Introductory Post

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog. As you can see, I have interests in a variety of pedagogy matters and am looking forward to adding a section on L2 matters.

My name is Nathan Serfling. I am currently a third-year part-time PhD student at Old Dominion University, where my emphases are rhetoric and writing studies, and writing pedagogy. I have special interests in online writing instruction, rhetorical theory and writing pedagogy, and faculty development and other administrative matters. I am also a full-time instructor at South Dakota State University (SDSU). There, I teach Composition I and Composition II, as well as the occasional Introduction to Literature.

SDSU is a mid-sized (about 12,000-13,000 students) Division I school. However, the population is relatively homogenous—mostly middle-class, white students from South Dakota and the surrounding states. My experiences with multilingual students have been relatively limited as a result. I have had only a handful of multilingual students over the years. While I did have more interactions with multilingual students as a tutor in our university’s writing center, even these were experiences were few and limited in scope. As SDSU continues to grow, though, we are attracting a much more diverse student population, and I anticipate that my limited experiences will multiply quickly.

This brings me to the focus of my blog in this section. My home department is small and consists of mostly literature faculty. These faculty teach some sections of Composition II, and GTAs, adjuncts, and full-time instructional staff teach the bulk of Composition I and Composition II courses. I am hoping to use my readings here to explore issues of faculty development (both within departments and across the university) regarding L2 pedagogy with the ultimate goal of extending the pedagogical skills and practices of my colleagues.