Honored with Teaching Award from Purdue!

Exciting news! I've been honored with a Committee for the Education of Teaching Assistants (CETA) Teaching Award from Purdue! I am humbled and thrilled for this recognition. Four graduate student teachers were chosen out of the entire English Department, and we were honored at a ceremony with other graduate student teachers from all across the university. It was a very special night! I truly love teaching and I feel very blessed I get the opportunity to teach undergraduates while pursuing my MFA at Purdue. 

I'm currently teaching English 205: Introduction to Creative Writing and English 106: Academic Writing and Research (a basic composition course all freshmen are required to take.) Next semester I've been accepted to teach English 420: Business Writing. I am looking forward to "paying forward" and hopefully inspiring Purdue's business students in the same way the terrific professors Patrick Henry and Tommy Knapp inspired and encouraged me when I was an undergrad student in the Entrepreneurship program at USC. 

This was our last week of classes at Purdue, and some of my wonderful students asked to take a picture with me after our last class. Here we are in the hallway outside our classroom:

I believe teaching is a symbiotic learning relationship with my students, and I am certainly inspired by their hard work, intelligence, creativity and kindness every day!