As an English major and Applied Writing minor, I worked in the AU Writing Center from 1989 until 1993 as the intern Assistant to the Director, when I left Ashland to study in London and then earn my M.A. in English from Michigan State University. After MSU, I took a job in Chicago as an advertising executive, where I worked for 8 years while also teaching as an adjunct at local community colleges, before taking a full-time teaching position at Jackson State Community College, where I was promoted to Associate Professor and served as the Writing Programs Coordinator, then as a Professor at Edison State College in Fort Myers, FL for one year, before being asked to take a newly created position at Chattanooga State Community College as the Assistant Department Head for Humanities/Learning Support Reading and Writing, tasked with redesigning the existing Developmental Reading and Writing programs into individualized, modularized course delivery.
I earned my Ph.D. in Composition & TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, writing my disseration about the increased marginalization resulting from Computer-Assisted Personalized System of Instruction course delivery for developmental writing courses; my writing received the Thomas Farrell Language Teacher Award in 2009, and in 2012, my dissertation earned the award for Promising Future Research in Composition. This past year, I received the state award for Outstanding Service to Students in Learning Support Programs for Tennessee for 2013 and was nominated for the Gladys Shaw National Award for Outstanding Service to Developmental Students, to be awarded in 2014.
My academic publications include a chapter in Computer-Mediated Communication Across Cultures: International Interactions in Online Environments (IGI Global Publishers), and peer-reviewed journal articles in TESL-EJ, The DKG Bulletin, Working Papers in Composition & TESOL, and the Tennessee English Journal; fiction publications include short stories in The GW (George Washington) Review, the Red Cedar Review, Yemassee, Re:AL, and Fugue, and my novel, The Freaks, was published in 2012. I am currently teaching writing in Tennessee and have been selected to teach British Literature to 1789 in London next summer.
