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Degree Programs

University Writing Program

Faculty and Staff Directory

  • Writing Program

    Brad Benz

    Since 2010, I have been a faculty member in the University Writing Program. I teach WRIT courses and FSEM and conduct WAC/WID outreach through the University Writing Center. My research converges around discourse analysis and green rhetoric and my teaching focuses on rhetorical theory and writing to non-academic audiences.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, University of Washington
    Office: AAC 380K
    Phone: 303-871-7608
    Email: [email protected]

  • Jennifer Campbell

    Jennifer Campbell

    In my teaching, I like to integrate the practical and the personal. My classes take a thoroughly practical approach to the study of rhetoric, research, and writing in the sense that students get a significant amount of hands-on practice in a variety of genres and in the sense that what they learn in my classes will be useful and applicable in a variety of "real world" situations. But I am equally concerned about my students as people with unique personalities, passions, and problems. I want us to consider not only academic and career success, but also personal well-being and how we can use writing to improve ourselves and our world.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, Auburn University
    Office: AAC 381B
    Phone: 303-871-7698
    Email: [email protected]

  • Libby Catchings

    Libby Catchings

    For me, writing delivers both self-knowledge and "poetic world-making" (Warner 2002) - a techne that makes every classroom encounter an opportunity for re-imagining our potential as ethical rhetorical agents. I think teaching writing also requires a sense of play, and an awareness of the materiality of both our bodies and the writing process. For that reason, I incorporate a variety of visual, sonic, and kinaesthetic practices into class; more often than not, you'll find crayons and voice recordings a part of the classroom experience. That multimodal disposition also informs my community-engaged research in prisons, making use of rhetorical phronēsis as a methodological framework for both fieldwork and the curation of that research.

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    PhD, University of California, Irvine
    Office: AAC 380F
    Phone: 303-871-7520
    Email: [email protected]

  • April Chapman-Ludwig

    April Chapman-Ludwig

    While I have many vested interests in visual rhetoric, women's literature, and writing in the social sciences, my passion for teaching starts with the opportunity to work with wonderful students who bring amazing experiences into my class. I encourage students to write what they are passionate about, to acknowledge there is much more to learn and to see how their words connect to the academic and civic community whether it is writing about a subculture, a fairy tale, mystery, or documentary.

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    MA, Illinois State University
    Office: AAC 380R
    Phone: 303-871-6620
    Email: [email protected]

  • Richard Colby

    Richard Colby

    There is much to learn about writing, but what matters is what you can do with writing. In my classes, students build many different things mostly with words, but sometimes with video and cardboard, and carefully consider what it takes to do so. I teach about the rhetoric of games, technical and scientific communication, and disciplinary research. I research games, gaming, and gamers and the intersections with civic, academic, and professional domains.

    Assistant Director of First Year Writing
    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, Bowling Green University
    Office: AAC 380X
    Phone: 303-871-7702
    Email: [email protected]

  • David Daniels

    David Daniels

    In the classroom, I try to create a friendly, nurturing environment that puts student processes of discovery and invention at its center. My side gig is writing and editing poetry, and I bring that spirit of collaboration and creativity into the classroom. My focus is less on producing "better writing" during the quarter but on creating better writers longterm, writers who are prepared to confront whatever writing situations their academic, civic, and professional lives might bring them.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    MFA, Indiana University
    Office: AAC 380G
    Phone: 303-871-7803
    Email: [email protected]

  • Rob Gilmor

    Rob Gilmor

    In my teaching, I aim to connect traditional theories of rhetoric with the interests of contemporary students through exploration of challenging ideas, a wide range of writing situations, and the different ways we all experience life and learning. As a scholar, I'm most interested in the ways rhetorical theory illuminates and challenges the practices of scholarly rhetorics and other academic discourses.

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    PhD, University of Denver
    Office: AAC 380N
    Phone: 303-871-7725
    Email: [email protected]

  • Sarah Hart Micke

    Sarah Hart Micke

    Concerned with relationships between language and responsibility, my teaching and scholarship focus on the intersections of rhetoric and ethics. My teaching emphasizes writing for and listening to diverse audiences, often in community-engaged contexts, such as service learning projects at local schools. My scholarship explores rhetorical and ethical theories and their applications in arenas ranging from lyric poetry to pedagogy to civic life.


