English Language and Literature News

Hello! Hey! Hi! Wassup! (I can never figure out which greeting to use so. . . why not use all of them?!)

As you can see from the title, I’m Josie, the new student assistant for the amazing English department! (And the crowd in my head goes wild, LOL.) Anyways, I’m very excited for this school year! I’m also very grateful for the opportunity (has anybody else spelled “opportunity” wrong? I used to spell it “oppurtunity” for the longest time) to be working in this department....Click here to read more.

As the term finally comes to a close, we now have the chance to look back at all our hard work. This is the time for celebrating at a department showcase and nervously looking at your grades on Blackboard, calculating how badly you can fail that one exam and still pass. Or is that last bit just me? Regardless, during the last few weeks and especially finals week we get to reflect on the best and worst parts of the semester. This act of reflection was particularly on display at the London Study Abroad Website Presentation on Wed, May 8.

Over the spring break students from ENG 225 and ART 305 left the United States and traveled to London, UK for eight days. During that time the students curated information, photos, writing and other forms of media to bring back to the States and be used in the creation of an interactive travel website for public access. This website was completed and presented to the university and Office of International and Off-Campus Study on Wednesday May 8^that 3:30PM in the Claire Moore Room on Owings Mills campus.

The presentation was a total success! Each student had the opportunity to explain their portion of the website. All students were required to design their own page and talk about their experience of the trip. Everyone did a wonderful job speaking about their trip experiences but two of the more memorable parts of the presentation came from Samantha Salvemini and Kelly Schwager. During the presentation, Samantha spoke about the new and old aspects of London City, but the coolest part of her section of the website was that she produced a short film of herself and fellow student, Victoria Doda, telling their stories of getting meaningful tattoos while abroad. One aspect of the website Kelly chose to produce was the itinerary page. She walked the guests and her fellow students through the events of the London trip. This not only immersed the viewers in the experience but brought back strong memories of the trip for her peers.

The experiences shared by the students and faculty that went on this trip will clearly stay with them for a very long time and this celebration brought everyone together to learn and reminisce. Congratulations ENG 225 and ART 305 students on a beautiful website and all your other hard work this term.

During the ENG-331 Design Your Career class, alumni come to offer their perspectives on the English major, where it has taken them in their careers, and give advice on different career paths. A number of the English alumni end up working in many fields with wildly varying career paths. This semester's Career Speakers Series has brought in five alumni, Rachel Lewis, who works as an Associate Editor at Agora Financial, Christine Leggett, who works as a Proposal Manager at Valiant Solutions, Katie Ballance, who works as a Marketing Director at Junior Achievement, Tom Murphy, who works as a Video Game Developer for FableLabs, JuiceBox Games, Zynga, and Big Huge Games, and Luke Driscoll, who works as a Managing Director at CCS Fundraising. 

The Career Speaker Series is one of the many beneficial aspects of the English Major. Dr. Laura Snyder says, "The speakers give the students a sense of daily life in a particular career, and they also give students advice on how to find jobs, write resumes, interview, and build skills in each job to lead to the next level in their career.  The speakers bring real life experience into the classroom." The most essential part of the Career Speaker Series is showing how our alumni have built their skills to reach the next level of their careers. This can either be moving up in a company or enhancing their resumes to move onto a new career path. Students get the opportunity to see that their English degree can take them to a variety of places and they will have the chance to grow and succeed beyond what they can currently imagine.

[Image from fool.com]

As much as Stevenson focuses on personal growth in academics and leadership skills we are also encouraged to take those skills out into our community. Whether it be through the internships we choose or Greek Life students are thrust into the world and asked to help. This semester two classes of English students have taken this spirit of service a step further and brought it into the classroom and succeeded....

We often talk about campus-life events hosted by the English Department, but it’s rare we shine any love on events hosted by other groups at Stevenson. It’s not that we don’t participate or appreciate the time and effort it takes to put them on but as this is the English Department Blog it should be pretty self-explanatory why we don’t. But, today we are going to explore one really cool recent event hosted by the Center for Diversity & Inclusion....