university of oregon mfa creative writing faculty

Search this site

College of arts and sciences menu, college of arts and sciences, creative writing, writing about climate change is writer’s way of making an impact.

• Read more about Writing about climate change is writer’s way of making an impact

President names two profs as arts and humanities fellows

• Read more about President names two profs as arts and humanities fellows

Grab the sunscreen, a beverage and plenty of reading

• Read more about Grab the sunscreen, a beverage and plenty of reading

Annual Kidd writing competition showcases UO talent

• Read more about Annual Kidd writing competition showcases UO talent

African American lecture series features the UO's Mat Johnson

• Read more about African American lecture series features the UO's Mat Johnson

UO’s Mat Johnson gains visibility with Invisible Things

• Read more about UO’s Mat Johnson gains visibility with Invisible Things

Garrett Hongo's Quest for Artistic Perfection

• Read more about Garrett Hongo's Quest for Artistic Perfection

Nathan Harris and "The Sweetness of Water"

• Read more about Nathan Harris and "The Sweetness of Water"

For "The Five Wounds," Four Words

• Read more about For "The Five Wounds," Four Words

UO names writing professor Mat Johnson its newest Knight Chair

• Read more about UO names writing professor Mat Johnson its newest Knight Chair

Search this site

Humanities menu.

Funding and Research Support

The Creative Writing Program funds all incoming MFA students with a teaching appointment. These positions are not teaching assistantships (TAs) in which students teach discussion sections of a course taught by regular faculty; students are the “instructors of record” for all of these courses. Previous teaching experience is not required for these appointments; training is provided by the program. However, applicants will need to demonstrate their probable success as a first-time teacher through their application materials and letters of recommendation.

Student instructors (aka graduate employees, or GEs) receive tuition remission, monthly stipends (approximately $24,000 for the 2024-25 academic year), some fees, and health coverage .

• First-year funding : GEs in the Creative Writing Program teach either Introduction to Fiction, Introduction to Poetry, or a section of the Kidd Workshops.
• Second-year funding : During the second year, MFA candidates typically receive an appointment teaching English composition. To qualify, students must successfully complete a training program offered by the Department of English during their first year.

Other Financial Aid

Information about additional financial aid, such as student loans, grants, and work study, is available through the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships . Inquire early, as many national deadlines are in February.

Richard and Juliette Logsdon Fiction Scholarship

The Richard and Juliette Logsdon Fiction Scholarship is awarded to a first-year MFA fiction student for work of exceptional merit.

Richard Logsdon had himself won a writing award in 1971, the Sarah Harkness Kirby Award from the UO English Department for the best graduate student essay, and that validation boosted his self-esteem and confidence. The Logsdons want to do something similar for other students.

Richard Logsdon was Senior Editor for Red Rock Review, a literary journal published by the College of Southern Nevada that features works by poets and short story writers—both new and established. In that position, he met then UO professors Ehud Havazelet (fiction), Dorianne Laux (poetry), and visiting poet Joe Millar. Inspired by them, he decided to sponsor a scholarship for the Creative Writing Program. Since there was already a poetry prize (the Miriam McFall Starlin Poetry Prize) but no existing prizes in fiction, he chose to designate the Logsdon Scholarship as a fiction prize

Eligibility

Only current first-year students in the MFA program are eligible. Specific guidelines and submission portal are located on the program’s intranet .

Apply for Logsdon Scholarship

The Miriam McFall Starlin Poetry Prize

The Miriam McFall Starlin Poetry Prize offers a promising poet the freedom to pursue writing in the summer between their first and second years in the MFA program.

The Miriam McFall Starlin Poetry Prize was established in 1997 by the late Glenn Starlin. It was created as a gift to his wife, Miriam, who has been reading and writing poetry her entire life, beginning as a girl after her bedtime, using a flashlight under the covers. Wait a Minute was her first volume of poems and was published in 2006.

This prize offers a promising poet the freedom to pursue writing in the summer between their first and second years in the MFA program.

Only current MFA program students are eligible. Specific guidelines and submission portal are located on the program’s intranet .

Apply for Poetry Prize

Funding FAQs

What type of financial support or fellowships do you offer?

The Creative Writing program admits 10 MFA students each year. Each incoming student is offered a teaching appointment with a .49 full-time equivalency (FTE) and is considered a graduate employee (GE). Each GE receives a full tuition waiver (covering resident or non-resident tuition, whichever is applicable), a monthly stipend, and health coverage. (See also: Division of Graduate Studies: Salary and Benefits .)

What does the teaching appointment involve?

Students are considered the “instructors of record” for the courses and training is provided by the program. Previous teaching experience is not required for these appointments, but application materials and letters of recommendation should indicate why you would probably be successful as a full-time teacher.

During the first year, each GE will teach one course per 11-week term (including finals) for a total of three courses. The assigned course will be either Introduction to Fiction, Introduction to Poetry, or one of the Kidd Workshops. No previous teaching experience is required; training is provided by the MFA program.

During the second year, MFA candidates typically receive an appointment to teach English Composition in the English department and will teach one course per 11-week term (including finals) for a total of three courses. Teaching English Composition in the English department is also possible and is dependent on the MFA student successfully completing the English department’s pedagogical courses during the first year.

What does the stipend cover?

The stipend is generally enough for the average single person to reasonably live in the Eugene/Springfield area. The annual stipend for the GE is approximately $24,000. For more information, refer to How Much Will It Cost? and Graduate Student Cost of Attendance

Is there any additional support to cover costs to enter contests, residencies/retreats, or travel?

While the Creative Writing program does not cover submission fees, we offer internal awards for MFA students that may be used to cover such expenses.

What other sorts of financial aid are available?

A limited number of fellowships, scholarships, and awards are available through the Division of Graduate Studies . Information about additional financial aid, such as student loans, grants, and work study, is available through the Office of Financial Aid and Scholarships . Inquire early, as many national deadlines are in February.

Does the program have any community outreach programs for MFA students?

Although community outreach opportunities are sometimes available within the Eugene/Springfield community, the CRWR department is not offering any outreach programs or volunteer opportunities at this time.

Are there any local literary festivals, a local art community, etc.?

Yes, there are a variety of local festivals (some of which are literary) in the Eugene/Springfield area, and you can volunteer to get involved in the local art community.

Are there study or teach abroad opportunities for MFA students?

We do not offer opportunities to teach abroad, but other UO departments may have some.

University of Oregon

Eugene , OR

http://crwr.uoregon.edu

Degrees Offered

Fiction, Poetry

Residency type

Program length, financial aid.

The Creative Writing Program funds all incoming students with a Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GTF) appointment. These positions are not teaching assistantships (TAs) in which students teach discussion sections of a course taught by regular faculty; students are the “instructors of record” for all of these courses. Previous teaching experience is not required for the GTF appointments; training is provided by the Program. However, applicants will need to demonstrate their probable success as a first-time teacher through their application materials and letters of recommendation.

Teaching opportunities

All students how graduate teaching fellowships

• T. K. Dalton MFA (Fiction) 2007
• Stephanie Dickinson MFA (Poetry)
• Eugene Gloria MFA (Poetry)
• Erin Hoover MFA 2005
• Major Jackson MFA (Poetry) 1999
• Keetje Kuipers MFA (Poetry) 2006
• Chang-Rae Lee MFA (Fiction) 1993
• Claire Luchette MFA (Fiction) 2017
• Sarah Murphy MFA
• Jude Nutter MFA (Poetry) 1997
• Alycia Pirmohamed MFA (Poetry) 2014
• Kirstin Valdez Quade MFA (Fiction) 2009
• Chloe Garcia Roberts MFA (Poetry) 2008
• Jennifer Ruden MFA
• Maxine Scates MFA 1975
• Lysley Tenorio MFA (Fiction) 1998
• Brian Turner MFA (Poetry) 1996

Send questions, comments and corrections to [email protected] .

Disclaimer: No endorsement of these ratings should be implied by the writers and writing programs listed on this site, or by the editors and publishers of Best American Short Stories , Best American Essays , Best American Poetry , The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Anthology .

Graduate School

• Resources to Prepare for Graduate School
• Adonara Mucek, Ph.D. Geology '17
• Adriana Mendoza, Ph.D. Mathematics '14
• Andrew Olsen
• Becca Maher ('21, Ph.D.)
• Bryan Lynn, Ph.D. Integrative Biology
• Celeste Frazier Barthel, Ph.D. Education '21
• Diane Brandt
• Francesca Germano, Toxicology, M.S.
• Garrett Rogers
• Jafra Thomas
• Jen Hayes, Horticulture, PhD
• Jordan Jimmie
• Jordan Spradlin, Public Health, MPH
• Kalina Fahey, Psychology, Ph.D.
• Katie Stelling, Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Ph.D.
• Kelsey Contreras
• Layla Ghazi
• Marie Tosa, Ph.D. Wildlife Sciences
• Sara Letton
• Tiara Walz, Ph.D. Public Health
• Glossary of Terms
• Master's Students
• Doctoral Students
• Certificate Students
• Graduate School Orientation 2024
• Graduate Teaching Orientation 2024
• Do I Qualify to Attend Graduate Summer Step?
• Orientation for Winter, Spring and Summer Terms
• Co-sponsorships
• Your Graduate Committee
• Student Resources
• Grad Research Photo Competition
• Tips for Scheduling Committee Meetings
• Program of Study
• Formatting a Thesis or Dissertation
• Pretext Pages Templates
• Commencement
• Grad Inspire
• Grievance Procedures
• Request a Workshop
• Earning Concurrent Degrees or Pursuing a Dual Major
• Career Preparation
• Grad Writing Group Challenge
• Graduate Writing Center Online
• Changing or Adding a Degree, Major or Certificate
• GRAD 420 - Graduate School Preparation
• GRAD 512 - Current Issues in Higher Education
• GRAD 513 - Professional Development in College and University Teaching
• GRAD 516 - Graduate Teaching Seminar
• GRAD 520 - Responsible Conduct of Research
• GRAD 521 - Research Data Management
• GRAD 542 - The Inclusive College Classroom
• GRAD 543 - Dialogue Facilitation in Professional Contexts: Skills and Practice for Graduate Students
• GRAD 550 - Introduction to Online Course Development and Facilitation
• GRAD 560 - Theories of Teaching and Learning
• GRAD 561 - Course Design and Methods
• GRAD 599 - Creating Happiness
• GRAD 599 - Cultivating Productive and Positive Academic Relationships for Graduate Success
• WR 599 - Graduate Writing for English Language Learners
• WR 599 - Scientific and Technical Research Writing
• WR 599 - Writing Workshop for Thesis and Dissertation Writers
• OSU Grad Advantage
• Graduate Faculty Membership
• Graduate Council Representatives
• Policy updates
• Holistic Admissions
• Defining the Graduate Mentor
• The Importance of Mentors
• Apprenticeship and Mentoring
• Mentor and Mentee Pairing
• Maintaining and Evaluating Mentoring
• Suggestions for Mentoring Programs
• Handbooks, Manuals, and Guides
• Mentoring Bibliography
• Communication Items
• Detailed Considerations for a Joint Degree Program
• MOU Outline for Creating a Joint Program
• College and Program Recruitment Representatives
• Graduate Recruitment Tips
• Helpful Recruitment Links
• Shared Graduate Recruitment Schedule
• Leave of Absence and Family Medical Leave Eligibility
• Mentor Training for Faculty
• Student Funding
• Student Progress
• Student Progress Information for Programs
• Student Registration Information
• August 2023 Newsletter
• Sept 2023 Newsletter
• October 2023 Newsletter
• November 2023 Newsletter
• April 2024 Newsletter
• Dec 2023 Newsletter
• Feb 2024 Newsletter
• Jan 2024 Newsletter
• March 2024 Newsletter
• May 2024 Newsletter
• Strategic Plan
• Request Info
• Current Students
• Faculty Resources

You are here

Creative writing (mfa).

Oregon State University has a long tradition of excellence in producing and teaching creative writing, going all the way back to the 1950s when the future distinguished novelist William Kittredge was a student here, and Bernard Malamud won a National Book Award while teaching in the English Department.

This is a distinguished past, but our present is even more remarkable.

Creative Writing has never been more vital or successful at OSU than it is right now, with a nationally competitive pool of applicants in fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction, full funding for all our students through GTA positions, with full tuition waiver, a vibrant Visiting Writers Series, and the new Stone Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. For information on the high-residency program and its GTA fellowships, please contact the SWLF main office at [email protected] , call 541-737-3244, or visit their website.

A low-residency variant of the program is also available on the OSU-Cascades campus in Bend, Oregon.

  Creative Writing Website

  College of Liberal Arts

 Corvallis  OSU-Cascades

Primary Contact

Creative writing director, admissions requirements, required tests, english language requirements .

English language requirements for international applicants to this program are the same as the standard Graduate School requirements .

Additional Requirements

Please, before applying to this program, always refer to the application guide to confirm application requirements.

Application Process

Please review the graduate school application process and Apply Online .

Dates & Deadlines ?

Admissions deadline for corvallis students, admissions deadline for osu-cascades students, funding deadline for all applicants, concentrations , mais participation.

This program is not offered as a MAIS field of study.

AMP Participation ?

