English: Introducing a Bigger World

By Edward Cheever II

April 24, 2008

Walk into the Mabee Center at Southwestern Adventist University and at first you might think you walked into the music building. The halls, offices and classrooms ring with the sounds of the University choir practicing for the next big event. Behind the music, however, you’ll find one of the most engaging, intellectual and fun departments on campus: the English department.

It becomes clear when talking to Judy Myers Laue, Andrew Woolley, Karl Wilcox, Susan Gardner or Renard Doneskey, that one of the first priorities of these five English professors is academic success. One of their first goals, and perhaps the most obvious one, is to raise students’ scores on the Senior Exit Exam. But that isn’t the sum of the English department’s aims.

“We’re trying to bring our own department to give our students practice at writing, to give them the technique to write better, to bring up their scores,” says Laue, department chair. “But obviously we’re not just teaching the pursuit of good scores. We want to introduce students to the bigger world of literature, to writing well, and to understanding themselves.”

English has an impact on the education of the student, not just in English classes, but in every classroom on campus. Reading well is essential, in a variety of fields. “If you can’t read, you can’t learn,” says Woolley.  
Writing is also essential across wide fields of education, including such disparate departments as biology, history and religion. “If you can’t write, then you can’t express those ideas you are trying to express,” Woolley explains. “You don’t have the words. You don’t have the capability.”

Writing is essential to most jobs. Students often don’t realize just how important the skill of writing is in their future employment. “Writing helps you get a job, maintain a job, and move up in a job,” says Gardner. “The ability to write well shows the ability to think clearly and critically.”

The most important thing that English offers the Southwestern student, however, is scope. Reading literature enlarges the reader’s perspective of the world. It provides the ability to look at social issues and life itself in completely new ways.

With English departments present at virtually every college and university in North America, Southwestern’s English department has some unique attributes to its advantage. One is its smaller size. In larger universities, the department faculty may not even know each other, much less their many students. When the number of students remains small, the professor can relate his knowledge of the subject to the students in a much more direct way.

Its greatest apparent strength, however, is the department’s stellar assembly of professors. The English professors at Southwestern are all unique, yet they all share a commitment to educate students in the field of English.

“I view the English department as one of three flagship areas at our school,” says Eric Anderson, University president. “I can say without exaggeration that it is one of the best English departments in the denomination.”  
Each of the professors has worked hard to get to this position. The department offers more than 100 combined years of teaching experience, and not one of those years has been ill spent, according to Laue.
For the past nine years, Laue has overseen improvement and expansion of the English department while maintaining its quality of teaching. Out of her 25 years as a teacher, Laue spent 11 of those years at Southwestern Adventist University. And while she has specialized in 19th century American literature and 18th century British literature, she tends to hold all fields of English in high regard.

Woolley specializes in or has expanded into such diverse fields as renaissance literature, Victorian literature, history of the English language and world literature. He also directs the Southwestern honors program. He has served as a Southwestern English professor for 30 years, under five college and university presidents and at least nine academic deans.

Doneskey, current director of Southwestern’s annual drama production, has spent nine of his 20 teaching years at Southwestern Adventist University. He specializes in 20th century literature, and especially likes Faulkner and Walker Percy. Doneskey’s interests are diverse, and his commitment to teaching has led him to many places including China, where he taught for a year.

Wilcox was educated largely in Great Britain, and brings with him firsthand perspective from that country, the source of most English-language history. His specialty is primarily medieval literature, particularly Chaucer, though he has expanded his interests into the literary aspects of the Bible.

Though she has only been at Southwestern for a year, Gardner has already had a profound impact on the department, largely because of her initiative and vision in bringing to life the new writing center, The Write Spot. She brings with her 35 years of teaching, combined with experience with special writing programs for state governments and other institutions. She is also a co-editor of two books on writing.

The English department offers cultural and academic life to the Southwestern campus with the annual drama production and the Write Spot. The drama production at Southwestern has been around for many years and has been directed by a variety of professors. Currently Doneskey directs the play, with his most recent production being Moliere’s Tartuffe. 

This year’s performance will be The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde.  Even though each performance receives great praise from the audience, the actors and Doneskey seem to have the most fun. “It’s really a thrill to see a long-term project go through all the stages from read-through and casting, to the last night’s production,” says Doneskey.

The Write Spot offers an important element to the English department and the University. First conceptualized by Gardner, the new writing center now resides in the Chan Shun Centennial Library. Students can go each evening to receive tutoring aid from both fellow students and teachers. The center was established to support and supplement the writing on campus, bearing some of the burden teachers face, while simultaneously strengthening students to meet their own challenges. 

Gardner wants the center to send a clear message: “This is where writing goes on, we value writing here, we work with writing here, we enjoy writers, we enjoy writing. Let’s get to work.”
The drive behind the department, like the drive behind the university itself, is the dedication to God and the spiritual health of the students. 

“Although I teach English Lit, my primary objective is to teach it in ways that a student’s Christianity is developed. So nothing I teach and nothing I do in life is disconnected from faith,” says Wilcox.
The department also believes that English is an effective tool for exploring and understanding the Christian faith.

“I think literature raises questions about culture, roles of people in relation to themselves, to society and to God,” says Woolley. “As a Christian institution, our students need to be able to understand and explain our faith, and I think the English department does that.”

The ability to talk about God on campus and in the classroom is the number one advantage Christian schools have over public education, a benefit Southwestern Adventist University’s department of English puts a high value on.

Besides, as Laue notes, “If you can’t talk about God at all, it’s really not that much fun.”

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