teaching
From left to right: Erin with students at a program-wide poster session for composition and professional writing at Purdue; Erin receiving university-wide award for graduate teaching at Purdue; group of graduate students working outside the Mountainlair at WVU during the Amplifying Appalachia Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.
During my time in college classrooms, I've been privileged to work with undergraduate students in a variety of fields (engineering, pre-medical, computer science, computer graphics technology, graphic design, professional writing, fashion design and merchandising, forestry, and beyond) and graduate students in a number of different programs within English departments, including creative writing and literature. Though my approaches vary according to level and class, three elements stay the same: public writing and community engagement projects, the use of digital tools and emergent research, and opportunities for collaboration and peer mentorship.
One pedagogical project I've been passionate about in recent years is the use of Wikipedia to teach public writing. Since 2021, I have co-facilitated an Edit-a-thon at West Virginia University, dedicated to amplifying the stories of under-represented Appalachian writers, artists, and creators. Over the course of two years, more than 136 separate pages have been edited and 41,000 words have been added to Wikipedia by students, faculty, and community members alike. See our stats from 2021 and 2022, as well as coverage from WVU's independent student newspaper, The Daily Athenaeum, for 2021 and 2022.
I believe that this approach has resulted in, most importantly, student success, but has also been affirmed by teaching awards and honors. I have received recognition for my teaching at programmatic, departmental, and university levels, including receiving a West Virginia University Digital Learning Award in 2022, and a Purdue University Teaching Academy Graduate Teaching Award in 2018, both of which are competitive, university-wide awards.
I have taught a range of classes, including business writing, technical writing, multimedia writing, introduction to professional writing, internship-focused courses, and first-year writing. At the graduate level, I have taught courses in digital rhetoric, rhetorical theory, and composition pedagogy. Students in my Digital Humanities seminar in Spring 2022 created this public-facing resource, Navigating Search Algoriths: A Toolkit about the "search" function across platforms, illuminating that algorithms shape our searching patterns in ways that often go unnoticed. Feel free to reach out to me if you are interested in any of my materials.