This program does not participate in the Accelerated Master's Platform (AMP)

Contact Info

Graduate School Heckart Lodge 2900 SW Jefferson Way Oregon State University Corvallis, OR 97331-1102

Phone: 541-737-4881 Fax: 541-737-3313

• Programs - Majors, minors and certificates
• Academic Progress
• Student Success
• Faculty Support
• Staff Directory
• Graduate Catalog

• Skip to main menu
• Skip to user menu

Creative Writing Pro Tem Instructor - Open Pool

Job Details

• Names and contact information for at least three professional references Department Summary The Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon offers both a minor in creative writing and a Master of Fine Arts. The Program emphasizes the workshop and integrating concentrated time for writing with craft seminars. Undergraduate offerings within the Creative Writing Program also include the Kidd Tutorial Program (a unique studio experience that emphasizes literary analysis in poetry and prose fiction, craft-related topics of concern to the college-level creative writer, and an engagement with the rigorous critical discourse). Position Summary The Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon is seeking qualified applicants for its open instruction pool. Positions are limited duration appointments potentially renewable for up to a total of three years. In limited circumstances, there is the possibility of renewal beyond three years based on programmatic need, funding and performance. Potential courses are typically at the undergraduate level. Minimum Requirements
• MFA or MA in creative writing.
• Experience teaching at the university level. Professional Competencies
• Ability to work effectively with faculty, staff and students. The University of Oregon is proud to offer a robust benefits package to eligible employees, including health insurance, retirement plans and paid time off. For more information about benefits, visit http://hr.uoregon.edu/careers/about-benefits . The University of Oregon is an equal opportunity, affirmative action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the ADA. The University encourages all qualified individuals to apply, and does not discriminate on the basis of any protected status, including veteran and disability status. The University is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants and employees with disabilities. To request an accommodation in connection with the application process, please contact us at [email protected] or 541-346-5112. UO prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, marital status, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in all programs, activities and employment practices as required by Title IX, other applicable laws, and policies. Retaliation is prohibited by UO policy. Questions may be referred to the Title IX Coordinator, Office of Civil Rights Compliance, or to the Office for Civil Rights. Contact information, related policies, and complaint procedures are listed on the statement of non-discrimination . In compliance with federal law, the University of Oregon prepares an annual report on campus security and fire safety programs and services. The Annual Campus Security and Fire Safety Report is available online at https://clery.uoregon.edu/annual-campus-security-and-fire-safety-report . To apply, visit https://careers.uoregon.edu/en-us/job/533911/creative-writing-pro-tem-instructor-open-pool jeid-0357d9e9e8cae6438d358ef92c9ca565

Share this job

Get job alerts

Create a job alert and receive personalized job recommendations straight to your inbox.

Jump to navigation

• Find People
• Life at Pacific

Forest Grove, Hillsboro & Eugene Campuses Closed

Update: Pacific University’s Forest Grove, Hillsboro and Eugene campuses, and all Pacific healthcare clinics, remain closed all day Friday, Jan. 19. More Details

Faculty Biographies

• Faculty Videos
• Visiting Writers

Faculty Biographies | Master of Fine Arts in Writing

The writers who serve as faculty for the Pacific University MFA in Writing program are outstanding for both their level of national or regional literary achievements and for their teaching records and abilities. These accomplished authors share a sense of joy around their work, bringing their diverse writing styles and voices to the mix. During residencies and the guided study that follows, the MFA faculty advisor is hard at work on his or her own writing, and every exchange with a student is touched by mutual goals.

Request Info

Chris Abani is a novelist, poet, essayist, screenwriter and playwright. Born in Nigeria to an Igbo father and English mother, he grew up in Afikpo, Nigeria, received a BA in English from Imo State University, Nigeria, an MA in English, Gender and Culture from Birkbeck College, University of London and a PhD in Literature, and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California. He has resided in the United States since 2001.

He is the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize and a Guggenheim Award.

His fiction includes  The Secret History of Las Vegas ,  Song For Night , The Virgin of Flames ,  Becoming Abigail ,  GraceLand , and  Masters of the Board. His   most recent poetry collection, Smoking The Bible , was published by Copper Canyon in 2022. His other poetry collections are  Sanctificum ,  There Are No Names for Red ,  Feed Me The Sun - Collected Long Poems ,  Hands Washing Water ,  Dog Woman ,  Daphne’s Lot,  and  Kalakuta Republic . His nonfiction book,  The Face: A Memoir , was published in 2014.

Through his  TED Talks , public speaking and essays Abani is known as an international voice on humanitarianism, art, ethics and our shared political responsibility. His critical and personal essays have been featured in books on art and photography, as well as  Witness ,  Parkett ,  The New York Times ,  O Magazine , and  Bomb .

His many research interests include African Poetics, World Literature, 20th Century Anglophone Literature, African Presences in Medieval, and Renaissance Culture, The Living Architecture of Cities, West African Music, Postcolonial and Transnational Theory, Robotics and Consciousness, Yoruba and Igbo Philosophy and Religion. Visit his  website .

Ellen Bass is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets  and winner of a 2021 Guggenhiem Foundation Fellowship in Poetry . Her books include  Indigo , named a New and Notable book by the New York Times and Like a Beggar,  The Human Line , and  Mules of Love . In 1973 Ellen co-edited the first major anthology of women's poetry,  No More Masks!  and her non-fiction books include the groundbreaking guidebook,  The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse  and  Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bi-Sexual Youth .

Among her awards are Fellowships from the NEA and the California Arts Council, three Pushcart Prizes,  Nimrod's  Pablo Neruda Prize,  The Missouri Review's  Larry Levis Prize,  New Letters  Poetry Prize,  Greensboro  Poetry Prize, and The Glenna Luschei  Prairie Schooner  Award. Her work appears regularly in  The New Yorker , The American Poetry Review  and many other journals.

Ellen founded poetry workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and in the Santa Cruz jails. She lives with her wife in Santa Cruz, CA. Visit her  website .

Thoughts on Workshop : The workshop is an opportunity to share your poems and to hear how others respond to them. But equally—if not more important—it’s an opportunity to learn from the feedback given to other students. It can be hard to escape the subjectivity we feel about our own poems, but as you develop your ability to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of poems that are not yours, then you can apply that discernment to your own poems. 

Sanjiv Bhattacharya is presently the U.S. Correspondent for  Esquire  (UK), and a general freelancer for various titles in both countries, such as The   Telegraph , The   Guardian ,  The   Observer ,  Details, Marie Claire,  and a handful of others.

He's been twice nominated for  PPA Consumer Magazine  Writer of the Year for his work in  Esquire  – in 2017, 2015 and 2013.

He grew up in London, studied at Cambridge, and spent five years at  GQ  (UK). He then turned to freelance and moved to Los Angeles to spend the next nine years writing features about all kinds of things, especially celebrities, subcultures, and fringe groups.

In 2005, he made a documentary about Mormon polygamy, which led to a book on the topic,  Secrets & Wives: The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy , which came out in 2011. 

In 2008 he went to India for a couple of years to edit men’s lifestyle magazines, first  GQ  India in Bombay and then a few other titles at the India Today Group in Delhi.

Now he is back in LA, working on more books and articles.

Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of  Deluge  (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), winner of the 2021 Levis Reading Prize, the 2021 Luschei Prize for African Poetry, and longlisted for the 2021 PEN Open Book Award, and four chapbooks. Her honors include multiple Pushcart Prizes, grants from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Cleveland State University, where she was the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems appear in  The   New York Times Magazine, The Nation, The Atlantic, POETRY,  and elsewhere. She is a Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati.

Dr. Adrienne Christian is a poet, writer, professor, and photographer. Her poetry books include  Worn  (2021, Santa Fe Writer's Project) and  A Proper Lover  (2017, Main Street Rag).  Worn  was one of The Rumpus’ Most Anticipated Books of 2021. Her poetry, prose, and photographs have appeared in  Prairie Schooner ,  Hayden’s Ferry Review , CALYX , BUST , phoebe , No Tokens , World Literature Today , American Life in Poetry , Today’s Black Woman , African Vibes , the  Los Angeles Review as the Editor’s Choice ,  Next Avenue , and more. 

She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poem,  Wedding Dress , received the 2021 Common Ground Review Poetry Award. In 2016, she was nominated for the Rita Dove International Poetry Award. In 2007, she won the University of Michigan’s Five Under Ten Young Alumni Award. 

Adrienne is a fellow of the Cave Canem, Furious Flower, and Callaloo writing residencies. She has served as editor or jury member for literary prizes including the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, the Penumbra Poetry and Haiku Contest, the Cave Canem Starshine and Clay Fellowship, and the Nebraska Poetry Society Poetry Award. She is also Associate Editor at Backbone Press. 

Adrienne has been featured on panels by  Ms. Magazine  and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan, an MFA from Pacific University, and a PhD from the University of Nebraska. She teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific University. 

When Adrienne is not working, she is photographing the world. She has visited all 50 US states, all seven continents, and 65 of the world’s countries/territories. Read all about her adventures and see her travel photography at  adriennechristian.substack.com . Though she was born and raised in Michigan, Adrienne now lives in San Antonio, Texas with her husband.

Eduardo C. Corral's poems have appeared in  Best American Poetry 2012, New England Review, Ploughshares, and The New York Times.  His work has been honored with a Discovery/The Nation Award, the J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from Poetry , and writing residencies to the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He has served as the Olive B. O'Connor Fellow in Creative Writing at Colgate University, and as the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University.  Slow Lightning,  his first book of poems, was selected by Carl Phillips as the 2011 winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition. He's the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. In 2016 he won the Holmes National Poetry Prize from Princeton University. 

Claire Davis’s first novel, Winter Range, was listed among the best books of 2000 by The Washington Post, Chicago Sun Times ,  The   Denver Post , Seattle Post, The Oregonian, and The Christian Science Monitor , and was the first book to receive both the PNBA and MPBA awards for best fiction. Her second novel, Season of the Snake , and her short story collection, Labors of the Heart, were both released to wide critical acclaim. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary magazines such as The Gettysburg Review , Shenandoah , The  Southern Review , The Pushcart Prize Anthology , and Best American Short Stories . She recently retired as Professor Emerita from Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho and is currently teaching at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. 

Kwame Dawes is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and numerous other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent poetry collection, Nebraska , appeared in 2019. In 2016 his book, Speak from Here to There , a co-written collection of verse with Australian poet, John Kinsella, appeared along with When the Rewards Can Be So Great: Essays on Writing and the Writing Life , which he edited. His collection, City of Bones: A Testament , appeared in 2017. Also in 2017, Dawes co-edited with Matthew Shenoda, Bearden’s Odessey: Poets Responding to the Art of Romare Bearden . His awards include the Forward Poetry Prize, The Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, The Musgrave Silver Medal, several Pushcart Prizes, the Barnes and Nobles Writers for Writers Award, and an Emmy. He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and is Chancellor Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. Dawes serves as the Associate Poetry Editor for Peepal Tree Books and is Director of the African Poetry Book Fund. He is Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. In 2018, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Dawes was recently named as a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. He was also the editor of American Life in Poetry .

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffith

Tyree Daye was raised in Youngsville, North Carolina. He is the author of the poetry collections a little bump in the earth (Copper Canyon Press, 2024), Cardinal (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), and River Hymns (American Poetry Review, 2017), winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. A Cave Canem fellow and a Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellow, Daye is the recipient of a Whiting Writers Award, a Kate Tufts Award finalist, and a 2021 Paterson Prize finalist. He was the 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-In-Residence at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and received an Amy Clampitt Residency. Daye is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In January 2023, Daye served as Guest Editor of the Poem-a-Day series.

Siddhartha Deb is the author of two novels and The Beautiful and the Damned , a work of narrative nonfiction which was a finalist for the Orwell Prize and a recipient of the Pen Open award. The Light at the End of the World , his latest novel, is forthcoming in Spring 2023. His journalism, fiction, and essays have appeared in The New York Times , The New Republic , The Guardian , The Nation , The Baffler , and n+1 . A professor of creative writing at the New School, he is the recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute and the Howard Foundation.

Jack Driscoll is the author of four books of poems, three collections of short stories, and four novels. In addition, he is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including two NEA Creative Writing Fellowships, the NEH Independent Study Grant, two Pushcart Prizes and Best American Short Story citations, the PEN/Nelson Algren Fiction Award, the Associated Writing Programs Short Fiction Award, and seven PEN Syndicated Project Short Fiction Awards.

His work has appeared in magazines, literary journals, and newspapers such as Chicago Tribune , Kansas City Star , Civilization , Poetry , The Georgia Review , The Southern Review , and Ploughshares .

His novel, Lucky Man, Lucky Woman, received the 1998 Pushcart Editors’ Book Award, the Barnes and Noble Discovery of Great New Writers Award, and the 1999 Independent Book Publishers Award for Fiction. His newest short story collection, The Goat Fish And The Lover's Knot , was published in 2017.  Twenty Stories , a selection of his stories from over the years, was published by Pushcart in late 2022. 

Pete Fromm is a five-time winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Literary Award for his novels If Not for This , As Cool As I Am , and How All This Started ; a story collection, Dry Rain ; and the memoirs, Indian Creek Chronicles and The Names of the Stars , which won the Evans Handcart Award for excellence in biography and a Montana Book Award.   As Cool As I Am is also a feature film starring Claire Danes, James Marsden, and Sarah Bolger, and Dry Rain is a short film starring James LeGros and Nathan Gamble. Pete is the author of four other short story collections and has published over two hundred stories in magazines. His most recent novels, A Job You Mostly Won’t Know How To Do (2019), and Lake Nowhere (Le Lac De Nulle Part, 2022), are both bestsellers in France. He lives in Montana and speaks regularly at writer’s conferences around the country and in Europe.    Thoughts on Workshop: The workshop is a safe place to talk about how to improve not just this handful of stories, but all of our writing in general, learning the very difficult task of self-editing and revising your own work through the slightly less difficult task of putting another’s work under the microscope and figuring out what makes it tick, what works, and what doesn’t.    I will treat your stories exactly as I treat my own, looking for everything I can work on more, improve, cut, add, clean up, and, more than that, I’ll pick up on things I see that can expand beyond the story to the group. And I’ll ask for you to do the same. The more seriously you take the stories that aren’t yours, the more seriously and competently you’ll begin to see your own work. So, in advance of workshop, really read these stories, mark them up, see what leads to their joys and what may have caused spots that didn’t quite work for you. In the margins, your comments will mostly be on the sentence level, but then go deeper with end notes on the story as whole. Those end notes are like a letter to the author articulating what you find most essential, interesting, and effective about the manuscript, as well as any questions or suggestions you have about how the author might improve it. If you write these carefully, they’ll teach you as much about fiction writing as they teach the author about their manuscript; they also help build lasting friendships between you and your MFA peers.    I’ve always told my workshops that anything aggressive or demeaning or counterproductive would not be tolerated, warned that I’d come down with the wrath of avenging angels on any such behavior, yet, in my many years in this program, I’ve never once had to do any such thing. I think you’ll find yourself in a safe, welcoming, sincere group of fellow writers, all of us just trying to improve our writing. We’re in this together, taking the writing seriously, but maybe ourselves a bit less so.  Being willing to relax and laugh at ourselves sometimes is a great help. 