    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, Texas A&M University
    Office: AAC 380D
    Phone: 303-871-7966
    Email: [email protected]

  • Doug Hesse

    Doug Hesse

    I've taught writing for 35 years now, which signifies two things. One, obviously, is that I've been around awhile. But more important, I think is that writing is still endlessly fascinating, and teaching still endlessly important. One of my scholarly interests is creative nonfiction: memoir, personal essay, immersive journalism, profiles, travel writing and the like. I'm fascinated with the craft and possibilities of writing, the decisions available to writers, the consequences of those decisions: the aesthetics as well as the rhetoric. This fascination informs all my teaching.

    Executive Director of Writing and Professor of English
    PhD, University of Iowa
    Office: AAC 282B
    Phone: 303-871-7447
    Email: [email protected]

  • Writing Program

    Matthew Hill

    I've been at DU for 11 years now and attempt to engage students in multiple media and genres of writing. Be it through remix and podcasts, or essays and research projects, or my current experiments with analogue/board games, I allow students opportunities to learn how writing works in different contexts. Outside the classroom my current projects include community writing instruction and a research project about the history of sound and rhetorical violence.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    ABD, Michigan Technological University
    Office: AAC 380J
    Phone: 303-871-7808
    Email: [email protected]

  • Writing Program

    Megan Kelly

    I design classes focused on the critical analysis and production of environmental communication, with a particular emphasis on the rhetorical strategies used in the climate justice movement. My approach to teaching encourages students to take responsibility for their language and actions by understanding how writing and research serve as tools for social change. I value student engagement and create opportunities for students to write in collaboration with change-makers on campus, including the DU Center for Sustainability and student organizations such as Students for Sustainable Food, the DU Food Recovery Network, and Divest DU. I also like to use Instagram for student projects. When not teaching, you'll find me with the plants and the bees in the DU Bridge Community Garden.

    Assistant Director of the Writing Center
    Teaching Associate Professor
    ABD, University of Washington
    Office: AAC 380E
    Phone: 303-871-7507
    Email: [email protected]

  • Kamila Kinyon

    Kamila Kinyon

    In my teaching, I have experimented with different themes, genres, and approaches, ranging from the rhetoric of journalism to the teaching of ethnography, oral history, and visual culture. I like to keep course topics open-ended to allow students to draw on their individual backgrounds and interests. I am interested in issues of cultural diversity, and have presented pedagogical papers on topics such as multilingual writing, the first-generation student experience at DU, and the representation of Native American culture in contemporary and historical photographs, including those in DU's special archive collections. I have a background in Slavic studies, and have recently presented at the RMMLA on a work in progress for the University of Lisbon about Czech perceptions of Portugal in travel writing from different eras.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, University of Chicago
    Office: AAC 380W
    Phone: 303-871-7831
    Email: [email protected]

  • Writing Program

    Heather Martin

    In my classes, I encourage students to test their arguments with real audiences, both on campus and off. While writing is always the focus of my WRIT courses, I have taken up topics of comedic and visual rhetoric, environmental sustainability, progressive education, and the rhetoric of food.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, University of Denver
    Office: AAC 380B
    Phone: 303-871-7837
    Email: [email protected]

  • Juli Parrish

    Juli Parrish

    I've been reading the essays, stories, blog entries, response papers, final projects, newspaper columns, reviews, artist statements, research papers, unpublished journals, and other work that college students write for more than 20 years, and I'm not done yet. When I read student work, I read for possibility and potential, and that practice shapes my teaching. As the DU Writing Center Director, I particularly value conversations about writing: all writers need to talk about their work, and all students are writers.

