Alumni News and Notes

Update 10/22/08

Susan Johnson (M.A. English Teaching 1998) has been named Washington State Teacher of the Year. She teaches English at Cle Elum-Roslyn High School and is a co-director of the Central Washington Writing Project at CWU.

Update 10/8/08

Scott Klepach (B.A. English 2004, M.A. English 2006) has a full-time teaching position at Yakima Valley Community College. His novella Back to This Land was published by Inkwater Books in 2007

Melissa Green (M.A. English 2005) has been Director of the Upward Bound grant program at Yakima Valley Community College since January, 2006.

Updates 2007-2008

Anne Bahde (M.A. English 2007) is working as head of special collections at San Diego State University.

Aaron Baker (B.A. English 1994; M.A. English 1997) received the 2007 Bakeless Poetry Prize for his collection Mission Work. After leaving CWU, he received an MFA from the University of Virginia and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing at Stanford University. He currently teaches literature and writing at James Madison University.

Miriam Bocchetti (M.A. English 2006) is now the Director of the CAMP program on campus.

Eric Benson (M.A. English 2007) is working as a high school teacher.

Janalynn Bliss (B.A. English 2000) recently visited campus. She has completed an MFA at the University of Southern California and is currently teaching in their Writing program.

Prairie Brown (M.A. English 2004) has been appointed as the Writing Consultant for the CWU Des Moines Center. She will be in charge of the Writing Center at Des Moines.

Corey Dosch (M.A. English 2005) is in the doctoral program at Syracuse, and has won a fellowship from the English department there to attend the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University this summer.

Kiffen Dosch (B.A. English 2003, M.A. English 2005) has a teaching position in the Writing Program at Syracuse.

Jessica Durgan (M.A. English 2006) is working on her doctoral degree at Texas A&M. Her article "Framing Heritage: The Role of Cinematography in Pride & Prejudice" appeared in the journal Persuasions for Summer, 2007.

Debbie Lee (M.A. English 1991) is a Professor of English at Washington State University.

Katherine Mason (B.A. English 1993; M.A. English 1995) is an Attorney in Seattle.

Ryan Minch is working as a writer for a software company, preparing marketing materials, website content, documentation, and press releases.

Lucas Peters (M.A. English 2007) is working as a tutor in San Francisco and applying to the University of San Francisco to get a teaching M.A.

Gary Rees (M.A. English 2005) was offered a teaching position with the Houston Learning Academy (a private high school) during the summer break from his Ph.D program at University of Houston.

Jennifer Settle (M.A. English 2007) works for World Vision (an NGO out of Washington, D.C.). She recently got married and returned to Ellensburg, working long-distance for World Vision. She is considering applying to our non-tenure-track pool or for high school positions next year.

Amber Vargas (M.A. TESOL 2007) is now working at the Yakima Public Library

Mary Kay Wegner (B.A. 1988) is Director of Information Technology Services at Renton Technical College.

Shannon Wilson (M.A. English 2007) is working on her doctoral degree at Texas A&M.