Frank X. Gaspar was born and raised in Provincetown, Massachusetts, of Azorean Descent (Pico, Sao Miguel). His ancestors were traditionally whalers and Grand Banks fisherman, sailing out of the Islands and then Provincetown. He is the author of five collections of poetry and two novels. Among his many awards are multiple inclusions in Best American Poetry, four Pushcart Prizes, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature, and a California Arts Council Fellowship in poetry. His debut novel,  Leaving Pico , was a Barnes and Noble Discovery Prize winner, a recipient of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and a  New York Times  Notable Book. His second novel,  Stealing Fatima,  was a MassBook of the Year in Fiction (Massachusetts Foundation for the Book). His latest book, a fusion of genres, is The Poems of Renata Ferreira.

Molly Gloss is the author of six novels and a short story collection. Her novels include The Jump-Off Creek , which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Dazzle of Day , winner of the PEN West Fiction Prize; and the national bestseller The Hearts of Horses . Her story collection, Unforeseen , was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in 2020.

Other honors include a Whiting Writers Award, an Oregon Book Award, multiple Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award for the short story.

She writes both realist fiction and science fiction. Her work, even within the science fiction/fantasy genre, often concerns or reimagines the landscape, literature, mythology, and history of the American West.

Thoughts on Workshop:  Writing is ultimately a solitary art, but workshops are where we come together to collaborate, as musicians and dancers do, to offer mutual encouragement, stimulating discussion, practice in criticism, and support in difficulty. To help a story draw closer to what the writer intended, we ask: What is this writer doing, how is she doing it, why is he doing it, what is their story about? One of the most valuable tools for honing our own craft, is this practice of articulating answers to questions about another writer’s work.

Cate Kennedy is an Australian writer who has published two short story collections, a novel, three poetry collections, and a memoir. Her stories have appeared in many publications including The New Yorker , the Harvard Literary Review , World Literature Today , and Prospect magazine, as well as numerous Australian literary journals and periodicals including Best Australian Stories in 2006, 2007 and 2009.  Her debut collection, Dark Roots , was given a starred review upon its U.S. publication in Publishers Weekly and the Kirkus Reviews , and was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Great New Writers selection for 2008 and as Oprah magazine’s "new voice of the month" in July of that year. She is the recipient of the Queensland Literary Award for her most recent collection, Like a House on Fire , and the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for her 2011 poetry collection, The Taste of River Water . Her novel, The World Beneath , was awarded the People’s Choice prize in the NSW Literary awards in 2010, and has been translated into French and Mandarin. In 2021 she completed her PhD dissertation and was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree at LaTrobe University, Melbourne. Her short story collections are both on the English syllabus in her home state of Victoria in Australia. 

Thoughts on Workshop: All I can think of to say is to echo the master, Anton Chekhov, when he said: "I still lack a political, religious, and philosophical world view. I change it every month, so I'll have to limit myself to the description of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak."

E. J. Koh  is the author of the memoir The Magical Language of Others (Tin House Books, 2020) and poetry collection A Lesser Love (Louisiana State University Press, 2017), winner of the Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry. Her co-translation of Yi Won’s The World’s Lightest Motorcycle is forthcoming from Zephyr Press. Her stories, poems and translations have appeared in Boston Review , Los Angeles Review of Books , Slate , and World Literature Today . Koh is the recipient of fellowships from the American Literary Translators Association, Kundiman, and MacDowell. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University in New York for creative writing and literary translation. She is completing her PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle. The Magical Language of Others was recently named the 2021 winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award. 

Valerie Laken's short story collection,  Separate Kingdoms , was longlisted for the Story Prize and the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her novel,  Dream House , received the Anne Powers prize for fiction and was listed among  Kirkus Reviews'  Best Books of 2009. Her work has been published in numerous journals, including  Ploughshares,  Chicago Tribune,  and  Alaska Quarterly Review , and has received a Pushcart Prize and a  Missouri Review  Editors' Prize. She holds an MA in Slavic literature and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan, and she teaches in the graduate program for creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Thoughts on Workshop:  My goal in workshop is to foster a supportive community where writers feel safe sharing complex, imperfect work, and where readers are dedicated to helping their peers discover the best ways to advance and refine that work. We learn and show respect by taking one another’s work seriously and offering generous, thoughtful reactions rather than formulaic instructions. In my workshops, the author is free to ask questions, express their intentions for their work, and redirect the discussion. Our goal, as a group, is not to impose our values or aesthetic on someone else’s work, but to help each author discover and build on what is most unique and essential in their voice.

Danusha Laméris is an American poet, raised in Northern California, born to a Dutch father and Barbadian mother. Her first book,  The Moons of August  (Autumn House, 2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Award. Her most recent collection,  Bonfire Opera , (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), recently won the 2021 Northern California Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award. Some of her work has been published in  The Best American Poetry ,  The New York Times ,  The American Poetry Review ,  The Gettysburg Review ,  Prairie Schooner ,  Ploughshares , and  Orion . The recipient of the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, Danusha has taught poetry independently since 2006. She founded The Hive Poetry Collective, a radio show, podcast and event hub in Santa Cruz, CA, where she was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate. She is currently at work on a collection of nature essays. 

Thoughts on Workshop:  We are gathered here because we love poems and poetry. And that matters. It matters that we truly love what language can do, and love transmitting it to others. 

Poetry is about taking in the world, the whole experience of being human, and distilling that experience down to something that can be taken in and re-experienced by another person.

Craft-wise, we grow from reading great poems—and also from taking risks. Which means we need an environment of support and encouragement. It’s vulnerable to take risks. 

Every poet can learn to write stronger poems. It’s about craft, and dedication. Not just some amorphous and innate thing like talent.

Dorianne Laux's newest poetry collection,  Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems  (W.W. Norton, 2019) was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She is also the author of  The Book of Men ( winner of the Paterson Prize ) ,  Facts about the Moon ( winner of the Oregon Book Award), as well as two collections of poetry from BOA Editions:  Awake :  What We Carry (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and  Smoke . She is co-author of  The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry . Her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in  The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry  and in  The Best American Poetry four times. She has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Laux was elected Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020.

Thoughts on Workshop:  Our workshops are a place to present fresh work and receive feedback from a group of peers guided by your teacher. We value specific, concise, considered comments on thematics and craft. The aim is to give the poet useful information with which to continue their work. I encourage a supportive and friendly atmosphere where we feel welcomed, comfortable, and included, all of us working together for the benefit and betterment of each presented poem.  

Mike Magnuson is the author of two novels,  The Right Man for the Job  and  The Fire Gospels ; and three books of nonfiction, Lummox: The Evolution of a Man, Heft on Wheels: A Field Guide to Doing a 180 , and Bike Tribes . His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in  Esquire, Gentleman’s Quarterly, Men’s Health, Backpacker, Bicycling, Salon, Popular Mechanics, The Massachusetts Review, The Big Smoke, Best American Sports Writing, and other publications. Recently, he has completed a biography of legendary orchestral conductor Harry Rabinowitz, and he is working on a novel about an underground newspaper in Ghent, Belgium, at the time of the 1944 Tour of Flanders bicycle race. Mike lives on the north shore of Lake Winnebago, in Menasha, Wisconsin. Visit his website . 

From Jamaica, and born to a Jamaican father and Venezuelan mother, Shara McCallum is the author of six books of poetry published in the US and UK, most recently No Ruined Stone (2021), which won the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy award and named a finalist for the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize. La historia es un cuarto , an anthology of her poems translated into Spanish by Adalber Salas Hernández, was published in Mexico in 2021. McCallum’s poems have been translated into several other languages and her poems and essays have appeared throughout the US, Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Her writing has been awarded various prizes, including the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Jamaican government, a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the US Library of Congress, and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. McCallum is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor at Penn State University and was appointed the 2021-22 Penn State Laureate.

Thoughts on Workshop: Each workshop is a unique community we form, as practitioners with various subjectivities, brought together through our shared investment in the art and craft of poetry. To reflect this, in our discussions of poems I discourage consensus, unless this happens organically. Instead, I encourage the voicing of a multiplicity of—sometimes contradictory—readings and responses. Central to my idea of workshop is the belief that poems aren’t broken. We aren’t there to “fix” a poem or “torture a confession out of it.” When invited by a poet into their process, I think we serve and honor both the poet and the poem by reading closely, with a keen focus on identifying the poem’s effect and resonances as well as its aspirations and possibilities.

Joseph Millar’s collections are Kingdom , Overtime , a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, Fortune , and  Blue Rust (all available from Carnegie-Mellon). His most recent collection, Dark Harvest: New and Selected Poems, 2001-2020 , was released in October, 2021. Millar grew up in Pennsylvania, attended the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and spent 30 years in the San Francisco Bay area working at a variety of jobs, from telephone repairman to commercial fisherman. His poems record the narrative of a life fully lived among fathers, sons, brothers, daughters, weddings and divorces, men and women. His work has won fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in such magazines as DoubleTake, New Letters, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, The Southern Review, The American Poetry Review, and Ploughshares.

Mahtem Shiferraw is a writer and visual artist from Ethiopia and Eritrea. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Callaloo , Prairie Schooner , Poets.org, The 2River View , Luna Luna Magazine , Diverse Voices Quarterly , Numero Cinq , and more. Her short story "The River" received an Honorable Mention at Glimmer Train ’s Open Fiction Contest. In 2016, she won the Sillerman Prize for African Poets and her full-length collection, Fuchsia , was published by the University of Nebraska Press. Her poetry chapbook, Behind Walls & Glass , was published by Finishing Line Press. Her most recent collection, Your Body is War , is out now from the University of Nebraska Press. She has served as editor for Atlas and Alice , The Bleeding Lion , The Hunger Mountain , and more. She is the founder of Anaphora Arts , a nonprofit organization working to advance the works of writers and artists of color. She has served as a jury member for different literary prizes and residencies, including the Neudstat International Prize for Literature, the Brunel International African Poetry Prize, the Lucy Munro Brooker Prize, and more. She is a Pushcart prize nominee, and her work has been anthologized widely. In 2018, she received the Imani Award for Artistic Excellence from Harvard University. As of 2020, she also serves on the Editorial Board of World Literature Today . She holds an MFA from Vermont College. Her next poetry collection, Nomenclatures of Invisibility , will be published by BOA Editions, Ltd. in Spring, 2023. 

Thoughts on Workshop:  The workshop is a space for thoughtful discourse and discernment; we are here to learn about craft, but also to mitigate our differences, to elevate one another in our storytelling, in our common purpose. The workshop also provides an opportunity to understand new perspectives, to deepen our empathy, and to move forward with compassion. 

Mary Helen Stefaniak’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in many publications. Of her new novel, The World of Pondside , a mystery that takes place in a nursing home, Booklist said, “Stefaniak infuses an often forbidding and depressing environment with joy and dignity.” Her second novel, The Cailiffs of Baghdad , Georgia, received a 2011 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. Anisfield-Wolf Awards recognize books that make significant contributions to our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the diversity of cultures. Independent booksellers selected The Cailiffs as an Indie-Next “Great Read.” Her first novel, The Turk and My Mother , received the 2005 John Gardner Fiction Award and has been translated into several languages. It was named a Favorite Book of 2004 by the Chicago Tribune . Self Storage and Other Stories , her first book, received the Wisconsin Library Association’s 1998 Banta Award. The University of Iowa Press published her first book of nonfiction, The Six-Minute Memoir: Fifty-Five Short Essays on Life , in 2022, its essays selected from a column she began writing in 1998. Mary Helen is Professor Emerita of Creative Writing at Creighton University in Omaha. She has taught fiction writing in Ireland, in China, and in the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. She and her husband have lived in Iowa City since 1982. Their three remarkable children grew up there.

Thoughts on Workshop: The job of your colleagues in workshop is to read your pages carefully and respectfully and to let you know what they see, hear, smell, taste, feel, understand and/or fail to understand on those pages. It is a truism (and also, as it happens, a fact) that you will learn more from participating in the discussion of other people’s work than you learn from the discussion of your own.  You’re going to get many wrong ideas from your readers, but they will often lead you to the right ideas. A successful workshop is one that makes you, the writer, eager to dive back into the writing—whether to revise or to start anew. A really great workshop makes everyone else in the room feel the same.

Willy Vlautin has published six novels:  The Motel   Life  (2007), which was The New York Times  Editors’ Choice and Notable book, and was made into a major motion picture starring Dakota Fanning, Emile Hirsch, Stephen Dorff, and Kris Kristofferson;  Northline  (2008);  Lean on Pete  (2010), which won the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction, was short-listed for the IMPAC award, and is soon to be a film starring Steve Buscemi and Chloe Sevigny; The Free  (2014), winner of the Oregon People’s Choice Award; and  Don't Skip Out On Me (2018). His latest novel, The Night Always Comes , was released in April, 2021. His work has been translated into eight languages.

Vlautin founded the bands Richmond Fontaine in 1994 and The Delines in 2014, featuring vocalist Amy Boone (The Damnations). He currently resides in Scappoose, Oregon.

Thoughts on Workshop:  Workshop is an important part of the program, where students can learn to see their work from the diverse perspectives of their fellow students. Discussion and critique are valuable tools for honing our craft, and workshop should be a place where all students feel safe to share their work. Students should come to it with open minds, ears, and hearts. My goal is for students to be inspired and motivated by the discussions we have in workshop.

Kellie Wells is the winner of the 2022 Kurt Vonnegut Speculative Fiction Prize. She is also the recipient of the Flannery O’Connor Award, the Richard Sullivan Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Fiction, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award for emerging women writers, and the Baltic Writing Residency. She has been awarded residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center, Château de Lavigny, and Hawthornden Castle.  She is the author of four books: Compression Scars ; Skin ; Fat Girl, Terrestrial ; and God, the Moon, and Other Megafauna . Her research and writing interests include Victorian spiritualism and stage acts, dystopian/apocalypse lit, speculative/fabulist/slipstream lit, disability and chronic illness in the Anthropocene/Symbiocene, fairy tales and folktales, and apocalyptic crones. She has three very wry dogs, teaches in the MFA program at the University of Alabama, and is a congenital Midwestern American.

