As mentioned in previous sections, I maintain a persistent presence online, which has significant connections to professional service. In keeping active accounts on Delicious, Posterous, Twitter and Scribd, I not only make new contacts in my fields of interest but also have additional venues for sharing ideas and information. By posting items about composition, literacy, pedagogy, rhetoric and technology, I support and encourage the work of others. I also remain engaged in learning on a level that is similar to yet different from conversing with colleagues in the halls of the English department. Such online engagement is a kind of worthwhile public intellectualism and it continues to have a direct impact on my pedagogical and publishing interests.
Less nebulous forms of university service have had similar impact. The first of these concerns my participation in Mid-Career Writing Assessment. Roy Barnes, Stephanie Roach, Jacob Blumner and I selected essays of varying correctness for a university-wide norming session on what faculty should value in terms of students' writing. Bi-weekly meetings involved detailed discussion of scoring sample essays and justifying those scores in narrative formats to be distributed to UM-Flint faculty volunteers. The actual norming session with these volunteers occurred March 27, 2009, and lasted from 9am until 2pm. I was thankful to be part of this process as I found cultivating common ground with instructors from other fields to be easier and more enlightening than daunting.
Just as enlightening has been my time serving on the Student Publications Board as advisor for the student literary magazine, Qua. In Fall 2009, I conducted a successful search for a new Qua editor, interviewing two possible candidates. As of this writing, there is an open call for submissions to Qua and the editor plans to have the new issue published just after the spring break. In facilitating my role as Qua advisor, there is an opportunity to reinstate something of substantial worth to the campus community.
I also accepted invitations to and/or volunteered for a variety of other university activities and events. All of this is in addition to my regular attendance at CAS and English department meetings.
• At the invitation of Mary Jo Finney, I attended the first FYE Living Learning Community meeting at Good Beans Cafe on November 5, 2008.
• When MLA updated its handbook, I helped revise the Composition Survival Kit in May 2009 to reflect the changes.
• I was a guest lecturer for New Student Programs (Orientation) in summer 2009.
• With Dr. Vickie Larsen, I represented the English department at UM-Flint's Fall 2009 Academic Showcase.
• At the request of Krista Heiser, I was among the contributors to the Office of Extended Learning's "Blogs in Education" session on October 7, 2009.
• Most recently, I joined the Bookstore Advisory Board, which addresses customer service, long-range planning, textbook adoptions and the support of local authors.