Teaching Experience

I love teaching students at BYU. They spill over with goodwill and eagerness. I hope I empower them to think about themselves as writers writing and to take mindful control of their own learning. I’ve been teaching for almost 20 years and it’s always been my favorite part of the job. I hope each student has a moment in my class when their habitual response to learning gets upended and they discover what it means to discover and grow.

Research

I wish I could say that I study something exotic, politically expedient, practical for daily living, inherently viral, or deliciously controversial. But I don’t. I study how to teach writing—specifically, how teaching metacognitive strategies can help student writers.

Selected Publications

• “Teaching Mindful Writers” (book published by Utah State University Press, 2020)
• “Trained Capacities: John Dewey, Rhetoric, and Democratic Practice” (edited book with Greg Clark published by University of South Carolina Press, 2014)
• “How Do Dual Credit Students Perform on College Writing Tasks After They Arrive on Campus? Empirical Data from a Large-Scale Study” (with Kristine Hansen, Brett McInelly, and Dennis Eggett, published in WPA: Writing Program Administration, Fall 2015)

Service

Since coming to BYU in 2007, I’ve worked with 39 wonderful graduate students as they finished their masters theses in the English Department. When I think of the most important work I can do on campus, I think about how these changes we make will influence students. So I’ve enjoyed working on curriculum committees because they force me to think about how to improve the student experience. Over the years I’ve grown to appreciate even tough moments of collaboration with colleagues.

Citizenship assignments

• Faculty mentor for graduate student theses
• Coordinator, Writing Across the Curriculum, 2019-present
• English Major Design Ad Hoc Committee Chair, 2019-2020
• General Education Design Committees—1.0 and 2.0, 2019-2020
• University Faculty Advisory Council (Teaching Committee, Family Committee), 2018–2021
• Assessment Coordinator, English Department, Fall 2018-2020
• Coordinator, University Writing, 2013–2018