Thoughts on Workshop:  My approach to feedback and workshop discussion is, in large part, descriptive. In the course of the conversation and in my written comments, I illustrate for the writer how one reader has made sense of their work, point out the things I leaned on interpretively, and try to show the writer what led me to the reading I came away with. I describe how I see various craft elements operating and also offer general observations about the form the writer’s working in. Although I occasionally make pointed suggestions for revision, I’m generally not inclined to offer prescriptive feedback. Instead, I document one reader’s experience of the story/chapter, and the writer can think about how that experience does or does not align with their intentions (or what they know of their intentions at this moment), so that when they return to the work, they can make decisions about how to reimagine the parts of it they want to revise or how to move forward. It’s not that I think prescriptive feedback has no value; it’s just that my inclination as a reader is to go with the choices the writer has made and then think about how those choices accumulate into meaning for me as I read. Just as we all write differently, all members of a workshop have different dispositions as readers and critics, so I don’t expect fellow workshop members to respond to the work exactly as I do. However workshop members are inclined to engage with the work critically, so long as it’s respectful, is fine. The more variety there is in the way we read and analyze, the better for the writer. This is, to my way of thinking, one of the real virtues of a workshop—it can give the writer a prismatic view of their own work that will illuminate it in unexpected ways, throwing onto the wall patterns they might not even have realized were there.

Cecily Wong is the author of three books. Her debut novel, Diamond Head (Harper), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection, recipient of an Elle Readers' Prize, and voted a best debut of the 2015 Brooklyn Book Festival. Her second novel, Kaleidoscope (Dutton), was a best book of the month at Buzzfeed, Apple Books, and Today.com. Cecily is also the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Gastro Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to Food (Workman Publishing). Cecily’s work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal , The LA Review of Books , Self Magazine , Bustle , Atlas Obscura , and elsewhere. She is the 2023 recipient of an Oregon Literary Fellowship. A graduate of Barnard College, Cecily now lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and daughter.

Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer. She is the author of the memoirs The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir , The Song Poet , and Somewhere in the Unknown World . Yang is also the author of the children’s books A Map Into the World , The Shared Room , The Most Beautiful Thing , and Yang Warriors . She co-edited the ground-breaking collection What God is Honored Here?: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss By and For Native Women and Women of Color . Yang’s work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, the PEN USA literary awards, the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize, as Notable Books by the American Library Association, Kirkus Best Books of the Year, the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and garnered four Minnesota Book Awards. Kao Kalia Yang lives in Minnesota with her family, and teaches and speaks across the nation. 

Master of Fine Arts

Creative and environmental writing.

Unique, affordable, and rigorous, the Eastern Oregon University low-residency MFA in Creative Writing is where your writing practice and intellectual curiosity will find a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive community of writers. We also offer a special (optional) concentration in Landscape, Ecology, and Community.

Renowned poets discuss nature, injustice at Ars Poetica 

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke joins MFA faculty members for a virtual reading and talk April 28.

The 2nd Annual La Grande Lit Week

July 17-22, 2023, update: due to mid-afternoon heat concerns, the events scheduled, between 3:45-5:45 pm on july 22 at hq have been shifted., please see updated schedule below., free literary readings and conversations,, showcasing our great downtown, daily one-hour classes led by lit week authors for just $20, ( click here for registration ; full class descriptions available here ).

The La Grande Lit Week is a project of the Eastern Oregon University MFA Program in Creative Writing , bringing together faculty and visiting writers during its annual residency for seven days of literary events in Northeastern Oregon on the I-84 corridor. The line up features winners of the Oregon Book Awards, the Washington State Book Awards, and the Pacific Northwest Book Awards, as well as authors touring new or recent books. Most of the featured authors will be in conversation with EOU MFA faculty after their readings. Please see the full schedule below.

We give thanks to our partners and sponsors. In 2022, the Union County Chamber of Commerce provided a helpful seed grant for the inaugural La Grande Lit Week. Other partners include Fishtrap, JaxDog Café and Books, Liberty Theatre Cafe, Side A Brewery, Cook Memorial Library, La Grande Parks and Recreation, hq, The Local, Elgin Opera House, and Art Center East. And all thanks to our students and faculty who are our biggest supporters.

We also humbly acknowledge the original inhabitants of the land that La Grande and EOU are upon: the Cayuse, Umatilla, Walla Walla, and Nez Perce people. We celebrate their traditions, languages, and stories. We acknowledge their continuing connection to this land, water, and community and pay our respects to these original stewards of northeastern Oregon.

All readings and conversations are free and open to the public. For those interested in honing their own writing craft, one-hour “community classes” will be offered by Lit Week writers on special topics. Registration for each class is $20. Classes will be held in Badgley Hall on the EOU campus. Click here for registration. Further questions may be directed to Nick Neely, Assistant Professor of English/Writing, [email protected] .

2023 La Grande Lit Week Schedule

Monday, july 17, 6:30 pm, cook memorial library, 2006 4th st.

Michelle Nijhuis is an award-winning science journalist and the author of Beloved Beasts: Fighting for Life in the Age Extinction . She’ll be in conversation with MFA faculty member Kathryn Miles , whose most recent book is Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders .

Wednesday, July 19

6:30 pm, market place fresh foods (rooftop), 1912 fourth st.

EOU MFA faculty reading featuring Megan Kruse , Melissa Matthewson , and Joe Wilkins .

7:30 pm, Market Place Fresh Foods (rooftop)

Eileen Garvin is the author most recently of the bestselling novel The Music of Bees , which is set in Hood River where she lives, and the memoir How to Be a Sister . She’ll be in conversation with MFA faculty member Claire Boyles , author of Site Fidelity.

Friday, July 21

12:45-3:45, badgley hall, eou, one university blvd.

One-hour community classes offered by Sindya Bhanoo, John Daniel, Jessica Gigot and others. Registration required.

4 pm, Loso Hall Lobby, EOU

Kathleen Flenniken , Jessica Gigot , and John Daniel . Flenniken’s most recent poetry collection is  Post Romantic ; she is a winner of a Washington State Book Award and the state’s former poet laureate. Gigot’s latest book is the essay collection A Little Bit of Land , and her second book of poems, Feeding Hour , won a Nautilus Award and was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Daniel is the winner of three Oregon Book Awards in poetry and nonfiction; his latest book of poetry is Lighted Distance s : Four Seasons on Goodlow Rim and his previous book is the novel Gifted .

7 pm, The Local, 1508 Adams Ave

Sindya Bhanoo is a journalist and the author of the story collection  Seeking Fortune Elsewhere , winner of the 2023 Oregon Book Award for Fiction and the New American Voices Award. She’ll be in conversation with EOU MFA faculty member Megan Kruse , author of Call Me Home.

8 pm, The Local

EOU MFA Alumni Reading

Saturday, July 22

9 am-12 pm, badgley hall, eou.

One-hour community classes taught by Garrett Hongo, Kathleen Flenniken, Emme Lund, and others. Registration required.

1:15 pm, Schwarz Theatre (Loso Hall), EOU

MFA student thesis readings: Gabriel Boehmer , Christen Careaga , Rebecca DeLore, Christopher Densmore , Jensen Heike , Patsy Lally , Becky Murray , Gregory Rawlins , and Kasey Zmrhal .

Followed by the MFA program graduation ceremony.

4:45 pm, hq 3 pm, Schwarz Theatre

Garrett Hongo is the author most recently of the memoir The Perfect Sound and is a previous finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. He’ll be in conversation with EOU MFA faculty member Christopher Kondrich , author of Valuing: Poems , a winner of the National Poetry Series.

Followed by Hongo’s playlist related to The Perfect Sound .

3:45 7 pm , hq, 112 Depot Street

A group reading from Cascadia Field Guide , featuring poets and writers John Daniel, Kathleen Flenniken, Garrett Hongo , Nick Neely , Dao Strom , and Joe Wilkins .

7 8 pm , hq, 112 Depot Street

Emme Lund is the author of the novel The Boy with a Bird in His Chest , which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Fiction and a Pacific Northwest Book Award, and longlisted for The Center for Fiction 2022 First Novel Prize. She lives in Portland. She’ll be in conversation with EOU MFA faculty member Molly Reid , author of The Rapture Index: A Suburban Bestiary .

8:15 9 pm , hq

To conclude Lit Week, a visual-audio-poetry performance by Dao Strom , author of Instrument which won the 2022 Oregon Book Award in Poetry.

Admission Requirements

Applications for the 2024-2025 academic year are now closed. The next application period for the EOU low-residency MFA will open in October 2024 with a priority application deadline in January 2025 for best consideration (please check back for the updated deadline). After the priority deadline, applications will reviewed on rolling basis if space remains available. Accepted applicants must signal their intention to enroll in the program within one month of official acceptance by making a nonrefundable $500.00 deposit. The Master of Fine Arts degree requires two types of admission: (a) Admission to Eastern Oregon University with “Graduate Student” status; and (b) Admission to the MFA program. Both applications should be submitted at the same time.

Admission requirements for the MFA program

Admission requirements for the MFA program:  1. Admission to Eastern Oregon University with “Graduate Student” status. 2. Grade point average (GPA) of at least 3.0, calculated on either of the following two options: (a) Last 60 quarter hours completed of undergraduate upper-division coursework; or (b)  15 quarter hours of approved graduate-level coursework. 3. Official college transcripts for all undergraduate and graduate coursework. 4. Two letters of professional reference attesting to the applicant’s ability to be successful in a graduate program. 5. A short (750 word) essay explaining your reasons for wishing to pursue the MFA in Creative Writing at EOU and how you will integrate the demands of the program with your current responsibilities. 6. Creative Portfolio of your best creative work (10-15 pages of poetry; 15-20 pages of fiction or non-fiction).

Transfer Credit

The MFA Program allows a limit of 15 graded graduate-level credits (quarter hours) to be transferred from another accredited graduate-level institution.   If you have regularly attended Summer Fishtrap Gathering, Fishtrap Outpost, and/or Fishtrap’s Yearlong Workshop, you also may petition the MFA Director directly to convert up to 15 hours to graduate-level credits.  All graduate-level courses taken prior to program admission, and all graduate-level transfer courses, will be reviewed for appropriateness of transfer into the MFA program. Courses will not be accepted that are not appropriate to the MFA degree requirements. Courses completed prior to seven academic years before admission will be reviewed for appropriateness of transfer into the MFA program, but are not guaranteed to be accepted.

Applying for the MFA program

Submit electronically both the EOU Graduate Admission application and the MFA Program Application (i.e., cover sheet and creative portfolio), along with all required supporting documents, and official transcripts. Students who would like to participate in the Landscape, Ecology, and Community concentration should express this wish in their cover letters. Student who would be interested in studying on a part-time basis that would extend their time in a program to a third year should also highlight this intention in their cover letter.

Special note regarding admission to EOU

All MFA students are required to be fully admitted to the MFA program and EOU in order to complete the MFA degree. However, some students may desire to enroll in genre courses or elective courses on a part-time/non-admitted status. Enrollment in graduate writing workshops, seminars, and Individualized Studies requires full MFA program and EOU graduate student admission. Part-time and/or non-admitted course enrollment is permitted, but with the following exceptions: 1. Graduate student admission to EOU is required if a student will be registering for more than eight credits in any given term. 2. Graduate student admission to EOU and MFA Program admission is required, regardless of the number of registered credits per term, in order to receive financial aid. Financial aid is available both for full-time and part-time graduate students. Contact the EOU Financial Aid office at 541-962-3550 for information regarding submission of the FAFSA form and application procedures. Remember: All MFA students must be fully admitted both to EOU and the MFA program in order to enroll in any of the writing workshops and to receive the MFA degree. Students are strongly encouraged to apply for admission early in the program. For any application questions, please contact the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences program assistant Kayla Standley at 541-962-3508.

Our MFA is flexible in requiring just one residency commitment a year: back-to-back weeks in July at the storied Fishtrap Gathering of Writers at Wallowa Lake near the artsy town of Joseph, and in nearby La Grande on EOU’s campus. These experiences offer distinct vibes under the same skies, separated by a scenic 1.5-hour drive around the Wallowa Mountains, known as the Little Alps of Oregon. Students may opt to attend just two summer residencies or they may attend a third on-campus week in a third summer and take slightly less distance-based coursework.

At Fishtrap, students enjoy a morning generative workshop with the conference’s world-class faculty (see the 2023 line-up ) and gather in the evenings for faculty readings and open mics under the lakeside tent. There’s ample time for writing by the lake or taking trails into the Wallowas. For those unable to get away from home for two weeks, a virtual Fishtrap workshop option is also available (see the 2023 offering ). Of course, we whole-heartedly encourage in-person attendance: this place, this community, is stunning.

In La Grande, on EOU’s view-filled campus, students take a morning craft class and an afternoon critique-based workshop with our award-winning MFA faculty and in the evenings attend La Grande Lit Week readings and conversations with more award-winning authors at downtown mainstays like our local brewery, coffeeshops, or a brick-lined music venue (Lit Week is open to the public and runs concurrently with the residency). In the afternoon, Lit Week visiting writers also teach 1-hr classes on special topics that are optional for students. During free hours, students write, hike or otherwise explore this outdoorsy area, watch a film, go bowling, and drink a lot of coffee. Meals and conversation late into the night inspire imaginative leaps and grow bonds between fellow students and faculty mentors.

Through the rest of the summer, students continue to work one-on-one at a distance with their EOU workshop instructor to push forward a project they started or shared during the on-campus week.

Rigorous coursework continues remotely during the academic year (see the full course of study ). Our faculty work closely with students on their writing and provide instruction in contemporary literature, rhetoric, and special topics crafted to address student interests. We also provide students with meaningful, hands-on learning opportunities such as optional practicum classes in creative writing pedagogy, editing and publishing, and “professional portfolio,” in which students build professional materials specific to their long-term goals. Opportunities also exist to participate in the editing of our literary journal Oregon East and help with program communications and event planning, whether for credit or as a volunteer.

“My time in the MFA program at EOU was the one of the most enriching and rewarding experiences for me as a writer. Working with my professors and classmates helped me gain confidence in my work and submit it for publication. Now, as a doctoral student in creative writing, I’m able to draw upon the extensive foundation of genres and writing styles I encountered at EOU. Today I participate in readings in my local literary community and my school’s literary magazine. In all, EOU’s beautiful atmosphere and its knowledgeable and talented faculty are truly inspiring.”

