Introductory statement (teaching/research/personal interests): I came to Seattle University in 2008, and I truly enjoy the students and the university community. In addition to teaching, I am the Faculty Director of the Wellness Living-Learning Community and a strong advocate for service learning. My research focuses on the intersection between real-world rhetoric (historical and current newspapers, websites, and civic argument) and literary responses to social and environmental injustice. Recently, I have begun writing and researching for composition and argument textbooks.

Interests: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century American Literature; Ecocriticism; Environmental Justice; Environmental and Corporate Rhetoric; Service Learning; Social Justice.

Current and Recent Courses: English 110 Seminar Theme: Local, Organic, All-Natural: The Rhetoric of Sustainable Food. Current and Previous English 120 Seminar Themes: Utopias and Dystopias; Villains; Literature and the Environment. In my writing courses, students participate in service learning with local nonprofits working to combat hunger. Understanding the real issues in our community leads to richer, more personally invested research, and it is important that we at Seattle University work to make our community better. Students also get to interact with real community leaders who are working toward a more just and humane world. My literature courses tend to focus on what literature has to teach us about building a better world, environmentally, socially, and ethically.

Future Courses and Course Themes: Academic Writing Seminar: Local, Organic, All-Natural: The Rhetoric of Sustainable Food. Humanities I Seminars: Environment and the Literary Imagination; Utopias and Dystopias. Humanities II Seminar: Speak Out!: Literature and Activism in the Pursuit of Social and Environmental Justice