News Archive: Mentoring Program

Graduating GTF's Exciting Employment Opportunity

We are happy to announce that GTF Emily Deacon has accepted a position in Spotsylvania County Public Schools as a Dual Enrollment English Teacher, working with both Courtland High School and Chancellor High School. We're so proud of Emily, and we know that her students will benefit greatly from working with her.

Our GTF Program Mentors are active scholars, as well as dedicated teachers. On Friday, April 6, 2018, Nancy Taylor and Dr. David Beach will present "InfoLit Competencies for College Honors Students" at the Student Success in Writing Conference in Savannah, GA. We are excited that Nancy and David are showcasing some of the great work being done at Radford University!

Katherine LaRosa (B.S. 2010; M.A. 2012) reached the final four for the 2017 ALA National Moot Court Competition's Best Advocate Award. Read more about Katherine's accomplishment in Illinois Tech Today.

• An essay written by GTA Jessica Mattox (M.A. 2018) has been accepted for publication in the Virginia English Journal! The essay, "Spectacles of Empathy: Shopping at Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's for an English 11-Advanced Placement Unit Plan on The Great Gatsby," will appear this summer.

• Another of Jessica's essays, “Practical Poetry: A Nonstandard Approach to Meeting Content-Area Standards by Sara Holbrook--A Review,” recently appeared in the Virginia English Journal (Spring/Summer 2016, Vol. 66 Issue 1, pp. 68-73).

• Former GTF Courtney Simpkins (M.A. 2016) has published a review of Gothic Romantic: An Edinburg Companion, ed. Angela Wright and Dale Townshend. Forthcoming in Studies in Gothic Fiction, Spring 2017.

We're also pleased to announce several members' presentations at regional, national, and international conferences this semester.

• On January 28, 2017, Dr. Michele Ren, Dr. Erin Webster-Garrett, former GTF Jessica Thomasson (M.A. 2015), and Ms. Samantha Blevins convened a roundtable discussion at Association of American Colleges & Universities 2017 Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The session, entitled “Leaning into the Counter-Intuitive: Seizing ePortfolio Initiatives as a Means to Forward Liberal Arts Outcomes,” represents one of the 20% of submitted proposals accepted to the ePortfolio forum.

• On February 2, 2017, former GTF Katherine E. Smith (M.A. 2015) presented a paper entitled “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria: Potential Causes for Maria’s Spinsterhood in Joyce’s Clay” at The X James Joyce Italian Foundation Conference in Rome, Italy.

• On February 3, 2017, GTA Michelle Williams (M.A. 2018) presented a paper entitled "A Novice Joyce Scholar Facing the Parnell Affair in Joyce's Fiction" at The X James Joyce Italian Foundation Conference in Rome, Italy.

• On February 15, 2017, former GTF Courtney Simpkins (M.A. 2016) presented a paper entitled  “Assessing Participation in First-Year Writing Courses,” at the 9th Annual Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy at Virginia Tech.

• GTF Kelly Nickell (M.A. 2017) presented a paper entitled "The ‘Elsewhere’ of Women’s Writing: Critical Responses to the Discourses of Female Conduct in Plath’s The Bell Jar" at the Humanities Education Research Association's Conference, in San Diego CA, from March 1-4, 2017.

• GTF Phelan Tinsley (M.A. 2017) presented a paper entitled “How Native Writing Works to Invert Symbolic and Imaginary Texts to Counter Racist Discourse” at the Humanities Education Research Association's conference, in San Diego CA, from March 1-4, 2017. 

• On March 3, 2017, GTF Caitlyn Parker (M.A. 2017), Dr. Moira Baker, and Dr. Michele Ren will present a co-authored paper titled “Anticipating Intersectionality: The Activist Work of Tar Baby, The Color Purple, and Zami” at the Intersectional Inquiries Conference at the University of Notre Dame, March 2-4, 2017.

• GTF Stacy Penven presented a paper entitled "The Speaking Subject and the Revolution in Appalachian Literature of Resistance" at the Appalachian Studies Association Conference, to be held on March 9-12, 2017.