Amy Parker, '17 Master of Fine Arts in Writing New York state

Tuition, Fees & Aid

We are committed to being the best value for a low residency creative writing MFA in the west. Click "learn more" below for more details on tuition, fees, and financial assistance. Learn More

• Course of Study

EOU offers a traditional genre-based two-year low residency program that requires 60 credits of course work, including two 14-day summer residencies followed each year by online courses. Learn More

• Faculty Biographies

EOU’s creative writing faculty are an award-winning and committed group drawn from all over the country. Learn More

Applications are now closed for the ’24-’25 academic year

Applications for the ’25-’26 cohort will be accepted starting in october 2024.

At Eastern Oregon University, we share a core belief that creative individuals are an under-appreciated and under-used resource. The creative makers among us have much to offer their communities and we commit ourselves therefore to fostering that creativity. It is our belief, too, that finding community-based solutions to the real problems communities face can and should be a collaboration in which the creativity of artists and writers play vital, enduring roles for enriching the lives of all. The Grande Ronde Valley and nearby Wallowa Valley are gateways to Eastern Oregon’s Wallowa Mountains and Oregon’s largest wilderness, the Eagle Cap Wilderness, all of which provide an exceptional resource for student writers in our Landscape, Ecology, and Community concentration. In collaboration with our program partner, Fishtrap: Writing and the West , and the Summer Fishtrap Gathering of Writers at Wallowa Lake near Joseph, Oregon, we strive to create a truly one-of-a-kind literary experience for our students .

Subscribe to our program writing digest, The Mutineer

(which curates online events and opportunities from the region and beyond), read recent news from students, alumni, and faculty, explore our visiting writers series , check out the 2nd annual la grande lit week, july 17-23, 2023, study with an eou/fishtrap student teacher, (we’re pleased to announce this new program), contact info.

• Recent News
• Tuition, Fees, and Aid
• Landscape, Ecology, Community
• Financial Aid
• The Residency Experience
• EOU Visiting Writers Series

Discover your true nature with the Eastern Edge. Learn more .

Search this site

School of art + design menu, school of art + design.

The University of Oregon's Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Art is an interdisciplinary program that prepares you for serious and engaged art practice.

Challenged by new methods of experimentation and a critical understanding of historical and contemporary context, you will pursue an informed, independent practice, specific to your intentions and sensibilities.

We expect you, as a graduate student, to arrive at an accomplished body of work but also to acquire strategies and critical thinking skills necessary to sustain and develop your professional practice and inquiry.

You can work with our faculty within and across these areas :

Art & Technology

Jewelry and Metalsmithing

Painting and Drawing

Photography

Printmaking

You will have contact with faculty members from other media areas and disciplines through graduate reviews, independent mentorship, and interdisciplinary course work.

Our faculty members are:

• practicing, professional artists
• nationally and internationally recognized artists
• frequently featured in exhibits and publications
• committed to both practice and teaching, and offer challenging and diverse perspectives
• active participants in seminars, critique colloquia, studios, and independent mentorship
• connected to a network of innovative artists and critics, who they bring to campus through the visiting artists program

What We Expect

Visual literacy, willingness to engage in critical discourse, fervent art practice.

Our MFA program is a three-year period of rigorous studio investigation, critical discourse, and conceptual development. Emphasis is given to developing a course of study tailored to your needs, while encouraging exploration and risk-taking. Our program supports a thorough engagement with the processes and principles that are fundamental to the discipline, as well as an informed awareness of issues and practices within the larger art community. Developing fluency in critical discourse, analysis, and writing are important parts of graduate life. The MFA program culminates in a year-long terminal project and group exhibition.

With a cohort of typically 20 MFA graduate students, you will develop a tight-knit community and relationships with:

• Faculty members
• Regional, national, and internationally influential artists
• Gallery directors

Working intensively in independent studios on the Eugene campus, you are part of a world-class research university in the inspiring Pacific Northwest.

Awarded annually, Graduate Fellowships provide opportunities for significant financial support, as well as teaching and professional experience.

We encourage applicants to visit our facilities and meet our faculty members. We offer tours during most of the year. Go to our Visit Us page for available tour dates.

Explore Student Work: MFA Terminal Project Exhibitions

Disciplinary Depth, Interdisciplinary Thinking

Our Master of Fine Arts curriculum is designed to provide both interdisciplinary discourse and disciplinary depth. Across the program, graduate students have course work in common through classes such as graduate critique, issues and practices, theory and history seminars, and special topics courses. Our diverse faculty has a broad range of research interests. Through thematic seminars, and independent mentorship, you have the opportunity to work closely with faculty towards particular areas of specialization.

We also encourage our students to take advantage of our world-class research university and take courses that align with their research and practice outside of the Department of Art.

Grad Review and Open Studios

Twice each academic year, MFA candidates open their studios to faculty, invited guests, and the University community at-large. Known as "Grad Review," this event brings MFA candidates outside perspectives and the opportunity to have a cross-disciplinary review of their work. The process focuses on a critique of finished work, works-in-progress, and new ideas. Each student review panel includes Department of Art faculty members and outside reviewers.

Studios, Fabrication, and Technology

Each MFA Candidate receives a studio space and access to a broad scope of facilities and fabrication and technology resources. MFA candidates have access to many specialized tools and equipment across the department, school, and university including all media area labs and shops, large-format inkjet printers, a CNC milling machine, laser cutters, video and photographic equipment, 3D printers, RISO digital duplicators, and more.

Specialized workspaces and tools are available in all eight media areas in the department.

Degree Requirements

Minimum of 90 credits (54 must be graduate level) over three years. The minimum residence requirement is nine consecutive terms of full-time enrollment, not including summer session.

A minimum of 24 credits must be graded with a grade of B or better including:

• Participation in at least two graduate reviews
• Public exhibition of the MFA terminal projects and final review with the terminal project committee
• Terminal creative project report

Apply: MFA in Art

Connect with Us

MFA on Instagram

Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing

• Summarized MFA Handbook
• Diversity at OSU

MFA Faculty by Fields of Focus

• Meet Our MFAs
• Alumni News
• Application Guide
• Visiting Writers Series
• The Literary Northwest Series
• Stone Award
• MFA Student Reading Series
• 45th Parallel
• Letterpress Studio
• Internships
• Graduate Course Descriptions

You are here

Contact info.

Email: [email protected]

College of Liberal Arts Student Services 214 Bexell Hall 541-737-0561

Deans Office 200 Bexell Hall 541-737-4582

Corvallis, OR 97331-8600

liberalartsosu liberalartsosu liberalartsosu liberalartsosu CLA LinkedIn

• Dean's Office
• Faculty & Staff Directory
• Faculty & Staff Resources
• Research Support
• Featured Stories
• Undergraduate Students
• Transfer Students
• Graduate Students
• Academic Advising
• Career Services
• Scholarships
• Financial Aid
• Honors Student Profiles
• Student Resources
• Degrees and Programs
• Centers and Initiatives
• School of Communication
• School of History, Philosophy and Religion
• School of Language, Culture and Society
• School of Psychological Science
• School of Public Policy
• School of Visual, Performing and Design Arts
• School of Writing, Literature and Film
• Give to CLA

• Communications from the Vice Provost
• Faculty Affairs Team
• Organizational Chart
• Academic Faculty Development Resources
• Academic Faculty Workshop Series
• New Academic Faculty Orientation
• Communities of Practice
• NCFDD Membership
• Professional Faculty Resources
• Public Voices Fellowship
• Academic Leadership Summit
• Academic Leadership Academy
• Academic Leadership Workshop Series
• Provost Fellows Program
• Authors and Editors
• Distinguished Professors
• Annual University Awards
• Honorary Doctoral Degrees
• Newly Promoted and Tenured Faculty
• Future Faculty Pathways Program
• Provost Dual Career Hiring Initiative
• Tenured Faculty Diversity Initiative
• Work Life at OSU
• Academic Appointment Guidelines
• Faculty Handbook
• Promotion and Tenure Guidelines
• UHR Academic Faculty Policies
• UHR Academic Faculty Resources
• Employee Labor & Relations
• University-Wide Policies

2024 | Faculty Promoted to Senior Instructor I/II

72 osu faculty are promoted to senior instructor i/ii.

As Oregon's land grant university, Oregon State University is committed to educating, both on and off-campus, the citizens of Oregon, the nation, and the international community, and in expanding and applying knowledge. Candidates for promotion are evaluated objectively for evidence of distinction in their performance of assigned duties and in their scholarship or creative activity. The excellence of our faculty is paramount and we are very proud of the faculty recently promoted to the rank of senior instructor I or II.

Renee Albertson  Senior Instructor II | Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences

Renee Albertson has been an instructor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences at OSU since 2015. Renee earned her Ph.D. at OSU where she studied phylogeography and social structure of rough-toothed dolphins. She completed a post-doctoral study on humpback whale migration and climate change. Renee continues to collaborate with scientists and policy makers in the Antarctic and Island Nations in the South Pacific and applies these experiences in her teaching. Her courses include marine field-based, experiential learning courses at Hatfield Marine Science Center, as well as hybrid and Ecampus courses in conservation genetics and Antarctic Science.

Christy Anderson Brekken  Senior Instructor II | Applied Economics

Christy Anderson Brekken, J.D., M.S., is a Senior Instructor II in Applied Economics. Since 2007, she has taught Agricultural Law, Environmental Law, Food Systems, and Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics for both on-campus and Ecampus students. In 2020, she won the Excellence in Online Teaching & Student Engagement Award, and has been selected as the AEC Student’s Choice Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher. In addition to teaching, she mentors undergraduate research projects and serves on graduate committees. She has published scholarly research and Extension publications on public policy and governance in the context of human-environment systems such as food systems and land tenure.

Elisa Di Meglio  Senior Instructor I | Botany and Plant Pathology

Elisa DiMeglio joined the Botany and Plant Pathology department as an undergraduate in 2009 and worked in several labs as well as for the USDA Forest Service conducting botanical field surveys. In 2017 she began her graduate program which focused on using lichens and mosses as biomonitors and vegetation data for community analysis of a Zinc mine in Alaska. In 2019 she joined the BPP instruction team and have since developed four courses for our Ecampus program (BOT323, BOT341, BOT321, and BOT465). Throughout this time, she has been able to bring her own experiences to the table, as well as continue to learn both from her students and from her experiences as an instructor.

Jillian Gregg  Senior Instructor II | Crop and Soil Science

Jillian Gregg is the founding CEO of Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates, a research group that determines climate change impacts on ecosystem carbon storage. She is a co-author and spokesperson for the World Scientist Warning of a Climate Emergency journal articles, and has received $5+M in climate change research. Dr. Gregg joined the OSU College of Agriculture in 2015 to develop the course on Introduction to Climate Change which currently attracts >1200 students per year. She has also taught courses on Sustainability, Ecology, Stable Isotope Ecology, Plant Physiological Ecology, and Introductory Biology at OSU, Cornell University and the University of Utah.

Janell Johnson  Senior Instructor II | Animal and Rangeland Sciences

Janell Johnson was born and raised in Corvallis on a 750-acre grass seed farm. She was heavily involved in the Benton County 4-H program for 9 years showing sheep and pigs, competing in livestock judging, and participating in leadership activities. She continues to volunteer and support 4-H and FFA programs throughout the state. Janell’s passion for livestock judging continued during her undergraduate career where she competed on the livestock judging teams at LBCC and Chico State. She’s been at OSU since 2012 and resides in Corvallis with her husband and two daughters. They enjoy camping, spending time at Triangle Lake, and visiting the Oregon Coast.

Kelsey (KJ) Joseph  Senior Instructor I | Agricultural Education and Agricultural Sciences

Kelsey (KJ) Joseph received her B.S. in Community and Leadership Development at the University of Kentucky (UK) in 2015. Following graduation, she worked as an AgriCorps Fellow in Ghana in 2015-16 and as the AgriCorps Director of Recruitment from 2016-2018. In 2020, KJ graduated with her Master’s in Agricultural Education, with an emphasis in Extension Education, from OSU. KJ has been working as an Instructor in the Department of Agricultural Education and Agricultural Sciences for 3 and a half years. Personally, KJ actively volunteers at her local church, she is a member of the Benton County 4-H Board of Directors, and she is eagerly waiting for the arrival of her first child, expected to be born in December.

Matthew Kennedy  Senior Instructor II | Animal and Rangeland Sciences

Matt was born and raised in Casper, Wyoming where he grew up on a cattle and alfalfa operation while being active in 4H and FFA. He teaches a wide range of classes that includes Introduction to Animal Science to Applied Animal Nutrition to Swine Production Systems. He advises 60 plus undergraduate students annually. Additionally, he serves as the advisor for Steer-A-Year Program that has 25 students involved in it throughout the year. He is the proud husband of Brittany and father to Easton and Presleigh Kennedy. They enjoy watching their kids in all their activities and sports.

Shalynn Pack  Senior Instructor I | Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences

Shalynn Pack is the Internship Coordinator and an Instructor for the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences (FWCS). She assists all FWCS undergraduates in professional development, instructs Career Skills in Fisheries and Wildlife and Internship courses, is the Faculty Advisor for the Fisheries and Wildlife Club, and was awarded the CAS 2023 Distinguished New Faculty of the Year award. She coordinates the FWCS Vanguarding an Inclusive Ecological Workforce (VIEW) Fellowship, which won The Wildlife Society’s 2023 Diversity Award. She is a Certified Wildlife Biologist specializing in protected area policy and community-based conservation in Latin America.

Luke Painter  Senior Instructor II | Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences

Luke Painter received a PhD from the OSU College of Forestry, where he studied the interactions of aspen, elk, wolves, and bison in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Since 2013 he has been an Instructor in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation, teaching both online and in the classroom. Dr. Painter has continued to be active in research and publication, which he says helps to keep his classes up-to-date and interesting for students.

David Paoletti  Senior Instructor II | Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences

Following a successful but brief career as an Art Director in Chicago, David moved to Corvallis in 2003 to pursue a new path in the biological sciences. At OSU he was able to conduct research that combined his interests in behavioral ecology, herpetology, and the impacts of invasive species. In 2011 David was hired as an online instructor for the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences. As of today, he has taught 13 different courses for the department and is heavily involved in the continuing development of the curriculum. He’s proud to be part the best department on campus.

