Department of English, College of LAS, University of Illinois


Illinois Department of English Blog

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Welcome to the Department of English blog.



My name is Vicki Mahaffey and I took over as
head of the department on July 1, 2016. I'll be using this site to post updates and information of interest to our faculty, students, and alumni,
along with reflections about our discipline(s) in particular and the humanities in general. As anyone who has ever worked or studied here knows, the Department of English is a vibrant place. If you have something you'd like to see posted here, or if you want to contact me about the content of this blog, drop me an email at vmahaffe@illinois.edu.


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Incomplete list for Fall 2012

Each semester, our Center for Teaching Excellence publishes what they call a List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students.  These lists are based directly on student evaluation data from the semester mentioned.  Prior to summer of 2007, this was called the Incomplete List, in acknowledgement of the fact that not every class does student evaluations or reports their results. 

The old name has stuck--people all over campus still call it the incomplete list--and I like that name too.  Not because I'm worried about the omission of those faculty who may not have done course evaluations, but because student evaluation data is itself an incomplete way to assess quality teaching.

Still, every year I am pleased to see that our department is well-represented, because even if we don't think student evaluations are the only way to judge quality of instruction, we still want our students to be well served and happy with the courses they have taken!  I like to be able to kvell a bit about the many TAs, Instructors, Lectures, Professors, and (in a few cases) Academic Professionals who make the list each semester: both to thank everyone for doing well by our students and to trumpet the fact that we are a very strong teaching department indeed.  

Without further ado, then, here is the list of instructors in our many BTW, RHET, ENGL, and CW classes who made the Incomplete list for Fall 2012:

Laura Adamczyk, Iryce Baron, Manisha Basu, Jensen Beach, Michael Behrens, Michael Burns, Martin Camargo, Sandy Camargo, Debojoy Chanda, Jill Clements, Megan Condis, Mary Rose Cottingham, Eleanor Courtemanche, Steve Davenport, Esteher Dettmar, Dennis Dullea, Patrick Fadely, Kimberly Fonzo, Stephanie Foote, Andy Gaedtke, Shawn Gilmore, Philip Graham, Joe Grohens, Jim Hansen, Gail Hapke, Janice Harrington, William Hechler, Elizabeth Hoiem, Marilyn Holguin, Ann Hubert, DeAvery Irons, Maggie Kainulainen, Brigit Kelly, Annie Kelvie, Eileen Lagman, Jean Lee, Mary Lindsey, Melissa Littlefield, Trish Loughran, Jennifer Lozano, Sean Macintyre, Michael Madonick, Kaitlin Marks-Dubbs, Patrick McGrath, Heather McLeer, Erin McQuiston, Erica Melko, Jessica Mercado, Natalie Mesnard, Bruce Michelson, John Moore, Elizabeth Morely, Dave Morris, Justine Murison, Katherine Norcross, Valerie O’Brien, Michael Odom, Andrea Olinger, Robert Dale Parker, Julie Price, Thierry Ramais, Scott Ricketts, Michael Rothberg, John Rubins, Lindsay Rose Russell, Ted Sanders, Julia Saville, Spencer Schaffner, Frank Sheets, Derrick Spires, Jodee Stanley, Andrea Stevens, Eric Thomas, Debora Tienou, Wendy Truran, Jason Vredenburg, Gregory Webb, Zack Williams, Daniel Wong, Elaine Wood, David Wright.

Nicely done, one and all!  And, on behalf of our students, thank you!

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Campus teaching awards

I am pleased to be able to announce here that two members of our faculty are being honored this year with campus teaching awards. 

Trish Loughran has been selected to receive the Graduate and Professional Teaching award, and Julie Price will receive the Undergraduate Teaching Award.  Both are spectacular teachers, and I am really glad that they will be receiving this well-deserved recognition for their painstaking classroom work.

Both of them will be among the honorees at a Celebration of Teaching Excellence to be held at Alice Campbell Alumni Center on the evening of April 23 (also: that's Shakespeare's birthday.  But I digress).

If you are even a semi-regular reader of this blog, you'll know that we as a department often do fairly well in these college and campus teaching award selection processes.  In addition to recognizing two of our really exceptional individual teachers, these awards are lovely because they shine a very public light on the strong teaching culture of our department as a whole. 

Congratulations to Trish and Julie on these well-deserved awards!

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