Teaching Experience

During the current academic year, I am teaching a mixture of literature and composition classes for the Department of English and Modern Languages at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. This fall I am teaching English 485 (Senior Capstone), English 355 (American Ethnic Literature), English 209 (Survey of World Literature II), and English 104 (Science and Technical Writing). Also, as the Department implements its reconfigured major, new courses are being added each semester. For the first time in Shepherd University's history, a gateway course for English majors is being offered, and I am teaching it. This class, English 301 (Introduction to Literary Studies), will equip students with the vocabulary, skill set, and theoretical basis they will need to succeed in their upper-division English classes.

Other classes I have taught at Shepherd University include:

• English 447 (American Literature Travel Practicum)
• English 446 (American Literature and the Prominence of Place)
• English 365 (Contemporary Literature)
• English 280 (Introduction to Technical Communication)
• English 204 (Survey of American Literature)
• English 102 (Writing for the Humanities)

Before coming to Shepherd, while I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at McDaniel College, I taught

• English 2258 (African-American Literature)
• Comparative Literature 2220 (Great Works of the Western World II)
• Comparative Literature 2219 (Great Works of the Western World I)
• English 1101 (Introduction to College Writing)

And while working on my Ph.D. at The George Washington University (GW), I taught two sections of English 10 (Freshman Composition) and two sections of English 11 (Research Writing).  Before starting the program at GW, I taught on an adjunct basis at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC), specifically at NVCC’s main campus in Annandale, Virginia.  At NVCC I taught three sections of English 112 (Introduction to Literature) and one section of English 116 (Writing for Business) at NVCC.

If you are interested in seeing how I structure and lead the courses I teach, samples of my class syllabi are posted below.

Besides the experience I’ve had teaching at McDaniel, GW, and Northern Virginia Community College, I also taught for one year at the Friedrich Ebert Gymnasium (FEG) in Hamburg, Germany.  I was a Fulbright Scholar to Germany in 1988 – 89, and the award I received gave me the opportunity to teach English twelve hours a week in a German academic high school and to attend the University of Hamburg.

While I was at FEG, my accomplishments included:

• Sponsoring the English Club
• Teaching a semester-long session to the 12^th grade English class entitled “American Dream/American Nightmare”
• Teaching a semester-long session to the 12^th grade English class on US regional literature
• Teaching Our Town to the 10^th grade English class and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to the 13^th grade
• Chaperoning the 8^th grade’s week-long class trip to Bayreuth and Nuremberg