• On March 17, 2017, Dr. Amanda Kellogg presented “Critical Thinking in Teaching Communication and Communicating about Teaching” at the 2017 Conference on College Composition and Communication National Convention. 

• On March 17, 2017, Dr. Frank Napolitano presented “Resistance and Responsibility: Reshaping a Mentoring Program in the face of Administrative and Instructional Conflict” at the 2017 Conference on College Composition and Communication National Convention.

• GTF Kari Lynne Rappold (M.A. 2017), GTA Michelle Williams (M.A. 2018), and GTA Jessica Mattox (M.A. 2018) comprised a panel entitled "The Trifecta of Writing Instruction: Integrating Academic, Creative, and Technical Writing into Your Classroom" at Old Dominion University's 38th Annual Spring Conference on the Teaching of Writing, on March 27-28, 2017.
  

• On March 31, 2017, GTF Caitlyn Parker presented her paper, "'A Point of Resistance': Exploring the Damaging Consequences and Powerful Advantages of Discourse in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home" at the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender and Women's Studies International Conference at the University of Rochester.

• GTF Catelin Turman (M.A. 2017) presented her paper, "The Unbearableness of Tess of the D'Urbervilles," at the Virginia Humanities Conference at Shenandoah University on April 7-8, 2017.

• GTA Jessica Mattox (M.A. 2018) is presenting a paper entitled "Spectacles of Empathy: Shopping at Doctor T. J. Eckleburg's for an English 11-Advanced Placement Unit Plan on The Great Gatsby," at the Reading and Writing in the Twenty-First-Century Literary Studies Classroom conference at the University of Queensland (Australia), on July 6-8, 2017. 

The Mentoring Program would like to welcome Emily Deacon, Andy Geels, Jessica Mattox and Marti Williams. We're so excited to have them on board, and we know that they're going to do great things in their teaching teams.

We're so proud of the Graduate Teaching Fellows who represented Radford University at professional conferences this summer!

Two GTFs presented at The 1816 Conference: Creativity and Turmoil, at the University of Sheffield, England. Melanie Graham (M.A. '16) presented "'Watch Out, Boys, She'll Chew You Up': Percy Shelly's Ambivalence at Beatrice Cenci," on June 27, and Catelin Turman (M.A. '17) presented  "Partly from Curiosity, and Partly from Idleness: the Monstrosity of Emma Woodhouse and Victor Frankenstein," on June 25.

Caitlyn Parker (M.A. '17) and Kelly Nickell (M.A. '17) participated in Feminist Camp, a week-long workshop in New York City, from June 6-10. Caitlyn and Kelly were two of fourteen people chosen to spend the week with authors Jennifer Baumbardner and Amy Richards. They held internships, volunteered for Sancturary for Families, and held meetings with various non-profit organizations working for women's issues nationally. 

Three of our Graduate Teaching Fellows presented papers at the HERA (Humanities Education and Research Association) conference on March 25th, in New Orleans. Kelly Nickell (M.A. '17) presented "A Woman Without A Movement: The Bell Jar as Proto-Feminist Intervention," Caitlyn Parker (M.A. '17) presented "'A Point of Resistance': Discourse as Constraint and Empowerment in Alison Bechdel's Fun Home," and Phelan Tinsley (M.A. '17) presented "'Queers Aren't Meant to Love': 1950s-1980s Discourses on Homosexuality and the Counter-Discourse of Gay Love in Sherman's Bent and Newman's 'A Letter to Harvey Milk.'"

The Mentoring Program congratulates Melanie Graham (M.A. 2016), who has officially accepted service as a University English Instructor and TEFL Volunteer with the Peace Corps in the Ukraine.

In addition to teaching University English, Melanie will promote critical thinking and problem-solving skills to students and teachers in the field. She will work closely with her Ukrainian colleagues to provide teacher training and share, develop, and implement new language teaching methods and materials. We’re so happy for Melanie, and we wish her the best of luck!