Nicole Cox has 20 years of experience teaching and working in higher education. At CIC, she builds educational infrastructure—developing and managing the faculty professional development series, assisting with curricula revision, implementing instructional design and online teaching best practices, coordinating and managing the summer internship program, and revising and revamping the college’s website. Nicole previously served as a Writing Instructor in CIC’s Distance Learning program and in the Joint Combined Warfighting School at Joint Forces Staff College, where she helped students write and publish new research for military and academic journals.
Prior to NDU, Nicole worked as a Faculty Coordinator at the University of the District of Columbia’s Division of Workforce Development and Lifelong Learning; Academic Advisor and Instructor at the School of Education at American University; Adjunct Professor in English at Montgomery County Community College; and Senior Lecturer in Rhetoric and Composition and Assistant Director of the Writing Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. At UIC, she was nominated for and won the university-wide Excellence in Teaching Award from the Teaching Recognition Program.
Outside of her academic career, Nicole is a working writer. She’s had poetry, creative nonfiction, and stage plays published and produced in Chicago and DC. Her work was nominated for Pushcart Prize (2005), and she's been awarded Individual Artist Grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Maryland State Arts Council. She was invited to the Sewanee Writer's Conference (2015), won Best Drama at DC Capital Fringe (2019), won the inaugural national Emerging Playwright prize from Theatre J (2019), and earned international playwriting residencies in Paris (2020), Rome (2023), and Montreal (2025). She’s currently working on book of essays and her first musical.
Nicole holds a Masters in Fine Arts from Emerson College in Boston, MA (2003), and a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Judaic Studies from Yeshiva University in New York, NY (1999).