Ann Scheerer  Senior Instructor I | Applied Economics

Dr. Ann Scheerer is a Senior Instructor I of Sustainability courses at Oregon State University (2014-current) in Sustainability undergraduate and Environmental Science graduate (2022-current) programs. Ann’s previous appointments include Sustainability Academic Advisor (2014-2019), Adjunct Instructor at University of Oregon (2013-2014), and National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Research Fellow at University of Colorado (2009-2012). Ann has studied in France, India, and Sweden obtaining multiple interdisciplinary degrees: PhD, Design and Planning (University of Colorado); MSc, Strategic Sustainable Development (Blekinge Institute, Sweden); MPA (University of Washington); BS Mechanical Engineering (University of Michigan); and BA (Kalamazoo College). Ann leads a faculty-led study tour to Sustainable Scandinavia.

Kimberly Townsend  Senior Instructor II | Crop and Soil Science

Kim Townsend grew up in the Hudson Valley and Adirondack Mountains of New York. She developed an interest in soils at the Johns Hopkins University where she found herself studying feeding habits of detritivores and their impact on nitrogen cycling in soil. Kim came to OSU to study soil carbon stabilization in soils, completing an MS in Environmental Science and cultivating a love of teaching along the way. Kim bridges her passion for soil and community level sustainability initiatives by teaching the intro soils course and sustainability courses. When she isn’t working, Kim enjoys getting outside with her two sons.

Angelika Buchanan  Senior Instructor I | Management, Entrepreneurship, and Supply Chain

Originally from Linz, Austria, Angelika received her BS in Economics from Shepherd University and her MBA from New Hampshire College. Prior to joining OSU in Corvallis, she worked at AMCI inGreenwich CT and BHF bank in Germany in the international trade department, was a senior financial analyst in Washington, DC, and volunteered advising military service members on their personal financial planning. She started teaching in higher education in 2010 and joined Oregon State University COB in 2018. Angelika teaches multiple sections of BA 354, Managing Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, BA 352 Managing Individual and Team Performance and MGMT 450 Introduction to Mentoring and Coaching in various modalities and supports the recruitment of staff and faculty as a search advocate. She relocated to Central Oregon recently and enjoys exploring everything the area has to offer and teaching a few sections at OSU’s Cascades campus along with ecampus courses.

Lauren Caruso  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

Lauren is a Senior Instructor I in the College of Business. She has taught and developed courses within the College’s award-winning Blueprint series, focused on graduating students with the knowledge, skills, and network needed to excel in the workplace and in life post-graduation. Lauren also serves as an Assistant Director for Student Engagement and oversees the College’s recruitment and support of transfer students. Outside of her life at OSU, Lauren enjoys spending time with her family outdoors, exploring all that Oregon and the Pacific Northwest have to offer!

Marcella Flores  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

Marcella Flores is a Senior Instructor I and student affairs professional in higher education. She holds a B.A in American Sign Language/English Interpreting and a M.Ed. in College Student Services Administration. Marcella has taught and supported college students formally and informally for 10+ years. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for NODA (The Association for Orientation, Transition and Retention in Higher Education). She began at OSU in the College of Business in 2016 as a Program Manager & Instructor for Student Engagement. Since then, she was promoted to Assistant Director & Instructor for Student Engagement. Marcella’s role currently encompasses oversight of the entire first year courses within the Blueprint Series (BA160, BA161, BA162, and BA163). She supports the curriculum development and oversight of all course sections and instructors to ensure consistency in our learning outcomes.  Additionally, the First Year Experience team creates events, programs, and additional avenues of support to increase the retention of first year students. Lastly, Marcella’s role includes recruitment of first-time freshmen to OSU and the College of Business. This has allowed her to see students from the time they inquire about applying for admission to OSU throughout their first year on-campus (and then beyond). As an Instructor and Student Affairs professional, Marcella prides herself in being an empathetic leader who is skilled in creating structure out of chaos and who is fueled by intrinsic motivation to support students of all backgrounds to achieve a college education.

Stephen Hodges  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

Stephen Hodges is a seasoned Senior Instructor I at Oregon State University's College of Business (COB) and the owner of BosonHub, a digital marketing agency. Since 2016, he has taught nearly 1000 students, leveraging his practical business acumen to provide a unique learning experience. Stephen is an integral part of the First Year Experience (FYE) program at COB, becoming a mentor and guide for students throughout their academic journey. His dedication is reflected in consistently high eSET scores and student success in running profitable microbusinesses as part of their curriculum. He is a committed educator who fosters an environment of growth through learning from failures, which led to his recognition with the Student Learning and Success Teamwork Award (2020) and the Byron L. Newton Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award (2019). Beyond academia, Stephen's entrepreneurial ventures include his role as the CEO of BosonHub Digital Development and the founder of a non-profit, Nerds Abroad. He also serves on the board of the Oregon Fire Service Museum and actively contributes to his local church community.

Jonathan Leong  Senior Instructor I | Accounting, Finance, and Information Systems

Jonathan Leong joined OSU's College of Business's Finance Department in 2015 as an instructor. This position would evolve into becoming a program development coordinator for the finance program and engaging in research on the economic viability of the hemp industry. He is also a founding partner and Chief Investment Officer at Aumakua Capital Management L.L.C., where he brings more than eighteen years of buyside experience in Special Situations, Event-Driven investments and Volatility trading, working in Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Hong Kong. Prior to Aumakua, he co-founded Pivotal Investments Limited, where he served as vice president and managed several long/short and event portfolios. Previously, he worked as an analyst and trader at Evolution Capital Management in its special situations and volatility desks. During his eighteen years in the hedge fund industry, he established an extensive network within the corporate and investment communities, held several board and board observation seats on private companies, and helped build and grow several successful hedge fund start ups along with several other asset management firms. He is a Charter Financial Analyst and has earned his Master of Finance at Claremont McKenna College, he received his B.S. from Harvey Mudd College, where he double majored in molecular biology and economics (Claremont McKenna College). He holds teaching positions at Claremont Graduate University and Santa Monica College as well as holds board seats at the Portland Alternative Investment Association and Cascadia Wildlands, two regionally based non-profit organizations.

Dale McCauley  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

Dale McCauley serves as the Assistant Director of InnovationX Academy at Oregon State University College of Business. Over the past 12 years, he has developed dozens of student-led startups in multiple industries, providing mentorship and support through a number of programs. He joined the college professionally in 2011, launching the Austin Lab Series for students interested in starting a business while in school. In 2014, he expanded support for student entrepreneurs by building the first makerspace on the OSU campus, later expanding the facility to support over 3,000 students in their first-year. In 2016, he worked on the development of Innovation Nation, the largest first-year experience program at OSU. Since then, he has developed InnovationX courses such as Launch Academy which supports graduate and undergraduate student entrepreneurs from all majors. He also teaches InnovationX Launch Pad, a course for students from across the university who identify as innovators, designers, & entrepreneurs.

Amy Neuman  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

Amy has worked for the College of Business as an Instructor and Program Manager for Student Engagement since 2016, working primarily with the First Year BA160 series but also within the Blueprint and Professional Development Courses. Amy also oversees the College of Business Dean's Academy programming and the Arch, an academic success resource for first year business students. Amy Neuman is an OSU alumnus; she attended graduate school at OSU for a Master's of Public Health. She attended the University of Wyoming for undergrad but has been living in Oregon since 2011. She has experience working for and with government agencies, non-profits, state agencies, private organizations, and universities.

Andrew Olstad  Senior Instructor II | Marketing, Analytics, and Design

Andy Olstad is a Senior Instructor and Director of Teaching and Learning Excellence for the Oregon State University College of Business. He uses his background in statistics and the scholarship of teaching and learning to support learners and improve teaching practice. His current interests focus around maintaining high quality equitable learning environments in the face of remote learning and advances in AI.

Stephen Summers  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

As one of the Program Directors for Student Engagement here in the OSU College of Business, I have the opportunity to help ensure that every student in the COB graduates with the experience and skills needed to succeed both professionally and personally. As an Instructor, I get to support the 4th-year students and spend each year with them focusing on helping them make a strong transition to a full-time career, offering advice on short-term and post-graduation financial goals, and giving perspective on how to build the legacy of their lives.

Omar Tinidad  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

Omar is a supportive member of the Student Engagement team within the College of Business. He and his team are devoted to ensuring that all students flourish in the College of Business. Omar is also the faculty advisor for the People of Color in Business Club and is the program manager dedicated to international student support for the college. Besides having the privilege of working with an outstanding team, he is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Adult in Higher Education program at Oregon State University. Omar is dedicated to serving students, and he brings the knowledge gained from his graduate program into his work. Intertwined with work and school, he is also passionate about his faith, family, friends, food, and fun. You will often see him at the coast crabbing, on the rivers fishing, and on his bike shredding - always enjoying it with the people he loves and serves.

Sanjai Tripathi  Senior Instructor I | Management, Entrepreneurship, and Supply Chain

Sanjai Tripathi is an Instructor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship with the Oregon State University College of Business. Prior to joining OSU, Sanjai worked in a series of technology startups focused on software services and health applications, with roles including business development, product management, and executive leadership. Sanjai now develops and teaches courses in strategy and entrepreneurship. He emphasizes inclusive principles such as transparency, accessibility, engagement, and personal support. Sanjai developed the introductory course for the award-winning Launch Academy student-startup incubator program at OSU COB’s InnovationX Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Launch Academy is in its fifth year and continues to serve a diverse student population with a wide range of backgrounds and business concepts. Sanjai holds MBA and MS-Microbiology degrees from OSU.

Adam Vester  Senior Instructor I | Marketing, Analytics, and Design

I graduated from the University of Utah with a PhD in Economics in 2013. The vast majority of classes I have taught since then have been some form of statistics for business and/or economics, along with a few occasional economics courses. I have 4 kids, two of which are currently attending school here at OSU. I spend my free time volunteering at the regional theater near my house. I have acted in 9 plays and assisted in set construction for countless more. My two favorite rolls have bee Colonel Mustard in Clue, and Robin in Something Rotten. While not at the university or the theater I enjoy hiking with my puppy, or hanging out with my kids.

Jennifer Villalobos  Senior Instructor I | Student Engagement

Jennifer Villalobos serves as the Assistant Director of Career Success in the Oregon State University College of Business. In this role, she oversees the College of Business Career Success Center helping students secure internships and jobs. To support these efforts, she has worked collaboratively to offer workshops, career fairs, and company visits to provide students the opportunity to explore options and build their networks. She also serves as the course coordinator of Professional Development courses and teaches within the Blueprint series to help students build important life skills. In addition to these efforts, she also oversees College of Business club efforts providing support for students to build sustainable programs and take advantage of resources. She has also helped develop both peer and professional mentorship programs for both first year and transfer students within the College. As an alum of Oregon State and the College of Business, she loves being able to support students as they work through their future goals.

Ben Stanley  Senior Instructor I | Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences

Ben Stanley has been teaching at OSU since 2018 serving as instructor of record for nine unique course offerings, both online and in-person. Ben’s degrees from Oberlin College (B.A., 2005) and University of Minnesota (Ph.D., 2012) have focused on igneous processes on Earth and Mars. As a Senior Instructor I, Ben focuses on teaching classes like Mineralogy, Earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest, and Minerals, Energy, Water, and the Environment.

Nauman Chaudhry  Senior Instructor I | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Nauman Chaudhry joined Oregon State University as an instructor in 2019. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the area of database systems in 1998. He has over a decade of industrial experience including stints at Oracle Corporation and ADP. His academic experience includes working as an assistant professor of computer science at the University of New Orleans. He is the co-inventor of one US patent and a co-editor of the book Stream Data Management (Springer, 2005). His primary professional interests are in data management, web applications, and cloud computing.

Paula De Szoeke  Senior Instructor I | Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering

Ms. De Szoeke received her M.S in Industrial Engineering from Arizona State University. Before joining OSU, she worked as an Operations Research Engineer, Intel Corporation, 2008 – 2016. Also, an Industrial Engineer, Intel Corporation, 2004 – 2008.

Maher Elshakankiri  Senior Instructor I | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Maher Elshakankiri, a Senior InstructorI in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department at Oregon State University, holds a B.Sc., M.S., and Ph.D. in Computer Engineering. He joined OSU in 2019 and teaches courses including CS325, CS372, CS427, and CS529. His research interests encompass the Internet of Things, wireless sensor networks, mobile ad hoc networks, and cybersecurity. Elshakankiri has published more than 30 journal and conference papers and authored the book “Introduction to Wireless Sensor Networks” in 2015. He also serves as a reviewer for several academic journals and a technical program committee member for various conferences.

Leila "Lily" Ranjbar  Senior Instructor II | Nuclear Science and Engineering

Dr. Lily Ranjbar is the Director of Online Programs at the School of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Orgon State University. She is responsible for overseeing the largest online Radiation Health Physics program in the country. Additionally, she is a Senior Instructor II, teaching various courses for on-campus and E-campus students in the Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics programs. Dr. Ranjbar's research interests include risk assessment for cybersecurity in nuclear infrastructures, designing and developing radiation detection systems for clandestine nuclear weapon test monitoring, and advancing online education in STEM fields. She is a member of several committees, including the Health Physics Society Program Directors, the OSU Faculty Senate Graduate Admissions Committee, the Online Engineering Management Curriculum Committee, the NSE Graduate Committee, the OSU Graduate Students Award Review Team, and the COE Engineering+ Standing Committee. She is also the Faculty Advisor for the Iranian Students Association @ OSU and a trained mentor. Dr. Ranjbar has received several awards, including the 2023 College of Engineering Faculty Excellence in Online Teaching Award and the Diversity Grant from the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM).

Danielle Safonte  Senior Instructor I | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Danielle M. Safonte, M.I.S., Ed.D., is a Senior Instructor I and course designer for the College of Engineering with a background in computer engineering and information technology. Danielle has been an instructor in higher education for over ten years, with online education expertise. Danielle has been an instructor with the School of EECS since 2019 and currently teaches CS391 - Society and Ethics in Computer Science and CS340 - Introduction to Databases. Danielle also dedicates her time to working on course development, course improvement, and program quality standards for the school, holding a Quality Matters course certification and a certified peer reviewer.

