I am currently the Director of Transformative and Inclusive Pedagogy in the Center for Academic Innovation and Faculty Support at USC Upstate. In this position, I offer faculty development in the areas of inclusive pedagogy and transparent design practices. Some projects I've worked on in the first year include designing a new faculty orientation program, designing a new faculty, mission-aligned year-long professional development course, and crafting policy related to DFW rates. I've enjoyed working one on one with faculty to review courses and to collaboratively find pedagogical solutions for 21st century college students.
From 2020-2023, I was an associate professor and department chair of Elementary Education at Piedmont University in Demorest, GA. In those roles, I taught and worked with undergraduate and graduate students pursuing initial and advanced teacher certification in Georgia and I observed interns in the field. I also served as chair of a few doctoral committees and was excited to see the incredibly inventive and timely work of teacher researchers. I collaborated with my colleagues on program assessment and evaluation, designed courses, and learned a great deal from my students and their students.
During my time at Piedmont, I devoted significant time to revising and updating BA, MAT, and MA course outcomes, assessments, and evaluation tools and aligning program and course outcomes with GA's Professional Standards Commission (PSC) revised standards. I undertook that work in collaboration with the elementary education faculty, the college of education leadership team, and the college of education director of assessment.
Responding to needs and achievements of our many transfer students (70%+), I revised and reformulated our articulation agreements with a number of technical colleges throughout GA for elementary and special education transfer students. This effort was undertaken to offer greater recognition of completed coursework and to ensure timely completion of the BA degree. Collaborations with SPED leadership also gave me the chance to spearhead designing and proposing a 5 year MAT program for dual certification in elementary and special education, as many of our paraprofessional degree seekers have SPED classroom experience and interest. After discovering we had a number of paraprofessionals with 5-15 years of classroom experience, I used UMass Amherst's University Without Walls Model to design and propose a Paraprofessional Pathway to Graduation that intends to award up to 12 hrs of credit for prior work experience to be evaluated via portfolio.
A smaller, though equally rewarding project, was creating the sequence of courses for an undergraduate and graduate reading endorsement, as elementary education initial certification degree programs in GA are required to embed courses that address the PSC's reading endorsement standards. Opening the endorsement to other majors and ensuring elementary majors have the opportunity to complete K-12 field experience to achieve the formal endorsement adds to their marketability in a time when reading intervention, remediation, and support are desperately needed in the state and region.
I am passionate about creating educational systems that are more equitable and inclusive for nontraditional and diverse student populations and I value sharing this passion with others. I believe liberal arts and comprehensive education are excellent places from which to explore transformative learning models that recognize the ingenuity of 21st century learners and prepare students for meaningful personal and professional lives. My expertise includes the areas of literacy, elementary education, English education, faculty development, student success, and program evaluation.
From 2020-2023, I was an associate professor and department chair of Elementary Education at Piedmont University in Demorest, GA. In those roles, I taught and worked with undergraduate and graduate students pursuing initial and advanced teacher certification in Georgia and I observed interns in the field. I also served as chair of a few doctoral committees and was excited to see the incredibly inventive and timely work of teacher researchers. I collaborated with my colleagues on program assessment and evaluation, designed courses, and learned a great deal from my students and their students.
During my time at Piedmont, I devoted significant time to revising and updating BA, MAT, and MA course outcomes, assessments, and evaluation tools and aligning program and course outcomes with GA's Professional Standards Commission (PSC) revised standards. I undertook that work in collaboration with the elementary education faculty, the college of education leadership team, and the college of education director of assessment.
Responding to needs and achievements of our many transfer students (70%+), I revised and reformulated our articulation agreements with a number of technical colleges throughout GA for elementary and special education transfer students. This effort was undertaken to offer greater recognition of completed coursework and to ensure timely completion of the BA degree. Collaborations with SPED leadership also gave me the chance to spearhead designing and proposing a 5 year MAT program for dual certification in elementary and special education, as many of our paraprofessional degree seekers have SPED classroom experience and interest. After discovering we had a number of paraprofessionals with 5-15 years of classroom experience, I used UMass Amherst's University Without Walls Model to design and propose a Paraprofessional Pathway to Graduation that intends to award up to 12 hrs of credit for prior work experience to be evaluated via portfolio.
A smaller, though equally rewarding project, was creating the sequence of courses for an undergraduate and graduate reading endorsement, as elementary education initial certification degree programs in GA are required to embed courses that address the PSC's reading endorsement standards. Opening the endorsement to other majors and ensuring elementary majors have the opportunity to complete K-12 field experience to achieve the formal endorsement adds to their marketability in a time when reading intervention, remediation, and support are desperately needed in the state and region.
I am passionate about creating educational systems that are more equitable and inclusive for nontraditional and diverse student populations and I value sharing this passion with others. I believe liberal arts and comprehensive education are excellent places from which to explore transformative learning models that recognize the ingenuity of 21st century learners and prepare students for meaningful personal and professional lives. My expertise includes the areas of literacy, elementary education, English education, faculty development, student success, and program evaluation.
BACKGROUND
After growing up in Charleston County in South Carolina, I completed my undergraduate degree in English and Theater at Middlebury College in Vermont. I hold a Master's of Art in English from Middlebury's Bread Loaf School of English and I completed my PhD in Language and Literacy at the University of South Carolina. My dissertation looked at the agentic practices of women writers who teach English and was conducted using narrative inquiry and feminist theory methods. Before and during my doctoral work, I taught English at technical colleges and English grades 5-11 in independent and parochial schools in South Carolina, where one of my 5th graders wrote this treasured poem to the right. I believe that advocacy is the cornerstone of effective teaching and teacher education and that when students and educators feel supported, cared for, and valued, schools, communities, and people can thrive. These interests have also been nurtured through my work with Write to Change, where I currently serve as a trustee. Write to Change is a community nonprofit that has for decades supported teachers' grassroots efforts to elevate student leaders working and collaborating to bring about local and national change. |
RESEARCH INTERESTS
My research interests in the last few years have shifted to examining the roles liberal arts and comprehensive colleges must play to prepare a 21st century citizenry and to stay relevant in a wildly shifting global market. We must, with urgency, discover together whether or not we have the institutional vision and stamina to radically revise the way we teach, design programs, and recognize the accelerated needs, interests, and abilities of degree seekers. While serving on the provost's General Education Task Force at Piedmont, I discovered that many colleges and universities are engaging their collective creativity and ingenuity (staff, faculty, and students) to curate educative landscapes that are more responsive and intentional in course progression and offerings and are abandoning distribution models that no longer serve the students they aim to recruit. I hope to spend more time evaluating this phenomenon and documenting the impact it has on retention and degree completion and attainment, particularly for students who have been institutionally underserved and academically undervalued. |