Currently, I am Associate Professor of English and Associate Director of English Education at MSU. I teach undergraduate and graduate classes in the fields of composition and rhetoric, English education, and women's and gender studies. I also serve as the coordinator and advisor for the graduate teacher certification programs in English. My research interests include writing teacher preparation, pedagogical theories and their relationship to writing instruction, the political theory of Hannah Arendt as a lens for understanding writing pedagogy and the preparation of teachers, and representations of gender and maternity in popular discourse. My book, _First Semester: Graduate Students, First-Year Writing, and the Challenge of Middle Ground_, published jointly by Southern Illinois University Press and the Conference on College Composition and Communication as part of the Studies in Writing and Rhetoric series, is due out in February 2012. I am currently co-editing (w/Laurie Cella) a collection of essays--currently under contract with Lexington Books--that rethinks the concept of "sustainability" in community-based writing work.

My areas of specialization fall under the fields of composition and rhetoric, and include: writing teacher preparation; pedagogical theory; community-based writing and teaching; the political theory of Hannah Arendt; and representations of maternity in popular discourse.