I'm a teacher, writer, and scholar of communication. I earned my MA in Communication Arts and Sciences from Penn State in 2016 and will complete my PhD there this summer. I've been teaching communication classes at the university level since 2014 and have been coaching public speakers and tutoring writers longer than that. I believe strong speaking and/or writing skills can benefit anyone's career and life goals, at any stage in their academic and professional journey. I'm able to help you with everything from sweating the details of speech and writing--say, to get your sentence-level grammar and syntax perfect--to developing your expertise crafting logically sound arguments or a unique and engaging narrative voice. I'll work with you to develop a learning plan that responds to your unique goals, talents, and needs. Together, we'll hone your strengths as a writer or speaker, correct your weaknesses, and make sure you're confident in the excellence of your work and the confidence of your voice the next time you write or speak for an audience.

The story of how I became a teacher started in an airplane cockpit. As a teenager, my dream was to become an airline pilot. I learned to fly before I could legally drive a car and eventually earned my pilot's license and several of the more advanced ratings necessary to fly for an airline. As part of that process, I pursued a communication major and english minor at Ripon College. Airlines typically want their pilots to have a degree but tend not to car what it's in. I picked what I thought was the most general subject possible: communication.

By luck, I had declared as a communication major in the nation's best communication department. (Not coincidentally, but less luckily, it was also the most difficult and rigorous major at the whole college.) I fell in love with the subject. I learned to speak and write not just with clarity and precision--what you expect to learn from good teachers of speech and writing--but with persuasive force, argumentative rigor, and an attention-grabbing voice. I had gone to college expecting to check a box on my way to flying for life, and now classes on public speaking and writing were changing my life.

I realized I didn't want an airline career at the same time I realized I could make a career out of teaching communication. I quit flying, applied to graduate schools, and got in at my top choice, Penn State. The rest is history. I'll be finishing my PhD there in a few months and will be looking to land a tenured job at another university in the fall.