English Department welcomes new faculty, administrators
By Lauren Karch
The English department welcomed four new faculty members this fall, gaining a wealth of knowledge in everything from cultural identity to computer science. Students and staff have seen some new faces in Bachelor 356 as well, as the fall semester also brought new front office administrators to the department.
Director of College Composition James Porter is new to Miami, bringing with him years of experience as a professor of rhetoric/composition and technical communication. Porter joins the faculty at Miami from the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University, where he also served as co-director of Michigan State’s WIDE Research Center (Writing in Digital Environments).
Porter will be working with both new and veteran faculty in overseeing revisions to the department’s English as a Second Language (ESL) program. He will also be working with the Center for Enhancement of Learning, Teaching, and University Assessment on changes in English 111 and 112, the two composition courses required of all students. The overhauls to 111 and 112 are part of a Miami initiative to create more active learning and develop improved curricula in the Top 25, the university’s highest-enrollment courses. Porter, the director of the project for the composition courses, says the ENG 111 project is in the early stages of development. The ENG 112 project is about halfway completed, with pilot testing of the new curriculum beginning in Spring 2010.
“The main goal is to make sure that college composition courses prepare Miami students for their future college writing and, beyond that, for their professional lives,” he says.
An Oxford resident, Porter says he has enjoyed his work at Miami thus far. In addition to serving as the Director of College Composition, Porter is a professor in both the English department and the Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies.
“When Miami began searching for a new Director of College Composition, it looked like an interesting and challenging position, so I applied for it,” he said. “I’m happy to be here and have enjoyed directing the program and teaching.”
Professor Cindy Lewiecki-Wilson is no stranger to the campus. In her 20th year at Miami she replaces LuMing Mao as the department’s Director of Graduate Studies. Lewiecki-Wilson also served as the Director of College Composition from 2002 to 2007, and is both a professor of English and an affiliate of the Women’s Studies program. She looks forward to the spring 2010 publication of Disability and Mothering: Liminalities of Cultural Embodiment, a collection of essays she co-edited with former Miami Ph.D. student and current Northern Kentucky University writing director Jen Cellio.
Lewiecki-Wilson says that the department’s graduate committee will be revising the curriculum for the Master’s program in Composition and Rhetoric this year.
“We have a very strong incoming group of students,” she says. “We hope to sustain quality and national recognition of our graduate program.”
Margaret Luongo, another familiar face in Bachelor Hall, started her term as Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies this fall when former associate chair Michele Simmons finished her tour of duty. An M.F.A. graduate of the University of Florida, Luongo joined the English Department in 2004 as a visiting professor of fiction writing and is now permanent faculty. Her first book, titled If the Heart is Lean, was published in 2008, and she’s currently working on another collection of short stories, tentatively titled Fine Arts.
Luongo will be plenty busy in her first year chairing the undergraduate studies program. Both the Literature and Creative Writing majors have been revised for this year.
“There’s more similarity between the two majors,” she said. “Generally, students have a greater ability to take courses of interest to them and count those courses toward their majors.”
She says she’s enjoyed her experiences in administration thus far.
“So far, so good,” she said. “And I’m enjoying the front office staff; they’re all so nice!”
Assistant Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies Anita Mannur joins Miami’s faculty after four years at Denison University.
“I’m liking the classes – so far it’s been good,” she says of her experiences this fall
Mannur is teaching Asian American literature and ethnic literature this semester. She is a key player in Miami’s Asian/Asian American studies program, a new program directed by English professor LuMing Mao. She says she is excited to develop the program in its first year.
“The idea of the program is to build curriculum, but also to create a space for people doing that kind of research,” Mannur says.
Research in the field of Asian American studies is a topic Mannur is quite familiar with. Her book, Culinary Fictions, due for publication in December 2009, explores the relationship between food and national identity in the culture and literature of the South Asian diaspora. Using text from both novels and cookbooks, Mannur showcases the ways in which South Asians’ cultural, ethnic, and national identities are consolidated in culinary terms.
Felice Marcus will continue her work with international students this year as she moves to the English department from the Farmer School of Business, where she was coordinator of the China Business Program. Marcus, who holds master’s degrees in computer science and Chinese, has worn a variety of hats in her 10 years at Miami, including teaching courses in Management Information Systems and assisting with the FSB’s international programs. She played a key role in developing English 106: Experience in American Language and Culture, the academic component of the Academic Preparation and Culture Program (APCP), an immersion program for new international students Miami introduced in 2008
Marcus particularly enjoyed working with students during her six years abroad. She worked as a teacher of English as a Second Language for six years in Taiwan and Bogota, Colombia, after earning her bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College.
She hopes to retain ties with students in the China Business Program while working as an ESL instructor in the English department. Marcus says that she looks forward to helping the department develop renovations to its ESL courses, necessary due to this fall’s influx of international students. She plans to use her computer science knowledge to integrate multi-modal projects into her classes, and teaching her students ways to tell digital stories via the internet.
“For international students, having an audience that lives all over the world is more important, since the international audience includes their family and their friends,” she says. “The digital field is a path for them to share their work with people at home.”
Also joining the department in the expanding area of ESL courses is Visiting Assistant Professor Tony Cimasko, a 2009 graduate of Purdue University’s Ph.D. in English program. His area of research includes a focus on second-language writing, specifically in academic and professional genres.
His doctoral work focused on the concepts that second-language writers bring from other languages to the English language through academic and professional writing, importing ideas from a different language successfully into English.
“My research involves the way in which second-language learners learn these genres and what they bring to those genres,” Cimasko says.
Cimasko worked in the U.S. and internationally as an ESL instructor before completing his Ph.D. and coming to Miami. He says that, after focusing on research during his years of doctoral work, he wanted to find a position which would allow him to give more attention to teaching.
Miami proved to be that place, offering a position emphasizing instruction. Cimasko appreciates the placement of ESL courses within the English department, where he feels that writing classes can best be developed. He notes that other universities’ ESL programs may be found in education, linguistics, or foreign language departments.
“ESL is a young enough field that there isn’t really a consensus on where to put it,” he says. “It varies from place to place.”
Cimasko is currently teaching three composition classes for international graduate students, and may be instructing both graduate and undergraduate students later in the year. He says he’s pleased with his grad students’ work thus far. They are currently working with CVs and cover letters, hypothetically applying for academic positions. Through this work, the students obtain experience in a practical type of writing to be used later in their careers.
“All of these new faculty and administrators involved with the creation of new programs and the improvement of existing ones are instrumental in keeping us moving forward,” says Kerry Powell, chair of English. “We are just now beginning to realize the future of a more diverse and international Miami, which will also be the future of the English Department.”