Welcome to my website, a place where you can find resources for the courses I am teaching (or have taught in past semesters), my C.V., recommendations, writing/teaching resources, and more.
Check back, as my page is always updating.
B.A. English Education Indiana University of Pennsylvania (2002)
M.A. English/Literature West Virginia University (2007)
Ph.D Candidate, Composition & TESOL Indiana University of Pennsylvania (A.B.D.)
From Rowan University's Writing Arts Faculty webpage:
Laura has been teaching first-year writing courses since 2005, and has taught a variety of composition and rhetoric courses at West Virginia University, Kent State University, Rosemont College, and Westmoreland County Community College. She is a Ph.D. candidate finishing her Ph.D. in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation examines the dynamics of collaboration at the dissertation level, while studying resistance to collaborative dissertations within the field of composition. Laura’s research interests include rhetoric, collaboration, feminist/critical theory, multimodal composition, and writing in the disciplines. She teaches College Composition II, Foundations of College Writing, Special Topics: Professions in Writing Arts, Sophomore Engineering Clinic I, and Writing, Research & Technology.
Laura has been teaching first-year writing courses since 2005, and has taught a variety of composition and rhetoric courses at West Virginia University, Kent State University, Rosemont College, and Westmoreland County Community College. She is a Ph.D. candidate finishing her Ph.D. in Composition and TESOL from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her dissertation examines the dynamics of collaboration at the dissertation level, while studying resistance to collaborative dissertations within the field of composition. Laura’s research interests include rhetoric, collaboration, feminist/critical theory, multimodal composition, and writing in the disciplines. She teaches College Composition II, Foundations of College Writing, Special Topics: Professions in Writing Arts, Sophomore Engineering Clinic I, and Writing, Research & Technology.
“The Art of Pedagogy”
It starts, perhaps, with a notation,
a few words scrawled in the margins
of the forest green class record book.
Something about the origin of composing,
a stray thought on effective
rhetoric. A speck, really.
Enough to make the eye blink and water.
A notion that all isn't right
in the classroom, where boredom
tussles daily with vertigo,
where individual cognitions occur
as rarely as the discovery of new planets.
Vita brevis, baby, you tell yourself,
don't fret on what you can't change,
but of course that doesn't assuage
the heavy throb of dissatisfaction.
Through the window you can see them
outside, murmuring and huffing smoke.
There must be some way to connect,
some conjuring trick beyond the constraints
of situational context. The books
are full of suggestions, rippling
with theory, cascading
with what ought to be kick-
butt kairos, but sometimes logic
isn't enough. If it's a symbolic world,
it's also a world of fumbling
with buttons in icy brittleness.
The art of pedagogy is learning
how to span the breach between
the taste of coffee, and those words,
"the taste of coffee," in quotation marks.
--David Starkey, In In Praise of Pedagogy: Poetry, Flash Fiction and Essays on Composing.
Ed. Wendy Bishop and David Starkey
a few words scrawled in the margins
of the forest green class record book.
Something about the origin of composing,
a stray thought on effective
rhetoric. A speck, really.
Enough to make the eye blink and water.
A notion that all isn't right
in the classroom, where boredom
tussles daily with vertigo,
where individual cognitions occur
as rarely as the discovery of new planets.
Vita brevis, baby, you tell yourself,
don't fret on what you can't change,
but of course that doesn't assuage
the heavy throb of dissatisfaction.
Through the window you can see them
outside, murmuring and huffing smoke.
There must be some way to connect,
some conjuring trick beyond the constraints
of situational context. The books
are full of suggestions, rippling
with theory, cascading
with what ought to be kick-
butt kairos, but sometimes logic
isn't enough. If it's a symbolic world,
it's also a world of fumbling
with buttons in icy brittleness.
The art of pedagogy is learning
how to span the breach between
the taste of coffee, and those words,
"the taste of coffee," in quotation marks.
--David Starkey, In In Praise of Pedagogy: Poetry, Flash Fiction and Essays on Composing.
Ed. Wendy Bishop and David Starkey
