Please provide a brief bio, your educational background, research interests, and your favorite courses to teach:

I’ve been employed as a dish washer, disc jockey, sump-pump repairman, line cook, vacuum cleaner salesman, and telemarketer, but the best jobs I’ve had have been in writing centers. That work started in 1996, when I was a tutor in the Iowa State Writing Center. At the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, I taught in their award-winning writing program and was the assistant director of the UMass Writing Center. Then, I was a member of the English Department and the director of the Writing Center at Boise State University for six years, before coming back to Ohio in 2009 to take over the Wittenberg Writing Center. My B.A. is from Wooster (yup, that Wooster) in English; my M.A. is from Iowa State in English Literature; and my Ph.D. is from UMass-Amherst in Composition/Rhetoric. Most of my research nowadays focuses on the conversations that take place between writing advisors and students: How does an advisor establish rapport in a session?  What questions prompt the most revision? What is the balance between verbal and non-verbal communication? As for a favorite course, that’s easy: whichever one I’m teaching at the moment.

From my first semester teaching, I have worked with athletes (there were several swimmers in my 101 course at Amherst). What I have noticed most over the years is how athletics can help students focus; the time management necessary to attend practice and prepare for games often allows those students to prioritize their work and devise a plan for getting everything done. That ability is extremely important for a writing class, as an essay will usually involve several steps and thus students need to plan for the long term. Athletes can do that.

Athletics is one part of a larger whole. Alongside academics and social activities and community service, athletics serves to give students a wide-ranging and well-rounded education. The total experience they have through these various activities should be greater than the sum of its parts, and I believe that’s true for most of our students. Also, there are specific lessons that athletics brings—working as a member of a team; winning with class; losing with dignity—that are difficult to replicate elsewhere. Students also, in all the areas, come to appreciate the reward and results of hard work. They learn how effort translates into outcome, whether that’s in the pool, on the field, in the classroom, or in the community.

Actually, I believe the specialness of Wittenberg comes not from its uniqueness as a school, but rather the type of school it is: Division III. It is here, just as at Wooster, Oberlin, Kenyon, Allegheny, and others, that students can find a balance between athletics and academics, that they can be student-athletes in the true sense of that term. That’s been a goal of Wittenberg’s for many years, and we can highlight that we are the type of institution that allows for such a combination. How and why a student picks Wittenberg over other schools will be a personal matter—which school is the right fit?—but we can emphasize that we are the type of school that shares these priorities with other institutions. We do, after all, need other schools of this type in order to foster the competition between the teams.

Well, that’s difficult. Why don’t I mention the athletes that we currently have working in the Writing Center? There’s Ryan Parmater, a senior defenseman for the lacrosse team, who’s also extremely active in his fraternity and their philanthropic activities. Or Sarah Webb, a senior for the cross-country and track teams who is currently applying to Teach for America. Or Camila Quinones and Courtney Huck, two members of the national runner-up volleyball team. Or Emily Faas, a swimmer and Economics major who can do flip turns and flow charts. All of these students are committed athletes and advisors, working one-to-one with their fellow students on papers and projects. And they are but the latest in a line of dozens (perhaps hundreds) of advisors who have worked in the Writing Center and Writer’s Workshop over the years. All of them have been successful—as advisors, as athletes, as students. It’s been a privilege to work with them. 

Compiled By: Patrick Rittenhouse '17