My teaching philosophy is grounded in my undergraduate experience at a Jesuit institution. Following the university’s mission, the professors exemplified cura personalis or “care for the whole person.” Today, as a professor, I teach writing with the whole person—the student—in mind.
The teaching of writing is a holistic endeavor. Likewise, writing plays an instrumental role in many areas of students’ lives. To help prepare students to communicate in a variety of situations, I teach them the fundamental skills they will need to adapt to situations. To that end, I uphold three pedagogical principles in my courses:
- to assign rhetorically-situated projects,
- to draw on students’ discipline-specific knowledge, and
- to promote the transfer of students’ writing skills to and from other situations.
In turn, I hope that students will utilize the skills they learn to communicate effectively, ethically, and rhetorically in all situations.
At Marquette, I teach the following undergraduate courses:
- ENGL 6820: Public-facing humanities and career discernment (view the handout from the Writing Innovation Symposium 2022 that outlines two class activities)
- ENGL 4986: English Department Newsletter Internship
- ENGL 4224: Radical Writing – An Invitation to the Self
- ENGL 3222: Writing in Health and Medicine
- ENGL 3220: Writing for Workplaces (view the Instructables that students have created as their final team projects)
- ENGL 3210: Writing Practices and Processes
- ENGL 1001: Academic Literacies and ENGL 1002: Public Literacies — both courses were part of the First-Year English Program and followed a program-wide curriculum
- HOPR 2955H: MU4Gold Scholars Research Seminar – Telling Your (Research) Story
- HOPR 1955H: Core Honors First-Year Seminar (formerly ENGL 1301H: Honors English) – Rhetoric, Science, and Writing