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Some Sentiments About 20 Years at Stevenson
*** Last week I received an email from human resources about celebrating 20 years at Stevenson University. And I used to think the 13 years I spent at the Baltimore Orioles was a long time. When I taught my very first semester at Stevenson in January of 2000, I was pregnant with my son, Matthew, and was hired as an adjunct professor. Now, Matthew is a junior in college. When you look at it through that lens, a long time has passed. I moved into full-time teaching in 2008, when Stevenson changed its name from Villa Julie College to Stevenson University. Prior to my time at Stevenson, I began teaching…
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What I’ve Learned So Far as a Professor During the Coronavirus Pandemic
I’m guessing this particular post is going to be an ongoing work in progress with additions made to it regularly. You see, we are all learning, students and faculty. The decision to move online took only a matter of days once we knew the severity of the coronavirus outbreak and what its potential could be for our community at Stevenson University. Within a three-day span, we learned we were closing and we instituted online practices for faculty. Our university moved swiftly, and there was a ton of support offered from many: from our president and administrators; from our technology folks; from our department chairs and deans; and from each other.…
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The Move to Online Learning and Its Benefits
A few months ago, no one could have predicted the serious state we would be in as the coronavirus affects the world. I looked back at my camera roll this morning, and it’s filled with photos of local travel, time with friends and family, writing and promoting my books, and all the love I feel when I am on Stevenson’s campus. Now, as we are all quarantining ourselves to help flatten the curve, it looks as if this will be the new normal for some time. At Stevenson University, we took action quickly. We convened, came up with a plan to finish out the semester, and have put that plan…
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Podcast 10 – A Little About My Books & Storytelling to Help You Write Your Stories
*** So…in this podcast, I recorded it from my back porch, replete with airplanes flying overhead and a noisy crow in the background (I think I even got a little choked up—seriously—and coughed, only briefly). But that’s how we do it here on Steph’s Scribe: we keep it real. Real talk about real stuff with no edits. I thought I would take a moment to talk about my books and my storytelling. The intention here is to share how I got from point A to point B…and it is entirely meant to kick those of you who need it in the ass to get yourselves writing! So often we say…
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Interpersonal Communication Up Next
* This semester, I’ll be teaching two sections of Interpersonal Communication. I couldn’t be more pleased to reacquaint myself with this course, as I have not taught it in several years. This is such a wonderful foundational course in communication, and it is the basis on which relationships are built, caressed, fostered, and extended. The textbook for the course, The Interpersonal Communication Book, by Joseph A. DeVito, has offered new insights into the course whereby DeVito includes new information about how we communicate online (just as I am doing here). Online communication has become such a large part of our lives that it absolutely warrants attention. We have connections with…
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Thank You, Readers! I’m Flattered.
Today, I’m posting a quick THANK YOU to those of you wonderful readers who have purchased my book, attended my book launch last week, or tagged me in social media posts. It’s heartwarming to see so much interest in the book, and I’ve loved hearing from you and seeing the photos you’ve shared with your followers. I’m sharing some of the cool shots today with Steph’s Scribe readers! My newest book is available on Amazon.com and BN.com. Little Milestones, piggybacks onto my previous novel, Inn Significant, but can be read independently. However, if you loved Inn Significant, set in beautiful Oxford, Maryland, I hope you’ll enjoy Little Milestones, set in…
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Launching Little Milestones AND NaNoWriMo in one Evening on Campus
It’s been an unbelievably busy and exciting week! Launching LITTLE MILESTONES has been a thrill! I am so happy it’s available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and I’m doubly thrilled to be launching #NaNoWriMo this Tuesday on campus. It’s our third year of promoting writing on campus and getting students thinking about writing their own stories, be it fiction, nonfiction, or memoir. Students can also think about creating their stories on Wattpad or via a blog. When I was the age of my students, I would sit in class and dream of publishing something one day. At that time, you had to find an agent or publisher, or you…
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It’s Been A Helluva Week & A Little Milestone Is In The Books
The life of a writer: Wake up. Think about your writing. Edit your writing. Worry your novel isn’t good enough. Edit some more. Worry some more. Write more and delete more and rewrite the damn thing. Pretend like you don’t actually talk to your characters like a lunatic. Drink a lot of coffee and curse a lot of curses. Write. Edit. Write. Edit. Publish. Celebrate. Collapse. In all seriousness, I do want to collapse. And I’m just starting to think about the “celebrate” part, but I’m not quite there yet. Next week on campus, on Tuesday evening, we will officially LAUNCH my new novel, LITTLE MILESTONES, in conjunction with National…
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Year 19 and the Spring Semester
It’s hard to believe sometimes that 19 years have passed, but then I remember I have a freshman in college. I’ve been teaching at Stevenson University since 2000, when I was pregnant with my first child. I remember getting the job and being excited to be teaching at a four-year institution. I’d been teaching at well-respected community colleges in the area, and had loved my time with them. But teaching at Stevenson University (then Villa Julie College) was something I wanted to try. I had come to crossroads in my life. I had been teaching as an adjunct since 1993 and had left a full-time job in Baltimore at the…
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My Travel Writing Class and Their Work: Feeling Like a Proud Momma
* Wow. It’s hard to believe we have come to the end of another semester. My group of writers in our travel writing class published their stories today on our WordPress site called MORE THAN MARYLAND that I set up as a place to house of all of my All-Star Travelers who have taken the course at Stevenson University. As the students made some of their final presentations in class, a lot was discussed, such as what they learned from taking a travel writing course, which pieces from renowned travel writers were their favorites, how this course has helped them see travel differently, and what they will take with them…
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My Experience of Teaching a Travel Writing Course
I’ve been pretty fortunate to have the opportunity to teach a course called Special Topics in Travel Writing at Stevenson University, where I am a full-time professor. It’s one of my favorite courses to teach, and for years in another course I teach called Feature Writing, we cover travel writing as part of the curriculum. To be able to teach travel writing as a semester-long, intensive 400-level course is something I treasure. The students in my class are required to each pick a location relatively local to our region. Some explore cities or towns in Maryland, some in Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware, Washington, D.C. or any other destination that they…
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National Novel Writing Month Kick-off Next Week
Writers get excited about National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) like kids get excited about gifts at the holidays. It’s fun, it’s fulfilling, and it can be frenetic. Why? Because you’re trying to write a novel during the month of November. That’s 30 days, people. And if you can’t finish it, you can at least make some progress toward it. Novels such as The Night Circus and Water for Elephants were started during NaNoWriMo, so if that doesn’t motivate you to begin that work you’ve been thinking about for a while, nothing will. In conjunction with the Stevenson University Library and the communication club on campus, 47 House, I’ll be kicking…
