Education:
Bachelor of Science in English Education, Eastern Montana College
Master of Science in Education, Montana State University
PhD Curriculum & Instruction: Literacy, University of Minnesota
Classes Taught:
Education Classes; Adolescent Literature; Children’s Literature; English Classes; Composition
How Your Program Is Unique Here:
Here we have the presence of Christian critical thought (not an oxymoron) that examines theories and praxis from a biblical worldview. I work hard to incorporate the sense that God gives us thinking minds to determine what ideas lead to life or death, and the power to choose life.
From A Career Standpoint, What Students Will Be Prepared To Do With A Degree From Your Program:
To teach! To come to classrooms of children with knowledge and skills prepared to communicate curriculum, text and theory into useful lessons and opportunities designed to teach students the content and skills they need to prepare them to become thinking, fulfilled adults.
Testimony:
Surrendered to Christ in 1968 at Eastern Montana Bible Camp and practicing that surrender to the current day.
Favorite Bible Verse and Why:
Philippians 1:6, because my confidence does not lie within my own strength. Rather He is the one who calls us and who promises to complete His work in us until He is done with us. I find great hope in the thought that my salvation is not up to me. He is doing the work.
Before Crown:
I was an English teacher at a Montana public high school for 17 years. I was also a migrant education teacher.
What You Enjoy Most About Teaching at Crown:
The opportunity to work with students who will carry Christ into their future classrooms; having a chance to multiply the presence of Christians in the classrooms and businesses and hospitals of the future, long after I am gone.
How You Define “Academic Excellence”:
Knowing theory in a way that allows us to communicate about it with each other, and to actually make the logical and practical leap into actual praxis. In the same way that “faith without works is dead,” so is “theory without praxis.” Excellent students think their way through the theories to become creatively engaged in making them real. H.D. Thoreau said, “If you have built your castles in the sky/Let not your dreams go to waste/Just build the foundations under them.” He had it right.
What Students Say About Your Classes:
That I am passionate about learning and teaching, and that I am a caring professor.
What You Would Say to Parents of Prospective Students About Having Their Son/Daughter at Crown:
Crown is a great place for your sons/daughters to explore the calling God has for their lives. Faculty and staff are committed to following Christ and to leading by example what it means to live out their faith. Christian worldview and critical thought form the Crown College academic milieu, across the broad selection of degree options. I believe in the college mission, which is to provide a biblically-based education for Christian leadership in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Church-at-large and the world.
Published Works:
Various poems
