A Transition

May 8, 2025

I wanted to go to graduate school because I loved teaching. I wanted a doctorate so I could teach students at the college level. It wasn’t for the research or the life of the mind, although I enjoy writing and publishing (I have a textbook on religion and disability coming out this year!). It was because I love supporting students—watching them grow, opening their minds, pushing them, being part of this time of great transition, maybe even altering the course of their lives. 

I’ve always loved teaching. I tutored math in high school. I worked at writing centers in college and in graduate school at University of Virginia (with my dear friend Philip Herrington, who happily works at JMU now too, as a History professor!). While I was at UVA, I also led groups of incoming first-years over the summer, TAed, and taught my own writing classes as the instructor of record. I imagine you who subscribe to this Toolbox love teaching too—or can at least conjure up faint memories of loving it once.  

But my career trajectory swerved a bit in graduate school, after getting a part-time job at UVA’s Center for Teaching Excellence. I ended up wanting to work full-time in centers like that one, where I could support the growth of the other people in the classroom—the teachers. I went to Texas after I graduated, to become the assistant director of a teaching and learning center at Trinity University, turning down a job offer in biblical studies (one of my areas of speciality in religion) to do so. 

After three years there, I came to JMU in 2016 specifically to work as one of the assistant directors for the Center for Faculty Innovation (CFI), a center that was highly respected and decorated on the national level. Carol Hurney (now at Colby College), Cara Meixner, Ed Brantmeier—these were professionals I already knew and wanted to emulate as colleagues. Once I’d been here for several years, I made friends with fellow assistant director Andreas Broscheid whom I could not adore more. I’m grateful, over the years, to also have been shaped by Daisy Breneman, who pushes me to be a better human almost every day, and, more recently, Dayna Henry, who is one of the most generous and competent people I know. (She’s also a great cook…and hates leftovers, so I’ve benefited in MANY ways from our friendship.) 

I’ve also had the privilege of working with many wonderful CFI faculty associates over the years, including some who are no longer at JMU and my current teammates Lori Gano-Overway and Robyn Kondrad who are rockstars and who I’ve been lucky to learn from. I still get emails from Joshua Rashon Streeter. I still get lunch with Michael Kirkpatrick at E-Hall every semester. I still text jokes to Scott Paulson during opening faculty meetings. I still hug Carole Nash every time I see her at a Native American and Indigenous Working Group meeting. I still walk a couple miles every week with Kayla Yurco and her two dogs (one of whom wears a SWEATER when it’s cold 😭). To try to measure the ways that the CFI has changed my life—the way that these people have changed my life—would be impossible.  

In the fall, I will be fully moving to the Department of Philosophy and Religion and leaving my post in the CFI, after nine years. In this time with the CFI, I’ve run institutes, facilitated workshops, offered presentations, tried new programs, sunsetted others, collaborated across campus, served on committees, weathered lots of changes. I did the work and the work was good. Mostly. I made plenty of mistakes along the way, too, with people and with programs. I learned a lot. What else is there? 

The AUH and colleagues in my department are some of my favorite people at JMU—and I’m grateful they have received me with open arms. (They may come to regret this warm reception, once I’m around all the time 😅.) I think this will be a good home for me for the next chapter of my career. 

I started this Toolbox series when I first arrived at JMU. At first, I just re-used blog posts I had written at Trinity. Then I began developing new content. Since 2016, I’ve written nearly 50 Toolboxes. I’ve read and given feedback on nearly all of the rest. My hands have touched every part of this program. If you have complaints, I’m the one to blame. I’m not foolish enough to think that the series couldn't go on without me—and I’m planning to still be involved in their coordination moving forward—but it’ll certainly be different now. 

Thank you for reading these emails. Thank you for your kind words when one particularly resonated with you. Thank you for caring about teaching, about your students, about the mission of higher education. Thank you for giving this writing a home.  

I hope you all have a wonderful summer.