Ingrid Scheel  Senior Instructor I | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Ingrid Scheel emphasizes diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in her Electrical Engineering and Computer Science courses. She volunteers for organizations including but not limited to: ChickTech, Tech Trek, Willamette Innovator's Network, InnovationX, Redefining Women in Tech, and the Society of Women Engineers. She is the President of Optica, Columbia Section, and contributes to the International Society for Optics and Photonics as a conference chair, editor, and author. She is on the program committee for the Equity, Culture, and Social Justice Division of ASEE and co-chairs the Effective and Inclusive Teaching Practices in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Doshna Umma Reddy Senior Instructor I | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Doshna earned her Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Oregon State University in 2020. Subsequently, she joined EECS as an instructor. She has six years of experience in the software industry. Doshna has developed and instructed a variety of undergraduate Computer Science courses for eCampus. Her passion lies in assisting students in their learning journey and ensuring their success in her courses. During her personal time, she finds joy in volunteering for non-profit organizations that promote health and well-being.

Luyao Zhang  Senior Instructor I | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Luyao Zhang is a Senior Instructor I in the School of EECS. She holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Oregon State University. She also earned a B.S. in Polymer Science from Zhejiang University, China, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Material Science from UCLA and USC, respectively. Since 2016, she's been teaching Ecampus computer science courses, enjoying student interactions and guiding them towards careers in both industry and academia. In her free time, Luyao loves reading, cooking, and spending quality time with her family.

James Kiser  Senior Instructor II | Forest Engineering, Resources and Management

Dr. Jim Kiser, with a Ph.D. in Forest Science (2009) from Oregon State University, is a distinguished researcher with a focus on environmental effects on endophyte communities in Douglas Fir Progeny Sites and advances in molecular process technologies. His diverse areas of interest span quantum dynamics of endophytic fungi, molecular genetics of forest fungi, physiological responses of forest trees to fungi, surveying technology in forest environments, technological efficiencies for forest operations, and statistical processes in forest biometrics. With an M.S. in Forest Management and a B.S. in Forest Management from Oregon State University and Humboldt State University, respectively, Dr. Kiser brings a wealth of expertise to his research programs.

Teresa Ashford  Senior Instructor I | Human Development and Family Sciences

Teresa Ashford ’s teaching is guided by social responsibility, compassion, real-world experiences, and love for the subject matter. Students engage in inquiry-based learning with interdisciplinary content to recognize the critical importance of gender and culture, diversity, and contemporary and global perspectives. Empathy, an equity lens, Teresa’s lived experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and her abiding love of the study of human development and early learning shaped Teresa’s teaching pedagogy. She is interested in progressive, anti-bias, play-based early childhood education settings, in addition to examining 'play' from a global perspective.

Jennifer Creech  Senior Instructor I | Language, Culture, and Society

Jennifer Creech is a Senior Instructor I of German at Oregon State University. Her research and teaching interests include late 20th-century German literature, film and culture; Marxist and feminist theories; and porn studies. She is the author of Mothers, Comrades & Outcasts in East German Women’s Films (Indiana University Press, 2016), the co-editor of How to Make the Body: Difference, Identity, and Embodiment. Visual Cultures and German Contexts (Bloomsbury, 2022), and the co-editor of Spectacle: German Visual Culture, vol. 2 (Peter Lang, 2015). She has published essays on East German cinema, post-unification cinema, and feminist pornography in Seminar, Women in German Yearbook and various edited volumes.

Sarah Cunningham  Senior Instructor II | Language, Culture, and Society

Sarah Cunningham is an applied anthropologist specializing in food studies, youth, and rural communities. Sarah was a founding mother of the OSU campus food panty and a co-founder of the local nonprofit, Fresh & Local, First! She is also the coordinator of OSU’s Food in Culture and Social Justice Program and leads students in various service and experiential learning projects, such as the annual Empty Bowls Benefit and Celebration of Global Culinary Heritage

Elizabeth Delf  Senior Instructor II | Writing, Literature, and Film

Liz Delf teaches writing and literature across the university. In recent years, some favorite parts of the job have included developing courses for Ecampus, talking with English majors about life after college, coaching Fulbright candidates, and teaching first-year Honors College students. She collaborated with colleagues to develop the award-winning OER textbook A Dam Good Argument (2022) as well as the popular PACE Technical Writing Certificate. In 2023, she was honored by her colleagues with the SWLF Lisa Ede Instructor of the Year Award. She is interested in instructional design, AI-assisted learning, and career preparation to improve equity.

Daniele Di Lodovico  Senior Instructor I | Visual, Performing and Design Arts

Daniele Di Lodovico studied the University of Washington in Seattle getting a Master in Italian Studies and a Ph.D in Art History. His dissertation: “Revising Devotion: the role of wooden sculptures in affecting painting and devotion in the Late Medieval period in Italy (XII-XV century),” offers a reconsideration of medieval wooden sculptures and their role in affecting devotion. At Oregon State University he teaches introductory courses in art and architecture from prehistory through the twentieth century, and intermediate and special topics courses in Greek, Roman, Medieval and Renaissance art. Since summer 2023 he organizes a study abroad program in Italy.

Ricardo Febre Senior Instructor I | Visual, Performing and Design Arts

Rick Febre is a Senior Instructor I in the BFA-Graphic Design program within the SVPDA; and for the last two years, has served as the Program Coordinator. He’s taught previously at the California Polytechnic State University, Humboldt, the University of New Haven, and SUNY New Paltz. Mr. Febre is a practicing graphic designer with experience in advertising photography, advertising, and publication design. He has twice been awarded a Graphic Design USA award for his publication and print-design work, as well as industry-specific awards in advertising. He’s exhibited both photography and artist-books nationally. Mr. Febre is from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Kimary Fick  Senior Instructor I | Visual, Performing and Design Arts

Kimary Fick, Ph.D., Senior Instructor I of Music History at Oregon State University, is a musicologist and active performer of eighteenth-century music on historical flutes and recorders. Positioned at the intersection of music and aesthetics during the second half of the eighteenth century, her research examines questions of identity, taste, gender, amateur musicianship, and historical performance practices during the North German Enlightenment. Kimary’s work has been published in Women and Music, Early Music, Early Modern Women, and the Journal of Music History Pedagogy. As a baroque flutist, Kimary has performed with Oregon Bach Collegium, Dallas Bach Society, Denton Bach Society, and Texas Camerata.

Christine Gallagher Senior Instructor I | Visual, Performing and Design Arts

Christine Gallagher earned her BFA in Painting/Drawing from University of Oregon and her MFA in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design. She has served as an instructor of graphic design for nineteen years and spent twelve of those years teaching full-time at OSU. She served as program coordinator for five years, co-chaired an AIGA Design Educators Conference, and co-lead the building of the Ecampus Graphic Design Minor. She has taught almost every course in the graphic design curriculum, from freshman to senior level. Her interest lies in teaching students processes that weave together critical thinking and making.

Amanda Granrud  Senior Instructor I | Communication

Amanda Granrud joined OSU in 2011 and has primarily taught public speaking and interpersonal communication with undergraduate and graduate level INTO students. She is passionate about communication education and helping students acclimate to an American classroom while honing their language and study skills. Prior to OSU, she directed writing and speaking tutorial centers at North Carolina State University and University of Nebraska-Kearney. She earned her MA in Communication Studies from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a BA in Political Science from Carroll College in Helena, Montana. She enjoys hunting for mushrooms and exploring the Oregon coast on an Aprilla.

Katherine Hubler  Senior Instructor II | History, Philosophy, and Religion

Katherine Hubler’s teaching and scholarly work focus on the history of human rights and genocide. She is currently editing a collection of speeches given by witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust at OSU’s Holocaust Memorial Week since 1989. The volume—and its accompanying educational website—support the new Holocaust and genocide education mandate within Oregon K-12 schools. Within her own classes, Hubler specializes in fostering inclusive learning spaces and supporting students across all learning modalities. She promotes quality teaching and pedagogical innovation at Oregon State through her role as SHPR Ecampus coordinator, as well as her past service in the CLA Remote Teaching Peer Support team and as a Special Projects Fellow for the Center for Teaching Learning.

Sun Young Kim  Senior Instructor I | Language, Culture, and Society

Sun Young Kim has developed and taught online First and Second-Year Korean courses since 2014, and she also leads the Introductory and Intermediate Korean micro-credential certificate programs. She has received three Quality Matters certifications and earned an award for Excellence in Online Teaching. Prior to joining OSU, Sun Young taught Korean courses at the University of Oregon and Lane Community College for three years. She serves as a voluntary school director for the Eugene Korean School. Sun Young holds two M.A. degrees in International Studies and Linguistics with a specialization in Second Language Teaching from the University of Oregon.

Marta Danuta Kunecka Senior Instructor II | History, Philosophy, and Religion

Marta Danuta Kunecka received her Ph.D. at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and has been a faculty member at OSU since 2007. Her dissertation was an intersectional study of philosophy of law and ethics in regard to the notion of civil disobedience in American political thought. She is a recipient of Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund from Tokyo, Japan, Argentine tango dancer, thistle boat racer and a successful educator who continues to inspire our undergraduate students to engage in a critical, philosophical reflection about the world around us.

John Larison  Senior Instructor II | Writing, Literature, and Film

John Larison began teaching writing and literature at OSU in 2007. He has published more than 50 articles and essays on the environment in publications with international distributions and is the author of five books. His 2018 novel, a feminist Western called Whiskey When We're Dry, was a Los Angeles Times Bestseller, an Indie Next Pick, and a frequent best book of 2018. His forthcoming novel called The Ancients is a deep-time adventure story that seeks to reframe the climate crisis; it will be published by Viking/Penguin in October 2024. Before he began teaching at OSU, he worked as a fly fishing guide while earning a BA, a Masters of Education, and an MFA in Fiction.

Erik Leung Senior Instructor I | Visual, Performing and Design Arts

Erik Leung is the Director of Bands at Oregon State University. He conducts the Wind Ensemble, teaches conducting, and oversees all aspects of the band program at OSU. Leung completed his DMA in Wind Conducting from Northwestern University and has earned degrees from the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary. Groups under his direction have been recognized throughout Canada and the US. His book The Horizon Leans Forward… Stories of Courage, Strength, and Triumph of Underrepresented Communities in the Wind Band Field was received with wide acclaim, and he is currently writing a follow up.

Sarah McGreevy Senior Instructor I | Writing, Literature, and Film

Sarah McGreevy is an instructor in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film. She teaches composition and graduate academic writing for international students. She holds a Master of Arts in Composition and TESOL, as well as a Single Subject Teaching Credential in English. Sarah is passionate about supporting language diversity and helping multilingual students navigate American Academic English and Western Academic Conventions. She lives in Corvallis with her family and enjoys hiking in our beautiful forests as well as singing in Hazelwood Choir and the Corvallis Repertory Singers.

Michael Nelson  Senior Instructor II | Public Policy

Michael Nelson grew up in Leavenworth, Kansas, and graduated with a BA in Economics from Emporia State University. While taking a few years to explore the American West, including five summers of employment in Yellowstone National Park, he became passionate about environmental issues. He entered graduate school with the desire to combine his concern for preserved natural environments with the discipline of economics. While earning his PhD in Economics from Washington State University, Michael discovered his love of teaching, and was awarded the College of Business and Economics Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award. He joined the Economics Department at Texas A&M University as a Lecturer in 2000, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2009. He was a recipient of both the Corps of Cadets’ Recognition of True Interest and Enthusiasm While Teaching, Supporting, and Counseling Students, and the Outstanding Panhellenic Professor Award. In 2011, Michael joined the Economics program in the School of Public Policy at Oregon State University, and was promoted to Senior Instructor I in 2016. Over the past 25 years, Michael has taught approximately 225 courses to over 25,000 students. He enjoys finding ways to use the energy of the large class setting to provide transformational educational experiences for his students. In his free time, Michael enjoys spending time with his family and exploring the Pacific Northwest.

Camille Soltau Nelson  Senior Instructor II | Public Policy

Camille Soltau Nelson is an instructor in Economics in the School of Public Policy. She teaches courses in microeconomics, economic inequality, and economic research and writing. Camille grew up in Oregon and earned her BS from Oregon State University before doing her PhD at Washington State University, teaching at Texas A&M University, and finally returning home to work at OSU.

Benjamin Stenberg  Senior Instructor II | History, Philosophy, and Religion

Dr. Benjamin Stenberg received his doctorate from the University of Washington, with a focus on philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and the work of Wilfrid Sellars. His primary research interest is trying to determine the nature of the mind and the relationship between thought and language. He has taught philosophy at OSU for the past 13 years. His regular courses include ethics, reasoning, logic, and cognitive science, with classes both at the Corvallis campus and for Ecampus. He is also the current faculty advisor for the undergraduate Philosophy Club.

Michael Trevathan Senior Instructor I | Public Policy

Michael W. Trevathan is an instructor at Oregon State University. His research includes work in environmental politics, international political economy, and global governance. His current research interests are concerned with how states, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) address threats to water insecurity. Previous research has examined how rising powers are accommodated (or not) in their attempts to increase their influence in the Bretton Woods Institutions. In the wake of America's relative economic decline, I seek to explain why rising powers adapt to, or create their own, global economic governance institutions, and how those decisions impact the global political economy and its governance. My research is interdisciplinary by nature and has drawn on the fields of political science, economics, hydrology, political ecology, and political geography. His work has been published in the journals Politics and Governance, Rising Powers Quarterly, and in the manuscript Global Economic Governance and the Development Practices of the Multilateral Development Banks.

John Whitten  Senior Instructor I | Visual, Performing and Design Arts

John Whitten is a multidisciplinary artist who blends traditional drawing and digital tools to explore the interplay between technology, materiality, and the human experience. He utilizes digital photographic techniques and painstaking drawing methods to experiment with the fragmentation of pixelated visual spaces. These artworks seek to cultivate moments of meditative reflection, prompting contemplation on themes such as materiality, time, labor, and the creative process. Whitten’s work has been exhibited nationally, and he has received numerous awards, grants, and residencies. Whitten co-founded the artist-member galleries Well Well Projects and Carnation Contemporary and the artist-collective project Thunderstruck.

