This past week, I had the opportunity to meet with one of the English department’s newest professors: Dr. Archie Crowley (they/them).They were born and raised in Southern California, then moved to Atlanta, Georgia after undergrad, and then moved to South Carolina for grad school, and now up to North Carolina. Dr. Crowley has a PhD in linguistics from the University of South Carolina, and an impressive background in women’s and gender studies. After majoring in applied linguistics, they went on to create and film their own TedxUofSC talk that shared a linguistic perspective to help the audience embrace language evolution concerning gender and identity, which has garnered a million views online. Dr. Crowley has articles published in reputable academic journals and has presented speeches on various subjects in national and international conferences.

At Elon, where Dr. Crowley is so happy to be, the people have really stood out to them. Dr. Crowley says they have felt very welcomed by faculty and students alike. They are excited to begin many new projects around campus while learning the ropes at Elon. Dr. Crowley’s favorite class to teach by far has been Intro to Linguistics (ENG*3010). They are looking towards one day creating a linguistics program that provides teachers and students with a new way to consider language. This new way of thinking shows that language creates links in society that can be studied. These links explain how people communicate, and therefore can explain how relationships work in society. I was even able to share a laugh with them, based on the stereotype that all linguists are polyglots.

As an English major alumnus of Elon University, Colin Rackley has recently made a generous donation to the Elon English Department for his Elon Day Donation. He has expressed his great admiration for the English department and deeply hopes that other Elon graduates of the English department will make donations as well. 

Rackley obtained a degree in a Creative Writing concentration and was part of the graduating class of 1998. During his time as a student, Rackley was involved in the English Department newsletter and the student-led service organization Circle K International (CKI). 

Since graduating from Elon, Rackley has worked in a variety of different positions to find his passion. He has worked in transportation, hotel business, and non-profit sectors. When asked how he has applied topics that he learned within the English department or at Elon in general to his career, Rackley replied that he has been able to apply knowledge from Elon in a multitude of ways. For instance, when Rackley was a supervisor in the hotel business he had to be very specific when training another person and detailing the specifics of a job position. He believes that the detail-oriented mindset that he formed from the English department helped him to succeed in this position. Rackley also worked for a non-profit dedicated to assisting troubled youth. As part of his role in this non-profit, he worked to develop advertising, flyers, and events to recruit volunteers for the organization. He stated that the creativity he developed from the English department greatly helped him to accomplish these tasks in an effective manner. When he needed to tell stories at events about troubled youth he used creativity and effective language in order to deliver a persuasive message and moving story. Rackley feels his degree in Creative Writing helped him to communicate to the community.
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This week I sat down with English and Drama Studies Professor Scott Proudfit (pictured left) who recently was recognized with the Elon College Excellence in Teaching award. We discussed his award, his nine years of experience teaching at Elon, and finally his goals for the future. Professor Proudfit’s students describe him as the “Best person on the planet,” and he says that he feels “flattered” to be recognized by both the University and his students.

Professor Proudfit is passionate about creating courses that reflect life experiences. He has designed and taught many classes at Elon like “The Graphic Novel” and “The AIDS play.”

“I am very privileged to be able to design classes and majors that I am truly passionate about because I know not everyone gets that opportunity.”

I asked him about his impression of Elon students over the years.

“Elon students are normally pretty stressed, but they are also looking for big answers to big questions about things like gender, sexuality, and race and my classes are the places for them to really discuss these difficult topics with other people.”

Professor Proudfit describes his biggest teaching challenge as making his students comfortable without the protection of electronics. In his classes, there are no phones and no computers; just a group of people discussing important topics and big ideas. An uncommon way of teaching, but it seems to be working for Professor Proudfit.
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Professor Paula Patch is the College Writing/English 110 program coordinator, a senior lecturer in the English major and ENG 110 program and the newly elected Vice President of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, a national organization composed of writing teachers and writing program administrators. Additionally, Professor Patch recently co-authored an article based on the takeaways from teaching high school students: “What College Faculty Can Learn From Teaching High School Students,” with Professor Greg Hlavaty.

Professor Patch and Professor Hlavaty have been teaching Alamance County high school juniors for eight consecutive years for the College Writing for High School Juniors program, which is co-administered by the Elon University English Department and Collegiate Start @ Elon in the Office of Education Outreach in the Elon University School of Education.“We find that we really love teaching the class because there is something about the energy that high school students bring to a classroom that college students either hide or put elsewhere,” Professor Patch said, “You’re just getting like the real, raw person in a high school class.”

The first part of the class focuses on college essays and other materials for college admissions and the second half on college writing preparation, such as rhetorical skills, process skills and argumentation skills. “We want to give them a preview and some preliminary work into developing those rhetorical skills, process skills and argumentation skills that we know everybody can use constant, repeated practice with,” said Professor Patch, “It’s been fun because we’re teaching similar things [as English 110], but with different purposes.”
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In addition to being a professor in the English Department who teaches Professional Writing and Rhetoric classes, Dr. Paula Rosinski is the Director of Writing Across the University in the Center for Writing Excellence. Dr.  Rosinski explains that the Professional Writing and Rhetoric major is a “traditional rhetorical education, updated for the 21^stcentury” and that the WAU program supports the teaching and learning of writing on Elon’s campus.

Dr. Rosinski specializes in multimedia rhetoric and writing technologies. She said that “in the writing technologies class I teach, we examine the biases, affordances, and limitations of different writing software and technologies that are common to professional writers, because they impact everything about the rhetorical situation: the audiences you can reach, the genres you can produce, and how texts are delivered and consumed.

