Profile Comparison

Kristin Arola speaks on multimodality in the classroom. Participants try creating multimodal projects and discuss

assessment practices.

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Faculty and Staff Profiles

Dr. Jenny Sheppard

Dr. Jenny Sheppard was planning to be an elementary school teacher before accidentally happening upon the field of rhetoric. While waiting for her credential program to begin, Dr. Sheppard took a graduate class in literacy that she says “changed everything.” “The class was so much more challenging and engaging than my other coursework and helped me to see that what we traditionally think of as literacy was, in fact, much more complex,” Dr. Sheppard reflects. She joined SDSU’s RWS department as a lecturer in 2014 and recently received the 2018–2019 College of Arts and Letters Excellence in Teaching Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences (for tenure or tenure-track faculty).

Starting in fall 2019, she became a tenure-track faculty member.

Of the 12 different classes Dr. Sheppard has taught in RWS so far—ranging from first-year writing courses to a graduate course in digital rhetoric and literacy—one of her favorites has been RWS 414, Rhetoric in Visual Culture. In the class, she has students examine visual texts such as monuments, photographs, advertising, and visual identity. “Most students come into the course with a lot of experience reading words from a rhetorical perspective,” Dr. Sheppard comments, “but they haven’t usually had the opportunity and tools to think about how the visual also works to inform and persuade, so it’s exciting to see those skills develop.”

Students describe Dr. Sheppard’s teaching style as flexible, as she encourages students to write on their own interests, and as accessible and invested in their success and growth. Dr. Sheppard explains her approach to teaching as “engaged but laidback.” While she is interested in sharing a lot of material with her students and expects them to work hard in the class, she purposefully “shape[s]…classes around activities that give students the chance to test out ideas and to apply course concepts to topics of interest to them.” She wishes that she had known as an undergraduate that it’s okay to “ask faculty about pushing the boundaries of class projects” in order to better fit personal interests. One of her

( Department of Rhetoric and Writing Studies, San Diego State University ) ( https://rhetoric.sdsu.edu/news_and_events/newsletter_s2019.htm#dierker )

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professors at Chico State, Tom Fox, was influential to her current pedagogical philosophy; he helped her understand that it is important not to take a single approach to cultivate student learning but to constantly look for multiple ways to ensure students’ success. The New London Group is another influence that Dr. Sheppard cites—these literary scholars support a pedagogical framework that combines direct instruction, hands-on practice, and reflection.

For Dr. Sheppard, one of the best parts of working at SDSU is the diversity of the students she gets to work with. As the department’s classes are relatively small and the field of rhetoric permits students to pursue topics of their own choice, she enjoys getting to know her students, their backgrounds, and their interests—and she values learning from them throughout the class as well. The biggest challenge is finding time to give detailed feedback on student work, which is an integral aspect of her teaching style.

Research topics that are of special interest to Dr. Sheppard include the study of digital and multimodal rhetorics and their integration in the classroom. Currently, she is working on one project about infographics as a multimodal genre that can be useful in teaching digital composition; the genre incorporates literacies and rhetorical practices relevant to communication in the 21st century, which makes it an ideal learning tool for students. Another study she is engaged in is an examination of “tactical communication practices in online social media medical support groups that help users assert more agency in navigating their treatment.”

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