Who: Miriam O'Kane Mara, associate professor of English
Teaching: Mara will be teaching a graduate scholarship course in the fall and a British and American women’s writer’s class, British fiction and British Literature II in the spring.
User of social media: As part of Mara's graduate scholarship course, her students blog about areas of research they would be interested in after hearing from tenured professors who come in to speak about their research. “The library hosts the blogs and it helps the students to expand their dialog on the subject,” says Mara.
“I have also done study wikis and toward the end of the semester, I may put up a wiki so that the students can in a way, write their own study guide,” she adds.
Research: Mara did a Brown Bag seminar in March on her research of a case study in Texas that talks about what happened when they attempted to mandate the Gardisil vaccine as part of immigration policy and the backlash against the mandate. “I looked at the rhetoric around the language associated with the campaign,” she said.
Campus Life: Mara and her husband, Andrew, associate professor of English, participated in the Faculty in Residence program at the Living Learning Center for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years. “I worked in the residence hall during my master’s program and when we heard about the opportunity, we thought it would be a good experience, so we took the plunge,” she said.
“Getting to know the students outside of the classroom context helped me to think about my teaching and integrate those understandings of students into the way I prepared my material,” she said. “It also helped me to understand their fuller capacity.”