    Director of the Writing Center
    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, University of Pittsburgh
    Office: AAC 282C
    Phone: 303-871-7431
    Email: [email protected]

  • LP Picard

    Lauren Picard

    In and out of the classroom, I strive to put student writing first. My open-ended assignments are designed to 1) allow students to develop and refine their writerly voices, and 2) encourage students to take ownership of their intellectual pursuits. I am also involved with many projects, both within the Writing Program and across the university, that showcase and celebrate the work of our undergraduate authors. I am a managing editor of WRIT Large, a journal of undergraduate writing and research, and the Director of DU IMPACT 2025's One Book, One DU program.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    MFA, Emerson College
    Office: AAC 380P
    Phone: 303-871-7505
    Email: [email protected]

  • Polly Reid

    Polly Reid

    My teaching tends to focus on rhetoric in the real world – how techniques of persuasion influence our lives, from visual imagery to popular media to politics. In my research, I explore the history of rhetoric and media, particularly the visual rhetoric of early print. In both my teaching and scholarship, I am interested in how changes in media transform the way we express ourselves and form communities.

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    PhD, University of Georgia
    Office: AAC 380T
    Phone: 303-871-7573
    Email: [email protected]

  • keith rhodes

    Keith Rhodes

    I seek to prepare my students for the wide variety of writing that they will do for the rest of their lives, and my main scholarly focus has been studying the best ways to accomplish that goal. I have split my working career between practicing law and being a scholar and professor of writing, so I bring to my classes both a workplace and an academic perspective. I find the study of writing and of persuasion deeply fascinating, and I hope to develop that same level of interest in my students.

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    PhD, University of Nebraska, Lincoln; JD, University of North Dakota
    Office: AAC 380R
    Phone: 303-871-7484
    Email: [email protected]

  • david riche

    David Riche

    As a teacher, I cherish every opportunity I have to support students' inquiry, especially as they become more fully aware of the traditional and nontraditional literacies they will (or already do) use in their daily lives. To encourage this kind of rhetorical consciousness, I teach assignments that prompt students to develop compositions across multiple genres and modes; previous students of mine have transformed their work into podcasts, dioramas, board games, mosaics, and even musical compositions. My research and teaching interests cross paths in the areas of multimodal composition, game design, and rhetoric as a way of experiencing vulnerability.

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    PhD, Louisiana State University
    Office: AAC 380Z
    Phone: 303-871-3259
    Email: [email protected]

  • Casey Rountree

    Casey Rountree

    I find that teaching writing gives me an opportunity to develop students' critical thinking skills in ways that can potentially impact their lives far beyond the classroom. That's exciting to me. I also believe the 1990s TV show Twin Peaks is the finest work of art of the past century.


    Teaching Associate Professor
    ABD, University of Denver
    Office: AAC 380V
    Phone: 303-871-7518
    Email: [email protected]


  • Lauren Salvador

    Office Manager
    Office: AAC 282A
    Phone: 303-871-7448
    Email: [email protected]

  • Carol Samson

    Carol Samson

    Professor Emeritus
    PhD, University of Denver

  • Blake Sanz

    Blake Sanz

    As a teacher, I'm especially interested in cultures of remix and ways that research can be used for creative purposes beyond typical academic genres of writing. My fiction has been published in a variety of magazines, and I'm currently working on a couple of new creative projects. I'm from south Louisiana and when I'm not teaching, I can sometimes be found listening to embarrassing pop music on repeat or cooking a gumbo.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    MFA, University of Notre Dame
    Office: AAC 380A
    Phone: 303-871-7566
    Email: [email protected]

  • Blake Sanz

    Aubrey Schiavone

    My writing courses are designed as workshop spaces that engage student writers in the process of writing. That means, students in my courses always research and write about topics of their choosing—topics that matter to them in their academic, professional, and personal lives. While the primary theme of my courses is always learning about writing, I also teach courses in which students research and write about contemporary food issues.

    Additionally, my courses incorporate digital and multimodal composition—including blog posts and video projects—in order for students to practice communicating effectively in a digital age. Finally, my research focuses on supporting first-generation college students as they encounter specialized writing and speaking practices in college. I am also a first-generation college student myself and happy to mentor any undergraduate or graduate student who is navigating life as a first-gen. Feel free to email me :)

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    PhD, University of Michigan
    Office: AAC 380M
    Phone: 303-871-7950
    Email: [email protected]

