Stephanie Carpenter Selected for Deans' Teaching Showcase
College of Sciences and Arts Dean LaReesa Wolfenbarger has selected Stephanie Carpenter, assistant professor in the Department of Humanities, as the featured instructor in this week’s Deans’ Teaching Showcase.
Carpenter will be recognized at an end-of-term event with other spring showcase members and is a candidate for the CTL Instructional Award Series.
Carpenter is an assistant professor in creative writing who brings rich and unique perspectives into her scholarship and teaching through her Master of Fine Arts and Ph.D. in Creative Writing degrees.
“Students in Dr. Carpenter’s courses have the benefit of a professor trained in the practice of creative writing as well as one trained in analyzing literature,” said Wolfenbarger. Combining these in her courses, Carpenter challenges and supports students to reach and to develop their creativity and critical analysis as complementary skills. Carpenter leads with a philosophy that “practice is paramount.”
“The depth and positivity of student feedback on course evaluations is impressive and the comments convey how profoundly impacted the students feel after taking a course from Dr. Carpenter,” said Wolfenbarger. “Students even express surprise at how deeply they are affected by her courses.”
Student comments have a recurring theme of how the course supported their growth. One student advised future students to choose interesting and meaningful writing topics. “Sometimes these topics can be deep, and it’s a good opportunity to explore the self. You may learn something,” they wrote. Another student advised, “Be prepared to search your soul.”
Students described how Carpenter provides the scaffolding for their growth throughout the course. “I thought the way you gradually brought us out by responding to shorter pieces that didn’t require as much intimacy, gradually building to pieces requiring more and more soul searching was a good strategy,” said one.
Carpenter completely reinvented her approach to grading to reduce student anxiety and to bring more attention to the qualitative feedback provided for students. These changes were in direct response to a series of experiences she had. Factors influencing the substantive changes included the demands during COVID, participation in the Digital Pedagogy Lab seminar “The Virtual, Liberatory Feedback-Driven Classroom” in 2020, and reading two books that challenged traditional methods used by Carpenter: “The Anti-Racist Workshop” by Felicia Rose Chavez and “Craft in the Real World” by Matthew Sallesses.
Carpenter succeeded superbly in creating a positive learning environment for students. Students uniformly embraced the changes, commenting extensively on the welcoming environment and praising her grading system as “conducive to actual improvement of text analysis and writing skills.” Students who consider themselves shy appreciated how comfortable they felt contributing and how Carpenter provided ways to contribute in addition to class discussions. Students appreciated how Carpenter “invited and allowed many different thoughts, opinions, and statements” in class discussions and “the opportunity to write in different spaces.
Carpenter is a model scholar/teacher who inspires students to engage with writing and analysis in a way that will have lasting effects.