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I am a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Most of my teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels explores the connections between writing and technology. Some of my recent scholarship has appeared in the journals Kairos, Computers and Composition, College Composition and Communication Online, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. I've also given presentations at many different conferences.
I'm currently the coordinator of our undergraduate and graduate programs in writing. In fall 2007, I will begin a sabbatical to work on a project tentatively titled Blogs As Writerly Spaces.
Much
more than you wanted to know
I was born in Wisconsin and I
lived in several different places as a child, but I consider Cedar Falls, Iowa
to be my home town. After high school, I attended the University of Iowa
where I earned a BA in English. After my undergraduate degree, I
entered the
creative writing program at Virginia
Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, and I earned a
Master of Fine Arts degree. I continued to live in Richmond until 1993,
working part-time as an adjunct instructor at Virginia Commonwealth and
full-time in the marketing department of the Virginia Student
Assistance Authority, a student loan agency. While my title there was
"public relations representative," most of my work involved desktop
publishing, document design, and technical writing.
I entered the PhD program in Rhetoric and Writing at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. My dissertation, which I have made available on the web, was called "The Immediacy of Rhetoric: Definitions, Illustrations, and Implications." In 1996, I began work as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, Oregon. In 1998, I joined the faculty at Eastern Michigan as an Assistant Professor, and in 2002, I was granted tenure and promoted to Associate Professor. In Fall 2007, I was promoted to Professor.
Most of my teaching focuses on the relationships between writing and technology. I frequently point out that I am an expert in writing who uses computers and not an expert in computers who uses writing. However, since I have been invested in the use of technologies like the Internet to facilitate my teaching since the early 90s (email, newsgroups, web pages, synchronous discussion forums, blogs, etc), I suppose I am a "computer expert" of a sort. Technology can’t replace good teaching nor can it solve the problems of bad teaching. But I do think that instructional technology simultaneously facilitates and questions the student-centered classroom in interesting ways that has made me a better teacher.
Currently, my main scholarly projects include some presentations and articles on blogging, podcasting, and online teaching. I'm currently working on a project about blogging, rhetorical siutation, and "writerly" spaces. I'm also (very slowly) working on a project that traces the history of various early writing technologies with changes in writing instruction. To date, I've published an essay on the introduction of the chalkboard in nineteenth century schools, I have presented on the evolution of the pen (from quill to nib to fountain pen to ballpoint) and the implications this tool had on the ability to teach more complex writing skills, and on the impact of the introduction of inexpensive paper products.
If you want to learn more about my non-academic life, look here.