I specialize in academic writing for both native English speakers as well as secondary language speakers. I teach courses based on modeling and argumentative writing, with topics ranging from impact of the internet/anonymity on communication, influence of culture/language, and how the mind can be manipulated by external/internal factors. My research has been focused on communication, both written and spoken, and material/course development. Recent projects have included analysis of student support needs in writing classes, expectations across departments on what students can produce in their writings, insight into pronunciation patterns in English, and material development aimed at more fluent non-native English speaking.

I teach university freshman composition and research writing as well as cross-cultural communication. My research interests are peer feedback, lexical frequency and corpora studies and writer agency dynamics between teacher and student. I am fortunate to have learned over my career a lot of what I know about teaching English and writing from the very students that say they don't know how to write. What a journey it's been to come from a small town in southern Idaho and get the chance to live in Russia (as an exchange student then language teacher), Thailand, Japan (originally planned to stay for three years), England and Finland and teach in those places as well.

I have been teaching Academic Writing to non-native English speaking students at the university level for a number of years. My interests include the benefits of collaborative learning and developing learner agency. Recent research focuses on peer- and self-assessment in the writing class, teaching research skills to first-year writing students and building community in an online class.