As a teacher, I care about getting students to practice inquiry as they read and write; I want them to pose challenging questions, to critically consider other people’s ideas, and to connect what they learn in the classroom to their personal lives and public responsibilities.
I currently teach workshops, public events, and programs through The Land Institute and courses through adjunct faculty positions at nearby liberal arts colleges in central Kansas. For information about upcoming workshop offerings through the Ecosphere Studies program, check The Land Institute’s events calendar. Past offerings in 2019 include events in Salina, Kansas and Austin, Texas.
Other recent offerings include English 270: Eco-Writing in spring 2018 at Kansas Wesleyan University, an August 2018 experiential, place-based workshop for a class in biomimicry (DHM 4051) developed in collaboration with Dr. Cosette Armstrong in the sustainable design program of Oklahoma State University’s Department of Design, Housing and Merchandising, and a fall 2018 interdisciplinary weekend seminar (HN 305) in Bethany College’s honors program titled “Prairie Plant Stories.”
The West Bottoms Reborn project photographed a workshop I led on “Plants, Place, and Planet” at The Land Institute’s Perennial Agriculture Project Field Station in 2017. I have previously led workshops on literature and writing at the Loess Hills Prairie Seminar (2014) and the Nebraska Alliance for Conservation and Environmental Education & Nebraska Master Naturalist Annual Conference (2013), and from 2011-13 I was a tutor for Lincoln Literacy.
My teaching and mentoring experience in the Dept. of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln included an administrative appointment as an associate coordinator of the composition program (2014), and work as a graduate teaching assistant (instructor of record, 2010-16) and lecturer (2017). I taught 100-level writing courses, 200-level writing and American literature courses, and a 300-level course in literature and the environment at UNL. I taught both writing and literature courses online as well. One of my students won the Ted Kooser Award for Outstanding First-Year Writing in the Dept. of English in 2013, and in 2014 I was one of the recipients of the Robert L. Hough Graduate Teaching Award in the Dept. of English.
My first and perhaps most formative teaching experience was the 2006-7 academic year, when I taught English and African literature at the Evanjelické Lyceum in Bratislava, Slovakia.