Susan Adams Wins 2004 Outstanding TA Award |
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Congratulations to Teaching Associate Susan Adams , a fourth-year Ph.D. student in CCR, for being awarded a 2004 Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. Susan has taught WRT 105, WRT 109, WRT 195, WRT 205, WRT 209, and WRT 307.
Of her teaching, Susan says, "As a teacher I am located at a busy intersection of students’ expectations and institutional requirements. Each of these currents is itself composed of multiple and conflicting layers: an individual student may have seemingly incompatible expectations of a course, just as the “institution” is shorthand for administrators, alumni, program directors, and coordinators, and each of these may have contradictory allegiances at times. But teachers, I think, at that moment in the classroom, are both with the students and with the institution— must represent the needs of each to the other, and at times must side with one over the other. Composition’s history as a field traces this complicated role. Working so closely with students, it is difficult to imagine how we could not ally ourselves with their needs and concerns. Like colleagues in the fine arts, we wonder if we silence students when we enable them to engage in institutional conversations." |