I am passionate about writing, both creative and academic. When I teach writing, I do more than share my enthusiasm for the written word with my students; I pass on to them skills they will need throughout their academic careers, and which will benefit them in the job market, as well. I take this responsibility seriously, but I try to create in my classroom a community that is more than just a group of students to whom I am assigned to teach material that meets the course outline and objectives. I come to my students not only as a teacher, but also as a fellow writer and thinker, and the class is centered around discourse designed to draw out and develop ideas for each individual involved. My goal is that every student feels welcome, valued, and a contributor of important ideas to conversations we have in class.
I have loved writing since I was very young. I was born and raised in Minnesota, and I spent the cold winter months of my childhood reading, which soon led to writing my own stories. Although I wrote a lot of fiction as a young person, I was interested in other genres of writing. I read all kinds of books: novels, short story collections, reference books, poetry, and wildlife guides, to name a few. I learned early in life that the best, if not the quickest, way to get answers about anything was to consult a book—I grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s, before people had the Internet as a resource for information—and I spent hours at the public library. This love of books and thirst for information, combined with a compulsion to write, laid the foundation for my future career as a scholar, writer, and teacher.
Today, I am an experienced composition instructor with a strong writing center background. I enjoy working with students at all skill levels, but have a particular concern for beginning writers, especially those who are under-prepared for college level composition. Before beginning work on my master’s degree in English, I worked with at-risk students at Dassel-Cokato High School in Minnesota, offering academic support in and out of the classroom. I went on to become a graduate assistant tutor and Assistant Director of the Write Place, St. Cloud State University’s writing center while earning my M.A. in English. During my time as a graduate student at SCSU, I had the privilege of being part of the then-infant English 190 program, which helps under-prepared writers succeed at college English through collaboration between certain sections of first-year composition and graduate assistant writing consultants. After graduating from SCSU, I taught composition for five years in the Minnesota State College and Universities system, teaching first-composition and developmental writing courses. I remained part of the English 190 program as an instructor until I moved to Atlanta to teach and work on my Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition at Georgia State University.
My student-centered approach to process pedagogy is influenced by my writing center experience. Moreover, my experience with writing center work, involving both direct contact with students and administrative duties, helps me see the great potential that writing centers have to support writers at all skill levels. My dissertation research focuses on methods to support first year writing students who may be at risk of failure.