructional priorities:
Position writing as an interactive and recursive meaning-making process.
Frame writing as shaped by context, audience, and purpose rather than isolated skills.
Develop a shared metalanguage that makes writing processes visible and easily discussed in and across academic content areas.
Replace once-size-fits-all programs with adaptable instructional frameworks.
Support the transfer of writing strategies across secondary, post-secondary, and disciplinary contexts.
Teach grammar and reading rhetorically, emphasizing purposeful choice and interpretation of arguments.
Build metacognitive and rhetorical awareness so that students understand what they are writing, why, and for whom.
Emphasize formative, reflective assessment centered on revision and growth over time.
Help educators build sustainable, manageable writing instruction practices for students and faculty.