UW-Whitewater
Assistant Professor of English
Literature, Writing, and Film
Elizabeth Novotny is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where she teaches a variety of writing courses. She specializes in writing studies and writing program administration. Her research focuses on how to meet the needs of student writers, especially in first-year general education courses. She holds a BA in English from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a PhD in Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture from Michigan Technological University.
Teaching and Learning Philosophy
I believe that writing is a process and learning to write only comes through engaging in the process. I prioritize activities that allow students to have freedom, grow, and make mistakes in order to develop their own authentic thinking and voice. I share my own writing experiences and try to make my own writing process visible, especially messy works-in-progress. It is important to acknowledge that writing is difficult for everyone, not just for beginner writers, and students need to see me as a fellow writer who is engaged in the same kinds of activities that I am asking them to do. Metacognitive frameworks that help students become deliberate readers and writers are essential to my course design. I ask students to try out a particular reading or writing strategy and reflect on that experience: why it worked or didn’t work for them, and what kinds of circumstances it might be more or less effective in. I emphasize multiple ways of doing things and ask students to make choices about what strategies they use and connect to prior writing experiences. This reflective metacognitive work is as important as the activity itself. I also prioritize conferencing with students individually to get to know them and discuss their writing. Being a genuinely interested reader of student work is important for my teaching: students need to know that they are engaging with a real reader who values their ideas and responds to them. Ultimately, a focus on student learning drives everything that I do in my teaching, and I continually seek feedback from my students about what is working well and what could be better, and I make a point to respond to their suggestions.
