About the Faculty

Faculty Name /
Contact Information
Teaching Philosophy

Desiree Hellegers, Ph.D.

Associate Chair
Associate Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9643
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 202V

 
 

Wendy Johnson, Ph.D.

Associate Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9648
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 102R

  

Thabiti Lewis, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9256
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 102M

 
 

David Menchaca, M.A.

Assistant Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9176
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 202X

Pavithra Narayanan, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9732
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 202F

"I celebrate a teaching that enables transgressions - a movement against and beyond boundaries. It is that movement which makes education the practice of freedom." bell hooks

Wendy Olson, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9513
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 102K

My teaching philosophy reflects my study of rhetoric, writing, and culture, attempting to put education as transformation into practice within the classroom. A pedagogical approach that recognizes texts as inherently rhetorical stresses that texts are always produced in a particular context, with a writer always mediating her/his purpose with the beliefs, values and assumptions of the audience. Such an approach often works to demystify academic writing while also showing students how they can and do participate in textual production. With a rhetorical approach, students begin to see how texts are constructed along a series of choices writers make, to see where form and content are intricately related to one another. And in approaching their own writing through such a process, students experience writing as epistemological — that is, they experience writing as a means of creating knowledge as well as communicating it, often a transformative act, indeed.
 

Teresa Phimister, M.A.

Instructor/Academic Coordinator
Phone: (360) 546-9664
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 26

 
 

Kandy Robertson, Ph.D.

Clinical Associate Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9651
E-mail:
Office: VLIB 203

  
 

Carol Siegel, Ph.D.

Professor
Phone: (360) 546-9641
E-mail:
Office: VMMC 202S

 Learning is a process. We learn over a period of time by trying first one thing and then another. Standards and requirements should be made clear to students, but everyone (the students and the teachers) should realize that knowing what is expected for the final product is not the same as knowing how to meet those expectations. The most interesting work reflects changes in perception as understanding grows. Contextualization of ideas is vital to knowledge. Good writing is like good coffee or chocolate: rich, thick, with a deep lingering flavor to it. Assignments should allow for an accretion of knowledge, as one idea builds on prior ideas, so that students' work can enter into the conversations on the topic that have already taken place among writers.