UW-Platteville
Director of General Education | Academic Affairs
Associate Professor | Humanities – English
After being raised in Texas and obtaining my doctorate at the University of Miami in Florida, I moved to Platteville to teach in the Humanities Department. (Over a decade later, I am still not emotionally prepared for winters in Wisconsin). At UW-Platteville, I have the joy of teaching a range of courses, mostly in the general education program, including in humanities, writing, gender studies, and international education. In a typical week, I can go from teaching organizational patterns of development in College Writing to discussing Victorian gender roles in a British literature course and talking about Afropolitanism in the contemporary Nigerian novel in world literature.
While I’ve always loved teaching, my understanding of teaching and learning has changed significantly as I’ve consider more fully teaching in my institutional context. I teach at a STEM-oriented institution that is student population that predominantly white, male (2/3rd), and often the first of their family to attend college. What do these students truly need in their education? In attempting to answer this question, I’ve incorporated insights from critical race studies and the cognitive sciences into my classroom.
In our current climate, we are all currently experiencing huge levels of uncertainty- in our lives. Within higher education, there is a lot of focus on technology as a way to enhance teaching and learning. Certainly technology is helpful in improving the experiences of our students but I think that what we really need to model for our students is how to meet this moment with openness, generosity, and compassion.