Pablo Baldivieso  Senior Instructor II | OSU-Cascades Campus 

Pablo received his B.S. in mathematics, M.S. in statistics, and his Ph.D. in mathematical sciences from Portland State University. His dissertation studied necessary conditions for stability of vehicular formations with multi-mass linear arrays. While in graduate school, Pablo was nominated to attend the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley, California where he studied electronic structure theories. Pablo has taught statistics at Portland State University, the University of Portland, Portland Community College, and is currently at Oregon State University-Cascades.

Deborah Coehlo  Senior Instructor I | OSU-Cascades Campus 

Deborah holds undergraduate and master's degrees in nursing and a PhD in Human Development and Family Sciences. She spent 10 years working at the Child Development Center at the University of Washington in the Genetics Clinic and Multidisciplinary Clinic. Her research interests include social networking, transition to out of home care for families, and child development. She also maintains clinical practice as a developmental and behavioral specialist at Juniper Pediatrics (dba) in Bend, Oregon, including the diagnosis and care of children with attention deficit disorder, autism spectrum disorder, and other childhood mental health diagnoses.

Kiel Fletcher  Senior Instructor II | OSU-Cascades Campus 

Kiel is an Oregon-based, new media and video artist. His work has been shown at the Tate Britain, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Arts, and recently in a solo exhibition at the Czong Institute of Contemporary Art. He is a founding member of the interdisciplinary artist collective, Danger Punch.  Fletcher received an MFA in Visual Studies from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and a BFA in Sculpture and Digital Media from the University of Colorado where he was awarded a Technology, Arts and Media certificate.

Christophe Lanaud  Senior Instructor I | OSU-Cascades Campus 

Christophe has a solid industrial research background in composite materials, design, and manufacturing processes. He holds a mechanical engineering degree and a PhD in applied mechanics from the French Petroleum Institute. Christophe worked for 15 years in an industrial research organization in the US and Germany before switching to a global business innovation leadership role. He gained considerable experience in composite design and automation of manufacturing processes while working at GE’s international research, focusing on wind energy, jet engines, and oil and gas applications. Before joining OSU Cascades, he provided consulting services in composite manufacturing and digital twin processes. a Ph.D. in 

Brian Tanis  Senior Instructor I | OSU-Cascades Campus 

Brian primarily teaches courses related to the anatomy, physiology, and evolu tion of vertebrates. He completed his PhD in Zoology from Oregon State University, Corvallis. Prior to that, he received an MS in Biology from Fort Hays State University. Brian’s research focuses on inter- and intraspecific interac ti ons which shape large-scale ecological and evolutionary patterns in mammals across space and ti me.

Rebecca Webb  Senior Instructor II | OSU-Cascades Campus 

Rebecca is a Senior Instructor II for the energy systems engineering and engineering science programs. Prior to joining OSU-Cascades, she was an associate professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs working in the area of solar energy collection and transport. Rebecca also worked as an R&D engineer at Agilent Technologies designing test and measurement equipment and as a senior engineer responsible for performing thermal analysis of laser cooling techniques at Directed Energy Solu ti ons.

Stacey Olstad  Senior Instructor I | Pharmacy Practice

Dr. Stacey Olstad spent 10 years at Samaritan Health Services after graduating from Oregon State University College of Pharmacy, where she led initiatives to improve patient care transitions, developing medication reconciliation and a meds-to-beds program that integrated experiential learning opportunities for OSU pharmacy students. Since joining OSU College of Pharmacy faculty in 2019, Dr. Olstad has overseen the co-curricular program and is an advisor for several student organizations. Her classroom and co-curricular instruction emphasize professionalism, leadership, and career development. Dr. Olstad’s research focuses on the integration of experiential learning within pharmacy education, particularly aiming to enhance students’ understanding and application of cultural sensitivity and humility.

Staci Bronson  Senior Instructor I | Integrative Biology

Staci Bronson is a Senior Instructor I in the Department of Integrative Biology. Staci completed her bachelors, Masters, and PhD at Oregon State, all in Exercise and Sport Science. She enjoys researching the mechanisms behind adaptation to endurance exercise as well as the scholarship of teaching and learning. Staci developed and currently teaches the Ecampus series Principles of Human Anatomy and Physiology (BI25X). In addition, she teaches a writing intensive course (BI319) and the summer human dissection course (BI451). Staci received the 2022 Ecampus Innovation Award, was a 2022-23 CoSCIES Fellow, and is a 2024-25 Ecampus Research Fellow.  

Denis Drolet  Senior Instructor I | Chemistry

Bio unavailable.

Kelsi Espinoza  Senior Instructor I | Statistics

Kelsi Espinoza grew up in the California Bay Area. As a first-generation student, they transferred from Napa Valley (Community) College to Sonoma State University, where they earned their BS in Statistics. Kelsi then completed their masters in Statistics at Montana State University before moving to Corvallis to work on their PhD in OSU Education’s Language, Equity, and Education Policy (LEEP) program. Kelsi's first two years teaching at OSU was with the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP). Teaching with EOP gave Kelsi the opportunity to work with traditionally underserved students and develop further passion for making postsecondary education accessible to these students. Kelsi began teaching for the OSU Statistics Department in Fall 2018 and avidly emphasizes statistical literacy and accessibility. Many students over the years have asked why learning statistics is important if they never intend to “do” statistics, and Kelsi is fond of their (cheesy) quote, “Even if you never plan to use statistics, statistics will use you.” Being able to critically consider how data are being collected and used, and its implications, is vital in this data-fueled world.   

Kenton Hokanson  Senior Instructor I | Microbiology

Kenton Hokanson is a Senior Instructor I in Microbiology and an Assistant Professor (Senior Research) in Biochemistry & Biophysics. He received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience in 2017 from UCSF. He is passionate about teaching, and has worked to make laboratory science courses inclusive, engaging, and applicable to everyday life. His research program focuses on the function of electrically active cells like neurons, and how this function is modulated throughout development and by disease. He co-founded the Microbiology Dept. Core Values committee, and directs OSU's Electrophysiology Facility. 

Nathan Kirk  Senior Instructor II | Integrative Biology

Nathan Kirk (he, him, his) is a molecular ecologist, who specializes in marine symbioses including those involving corals and anemones. He also studies how group work and CURES can improve student performance and sense of belonging in biology classes. He teaches several upper division marine biology courses and the honors section of introductory biology at Oregon State University. He is an avid user of Gradescope to facilitate student instructor communication.

Randall Milstein Senior Instructor II | Physics

Randall L. Milstein has been a faculty member at OSU for thirty-four-years. He teaches astronomy and energy courses in the OSU Physics Department, and numerous courses in the Honors College. From 2016-2022 he was the Astronomer-in-Residence to the Oregon NASA Space Grant ConsorKum (OSGC) and currently represents OSU as its Affiliate RepresentaKve to the OSGC. His research interests include astrogeology, impact-cratering dynamics, and archaeo- astronomy. Milstein is a frequent outreach speaker and enjoys engaging with the public on topics of science, astronomy, and the roll of science ficKon in popular culture. He is also a frequent contributor to panel discussions and video and podcasts for the OSU based Annares Project for AlternaKve Futures.

Kate Shay Senior Instructor I | Biochemistry and Biophysics

Kate Shay describes herself as being on a “Tour of the West,” having lived in Idaho, California, Washington, and Oregon. Her Ph.D. work focused on oncogenic contributions to leukemias and lymphomas. She completed a post-doc at the Linus Pauling Institute and launched the Biological and Translational Models Core Laboratory. As an Instructor in the department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at OSU, Kate uses experiential learning and gamification to explore how students layer new knowledge onto their existing perspectives. She is currently conducting a project to compare the benefits of contextual and designed student interactions in upper-division biochemistry courses.  

Rebecka Tumblin  Senior Instructor I | Physics

Dr. Rebecka Tumblin is a physics and astronomy instructor. Dr. Tumblin's Ph.D. research utilized computational fluid dynamics and mathematical modeling to explore the conditions under which binary star systems and circum-binary planets form. When Dr. Tumblin completed their doctoral dissertation, they decided that there was need for systemic changes in the way introductory physics is taught and so decided to pursue teaching as a career. They continually endeavor to create an inclusive classroom which fosters a sense of community among the students, the undergraduate learning assistants, the graduate educators and the instructors, as well as maintain continual growth and innovation in their curriculum and classroom engagement. Dr. Tumblin truly believes that anyone is capable of learning physics with a little hard work and encouragement. One of their objectives as a teacher is to motivate students to develop their own learning interests and critical thinking skills. Dr. Tumblin believes once you motivate a curious mind to contemplate the complexities of the Universe and set them on the path of questioning these complexities, they begin to navigate and drive their own learning rather than be a passive observer who is just along for the ride. Paul Tillich once said, “The fatal pedagogical error is to throw answers like stones at the heads of those who have not yet asked the questions.” This philosophy has guided Dr. Tumblin in developing their own personal teaching style.

Stacey Vaughn  Senior Instructor I | Mathematics

Stacey Vaughn has a B.S. in Mathematics and an M.S. in Mathematics both from Oregon State University.  Stacey’s primary focus is on teaching: creating an inclusive classroom while making mathematics accessible to students. Stacey believes that removing barriers to entry and promoting mathematically confidence in students are two major hurdles that require constant care and attention in teaching. “My students consistently bring out the best in me, and it is my goal to bring out the best in them.”  

Skip to Content

Current Students

Interested in more? Search Courses

• Search Input Submit Search

From Chaos to Creativity: One Teacher’s Path to a Writing Degree

Heather hein.

Senior Editor

Former high school teacher and lifelong writer Ellie Moran finds her perfect fit in the Professional Creative Nonfiction Writing program at University College.

Ellie Moran will never forget the day she decided to go to graduate school.

It was the fall of 2021, and she was in her classroom at Denver’s East High School, where she taught English. Suddenly, the school was placed on lockdown, and Ellie was stuck with her rowdiest class of seniors, waiting for two hours while a dozen police officers, a SWAT team and bomb-sniffing dogs went through the building.

“And I said to myself, that’s it, I’ve got to go to grad school. That was quite literally the moment I decided. I went home that day and applied to DU,” she says.

Ellie had been teaching at East, her alma mater, for five years—an experience she calls both “delightful” and “tumultuous.” She loved her students, her colleagues and the field of education, but the pressures of being a teacher were too much—and not just because of lockdowns.

“I was only in my fifth year, and I felt like I was drowning, like I didn’t have the brain space or capacity to learn or be creative,” she says. The curriculum she taught had started to feel monotonous, and she wanted to spend more time writing.

As an undergraduate, she double majored in creative writing and secondary education at the University of Colorado Boulder. A couple years into her job at East, she decided to get a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction but, just before she was set to start the program, she had an “aha” moment.

“I was walking to a coffee shop and, I don’t know why, but I just asked myself, ‘Why are you going to grad school?’ And the only answer I had was to make more money. And I was like, ‘What?’ I can’t do something I’m not passionate about,” Ellie says. That afternoon, she says, she deferred her enrollment and removed herself from the pool completely about a week later.

'I have to write every day'

She realized that writing was what she wanted to do. “It’s like survival to me. I don’t know how to navigate the world without it,” Ellie says. “I have to write every day. I observe so many things in a day, there’s so many things in [my head], that I have to expel them.”

In the fall of 2022, Ellie enrolled in University College’s Professional Creative Nonfiction Writing program, which she says is a perfect fit for the memoir style of writing she enjoys most. “I have the memory of an elephant. I remember everything and enjoy writing about the things I remember,” she explains. “I don’t necessarily enjoy writing about things that haven’t happened.”

The creativity comes in, she says, by embedding her nonfiction with poetry and figurative language or adding images and “kind of just visually playing around” on the page.

“It feels like weaving, weaving creativity into the truth. It’s essentially making your personal story universal, taking the stories I see in my everyday life and pulling out the universal truths,” she says.

Now working as an enrichment coordinator for a Montessori academy in Denver, Ellie says her long-term goal is to get into publishing. The University College program, she says, was an easy choice because of its flexible schedule and virtual option.

“There are times where I’ve been wildly overwhelmed—because it’s grad school—but for the most part, it’s been really accessible, which I’m so thankful for,” she says.

That accessibility has allowed her to zero in on her writing. “I know how to write, but I wanted to get better. I wanted professors to look at my work and say, ‘That’s terrible’ or ‘That makes no sense.’ I wanted to learn how to structure my writing better, to work on the process.”  

One of her main writing outlets is a SubStack she started last year called Mis(s) Education . She writes narrative nonfiction essays on the state of education, including topics like school shootings (including one at East High School in 2023), teacher burnout and the “epidemic of ego” in educational leadership.

She plans to continue combining her love of writing and her love of education when she moves to New York City in the fall. She has applied to several publishing houses but is also applying to some schools and community colleges for non-classroom positions in areas like student engagement and community event planning.

“The biggest thing that I've learned is that you can’t change a system while you're in it. Teachers are too tired to write about their experiences. I want to have the time to, on their behalf, talk to them, take their words, write them down and get them out there.”

Related Articles

Coming Full Circle

2024 Commencement Speakers Announced

A Dreamer and a Doer  

Eric Larsh — Portland State University MFA Writers

It’s the Season 4 finale! On this episode, Eric Larsh tells Jared about writing into obsessions, whether he’s focusing exclusively on sonnets or, for the last two years, diving into a long poem about the Mojave Desert. Eric also discusses how his music compositions and editorship at Portland Review inform his poetry, deciding between a graduate degree in rhetoric or creative writing, and Portland State’s built-in opportunities to connect with faculty and visiting writers. Eric Larsh is a writer, bookseller, and musician living in Portland, Oregon. He is currently serving as Editor in Chief at Portland Review and pursuing his MFA in Poetry at Portland State University. His writing can be found at Los Angeles Review, Thin Air, The Daily Drunk, and elsewhere online. His music can be found at universalhealthcare.bandcamp.com. Learn more at ericlarsh.com. This episode was requested by Emily Jacobson. Thank you for listening, Emily! MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com. BE PART OF THE SHOW — Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee. — Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. — Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience. — Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application. STAY CONNECTED Twitter: @MFAwriterspod Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast Facebook: MFA Writers Email: [email protected]

• Episode Website
• More Episodes
• Jared McCormack