Jeff Sommers

sommerjd@miamioh.edu

  • Emeritus Professor of English

Education

  • Ph.D., English, New York University 1980
  • M.A., English, New York University
  • B.A., English, University of Pennsylvania

Teaching Interests

  • Composition
  • Writing assessment
  • Scholarship of teaching and learning
  • Problem-based learning and literary study

Research Interests

  • Composition
  • Writing Assessment

Selected Publications

  • “The Writer’s Options” 8th ed. New York: Longman’s, 2008. With Max Morenberg.
  • “Illustrating the Reading Process: The In-Class Read Aloud Protocol,” Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 32 (March 2005), 299-307.
  • “Two-Year College English Faculty and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: The Journey Awaits,” Teaching English in the Two-Year College. 32 (Sept. 2004) 14-25.
  • “Audiotaped Response and the Two-Year Campus Writing Classroom: The Two-Side Desk, the ‘Guy with the Ax,’ and the Chirping Birds.” Jeff Sommers and Cheryl Mellen. Teaching English in the Two-Year College, 31 (2003), 25-39.
  • “A Comprehensive Plan to Respond to Student Writing,” Practice in Context: Situating the Work of Writing., eds. Cindy Moore and Peggy O’Neill. NCTE Press, , 2002, 263-273.
  • “Spoken Response: Space, Time, and Movies of the Mind,” in Writing with Elbow, ed. Pat Belanoff, Marcia Dickson, Sheryl I. Fontaine, Charles Moran. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 2002, 172-186.
  • “Where We Are Is Who We Are, But It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way”: Two- and Four-Year Faculty Discourse Communities." Karen Powers-Stubbs and Jeff Sommers. InPolitics and Writing Instruction at the Two-Year Campus. Keith Kroll and Barry Alford, eds. Portsmouth: Heinemann/Boynton-Cook, 2001.
  • “Hero or Villain, Blunderer or Bungler?: Caught in the Middle Pedagogically” InBlundering for Change: Errors and Expectations in Critical Pedagogy eds. John Paul Tassoni and William H. Thelin. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 2000. 115-127.
  • Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jeff Sommers. “Professing at the Fault Lines: Composition at Open Admissions Institutions.” College Composition and Communication, 50.3 (February 1999), pp. 97-121
  • New Directions in Portfolio Assessment , co-edited with Donald A. Daiker, Gail Stygall, and Laurel Black. Boston: Heinemann, Boynton-Cook, 1994.
  • “Grades and Context: An Experiment and a Commentary.” Teaching English in the Two-Year College. 20 (Dec. 1993), 263-274.

Web Publications

  • “Critical Reading Outcomes and Literary Study in a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Literature Course” Mountain Rise: An Electronic Journal Dedicated to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Vol 3 No. 6 (2006).http://mountainrise.wcu.edu/index.php/MtnRise/article/view/86
  • “Using Digitized Audio Response to Student Writing,” 2005
  • “The Hegemony of the Final Exam: Problem-Based Learning in the Literature Classroom,” Inventio , Spring 2005, Vol. 7, issue 1.

Grants and Awards

  • Editor, Teaching English in the Two-Year College (an NCTE journal) 2006-2011
  • Distinguished Educator Award, College of Arts and Science, Miami University, 1993
  • E. Phillips Knox Teaching Award, Miami University, 2004
  • Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Fellowship, 2003-2004

Work in Progress

I am currently at work with Max Morenberg on the 8th edition of The Writer’s Options, a composition/style textbook. I am continuing my research into student learning outcomes in literature courses that emphasize Problem-Based Learning. I will be assuming the editorship of Teaching English in the Two-Year College, a National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) journal, and thus am working on the transition from the previous editor.