  • Rebekah Shultz Colby

    Rebekah Shultz Colby

    I study how the multimodality within games influences rhetoric, writing, and pedagogy. I published an article examining how the play within World of Warcraft (WoW) rhetorically influences argumentation on the WoW forums and another examining how writing teachers of technical writing and rhetoric and composition use game-based pedagogies. I also use games to teach writing: in one class, students use WoW as a research space to learn about disciplinary research and writing and in another they analyze and design games in order to learn more about rhetoric.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, Bowling Green University
    Office: AAC 380Y
    Phone: 303-871-7597
    Email: [email protected]
    Online Portfolio

  • Daniel Singer

    Daniel Singer

    I aim to encourage and develop students' willingness to experiment, to invent, to take chances exploring writing that is meaningful to them and that can impact the world beyond the classroom. To do that, I work to make close, supportive connections with students in my classes and try to teach writing in ways that acknowledge its complexities and celebrate its potentials. My research is on writing and the "will to do good," primarily in terms of rhetorics of advocacy and volunteerism, and on public writing and futures-oriented rhetoric (with side-interests in suasive psychology, emergent genre ecologies, and multimodal/digital composition).

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    PhD, University of Denver
    Office: AAC 380H
    Phone: 303-871-7705
    Email: [email protected]

  • Angela Sowa

    Angela Sowa

    I enjoy helping students discover how to more effectively share their passions and perspectives through rhetoric. My classes often focus on genre theory and reflective practices as ways to promote transfer - I want students to use what the learn in my classes in contexts far beyond the bounds of their academic careers. My research interests include the relationship between gender and religious writing; social justice and literacy; and promoting writing transfer through self-assessment and reflective genres.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, Texas Christian University
    Office: AAC 380C
    Phone: 303-871-7704
    Email: [email protected]

  • Geoff Stacks

    Geoffrey Stacks

    I am interested in teaching a class that emphasizes critical thinking and analysis. I enjoy challenging students to think better and more carefully about the choices they make when writing. My own scholarly interests include postmodern and contemporary American literature.


    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, Purdue University
    Office: AAC 380L
    Phone: 303-871-7607
    Email: [email protected]

  • Kara Taczak

    Kara Taczak

    I started teaching as an adjunct professor, and like most adjuncts I taught at several schools and thus taught a diverse group of students ranging in age, walks of life, social class, and writing abilities. Teaching so many different types of students helped me realize that I have the opportunity to give students something other disciplines cannot—an opportunity to take charge of their education. In light of this understanding, I design each of my classes with three distinct features in mind: theory, practice and reflection. These interlocking features help students take control of their education by giving them an awareness about who they are as a writers, thinkers, and knowledge-makers. It also encourages them to transfer their knowledge and practices about writing to other contexts -- the goal of any course should be to encourage transfer, but this is especially true for a writing classroom. Stemming from my award-winning research, I create classrooms that teach for transfer to offer students a solid starting point, so that they can progress forward in successful and effective ways in their educational careers.

    Teaching Associate Professor
    PhD, Florida State University
    Office: AAC 380S
    Phone: 303-871-7536
    Email: [email protected]

  • John Tiedemann

    John Tiedemann

    Writing allows us to think critically, to imagine, and to engage with world. In class, I encourage students to do all three of these things simultaneously.



    Teaching Associate Professor
    ABD, University of Wisconsin-Madison
    Office: AAC 380U
    Phone: 303-871-7609
    Email: [email protected]

  • Zoe Tobier

    Zoe Tobier

    My writing classes provide student writers with opportunities to explore new ideas, strategies, and techniques, all in service of developing critical thinking skills, creativity, self-awareness, and intellectual curiosity. In my classes, students explore the rhetorical power of narrative by writing stories about themselves and others, by analyzing the ways in which cultural narratives shape the media we consume, from documentary films to Snapchat to comics, and by creating impactful written arguments in a variety of media, for a variety of audiences.

    In addition to my work as a teacher of writing, I have a professional background in indie film distribution, screenwriting, and contemporary art exhibition, and my classes offer students opportunities to study and curate art and media exhibitions here on campus.

    Teaching Assistant Professor
    MFA, Columbia University
    Office: AAC 380Q
    Email: [email protected]

Adjunct Faculty

Our adjunct faculty members also teach courses in the University Writing Program, but their primary assignments or responsibilities are outside the school.

Interviews with Faculty

Individual interviews of University Writing Program faculty about their life and work—but with a twist.