Courtney A. Mauck
Ohio University English doctoral student Courtney A. Mauck is one of 10 graduate students chosen for Bedford/St. Martin’s 2021 Bedford New Scholars Advisory Board, a post that will help her strengthen her work on inclusivity in first-year writing courses.
The advisory board provides a way for Bedford/St. Martin’s, which is part of Macmillan Learning, to hear from graduate students about the teaching challenges they face as well as trends in teaching composition courses.
This year’s scholars will focus on three critical topics — student engagement, online learning, and creating more inclusive classrooms — as they meet with the company’s editorial team to discuss how Bedford/St. Martin’s course materials are being used.
Mauck is a Ph.D. candidate in Rhetoric and Composition at Ohio University, where she teaches first-year writing courses. She also teaches junior composition courses themed around feminist game studies and has co-taught two graduate courses, “Teaching College English” and “Learning Transfer.” Her research interests include digital rhetorics, multimodal composition, social media, game studies, learning transfer and first-year writing pedagogy.
Mauck served as assistant director of composition in the English Department at OHIO for two years with Dr. Rachael Ryerson. She helped to revise the first-year writing curriculum and develop a new course reader titled Challenging Our Assumptions: A Cultural Competencies Reader. First used in fall 2020, the revised curriculum adds “a more intersectional approach and a wider range of perspectives” to the existing cultural competencies reader.
“As part of the drive toward accessibility and inclusivity, we developed a curriculum that is more multimodal than the previous iterations of the curriculum, meaning that students gain practice composing in a variety of modes, not just writing,” says Mauck. The new reader is used to train incoming graduate assistants who are teaching EnG 1510 for the first time.
“I am currently working on my dissertation research, which involves exploring students’ composing habits on Snapchat to better understand how mobile/multimodal platforms can help to facilitate learning transfer in the writing classroom,” says Mauck, who will be entering her fifth-year of Ph.D. studies at OHIO. “I hope to defend my dissertation in spring 2022.”
“As part of the Bedford New Scholars program, I will work closely with the editorial team at Bedford/St. Martin’s and the other scholars to workshop and review projects in development, including textbooks and online course materials. Additionally, I will have the opportunity to participate in a week-long virtual summit, which, along with many networking opportunities, will provide a space to connect with graduate students from other institutions to workshop our assignments and course materials,” she says.
“One of the emphases this year for the Bedford New Scholars program is diversity, equity, and inclusion. Over the past few years, DEI has become increasingly important to me in both my scholarship and my teaching, and I look forward to my work with the advisory board as it helps me to learn and grow in that regard.”
“Department Chair Linda Rice and I are delighted but not surprised at Courtney’s selection for this honor; we’re sure that Courtney’s wealth of teaching experience, impressive knowledge of Rhetoric/Composition studies, and energetic professionalism will make her valued member of the Advisory Board. Bedford could not have chosen a more deserving scholar for this distinction,” says Dr. Linda Zionkowski, the Samuel and Susan Crowl Professor of Literature and graduate director for OHIO’s English Department. “Courtney has helped design a cultural competencies curriculum for Ohio’s first-year writing classes and generously shares her experience with making the classroom a comfortable, inclusive space.”
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