This semester, she is teaching PWR 212, Multimedia/Visual Rhetoric I, in which students revise traditional rhetorical strategies and apply them to produce their own multimedia and visual texts. These two classes go hand-in-hand, because “To be able to produce emerging genres and multimedia and visual texts, you need to have an understanding of the software and hardware. Analyzing isn’t enough. Students should practice how to produce these kinds of texts, too.”

Dr. Rosinski’s role as Director of Writing Across the University involves developing programming to enhance the teaching of writing on campus, for example by offering workshops herself or inviting faculty to present on their own areas of expertise. Dr. Rosinski also coordinates writing pedagogy grants and scholarship grants, meant to support faculty as they teach and study writing, and she also organizes writing groups and writing “boot camps” for faculty and staff, which give them time to focus on their own writing.  “What’s rewarding is that the work I do with faculty directly impacts students,” Dr. Rosinski said, “I hear back from faculty saying not only did they learn to teach writing more effectively, but that their students are learning content better too.”
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Nicole Galante ’19 is an accomplished English major concentrating in literature and PWR and minoring in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Galante is a Provost Scholar and a Betty Gerow Scholarship Award recipient, among other titles.

Nicole Galante ’19 presents her research on young adult power in young adult literature at SURE day 2018.

An Elon College Fellow and Summer Undergraduate Research Experience participant, Galante is also the recipient of the Rawls Endowed Research Grant. She combines her expertise in literature, PWR and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies to conduct research and formulate theories about young adult power, or lack thereof, in the young adult genre. Throughout her two and a half year long research initiative, Galante has read and analyzed 20 contemporary young adult novels.

According to Galante, the inspiration for this research topic stemmed from her discussions with Dr. Cahill, Galante’s professor of Sex, Gender, and Power during the spring of Galante’s freshman year. Dr. Cahill introduced Galante to the idea researching the connection between childhood and oppression. “The idea blew my mind,” said Galante, “I’d always understood that children don’t have the same power as adults, but I’d never thought about it in the context of privilege and oppression.”
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In a brand new, interdisciplinary approach for The Scroll, I got the opportunity to see Elon’s innovative education at work in one of my very own classes. Approaches to Arts Administration, taught by new professor Dr. David McGraw, I have been exposed to the inner workings of various arts organizations, how they are created, and what they do to help their community.

To facilitate this discussion, we were asked to give group presentations based on case studies of different art organizations. The most interesting presentation, in my opinion, was about an organization called Art Feeds. Art Feeds is designed to provide therapeutic aid to children- especially those affected by recent tragedies or natural disasters- through multiple forms of artistic expression. The group of girls presenting the case where well prepared, but that was not the interesting part. What I found fascinating was that the group handed the rest of the class coloring pages and crayons, and instructed us to color while they gave their presentation.

Shockingly enough, this made it easier for the class to focus on the presentation.

I know that this may not seem directly related to the English department, but it poses an interesting discussion. Are there other ways in which we as students can “occupy our minds” while in the classroom in order to focus on the content of the class? For example, doodling in our notebooks, or absentmindedly coloring can potentially increase our focus. The conflict, however, comes from finding the line. It is *probably* unreasonable to break out a coloring book, but a simple distraction to focus your mind could be seen as reasonable by most professors.
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This week the Faculty Spotlight is on Dr. Barbra Gordon. Of her 43 years as an educator, we have been fortunate enough to have her here at Elon for 31 years! One of our most Zen professors here in the English department, Dr. Gordon also advises Iron Tree Blooming, an on-campus meditation group.

Dr. Gordon teaches a variety of classes in writing and debate, and says that she cannot choose a favorite!

“Each course offers different delights,” she says, which allows her students to learn and develop in brand new ways. This is what she loves about the Elon community; she gets the opportunity to make a positive difference in the lives of young people, and encourages us to create a better future for everyone.

In her free time, Dr. Gordon bounces between meetings, research, tennis, and Italian! Her current research focuses on the differences between “composing with words, and composing with sound and images,” (super interesting). How she has time for everything? We may never know. As someone who is very passionate, however, Dr. Gordon encourages students to take courses that you are passionate about, and shadow professionals in the work world who are doing what you aspire to do.

We asked Dr. Gordon a fun question to close things off: If you were trapped on an island, what three books would you bring? She told us Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (to help her relax), the most extensive Norton Anthology of Poetry available, and the Tao Te Ching. Great choices Dr. Gordon! If you want to hear more about Dr. Gordon, learn some quick Italian, or find your Zen, invite her to coffee!

By: Katherine Francisco

I recently attended a round of presentations from Dr. Lindeman’s ENG 110 class. I was struck immediately by how professional each student was in preparing their work and presenting it to a panel of experts from the community.

Students giving their presentation.

Each group of students was responsible for offering their revisions to local websites including the Social Services page, the Environmental Health page, and the Sheriff’s Department website. The groups collaborated and offered many suggestions to make the pages less cluttered and more user-friendly. Data was collected from surveys the students completed off campus, and all of their content was formatted into presentations.

As they presented, three representatives from the county took notes and asked questions of the groups to get ideas to revise the websites. I noticed right away that all of the students were well prepared for the questions, and they had all rehearsed their content extensively.

I was honestly shocked at the professional level of work coming from a group of first-year students, but that is what Elon does best: shock others with their professionalism.

The panel of professionals who provided feedback on the presentations