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The following statements were initially written in response to a call for applications from the Rheroric Society of America's IDEA Emerging Scholars Program.

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A Note on Mentorship
Rhetorical Studies mentors are often hard to find due to their demanding professional commitments. Despite these constraints, I have receieved instruction from many conscientious thinkers in the Liberal Arts tradition. Lawyer-turned-professor Drew M. Loewe introduced me to rhetorical studies. David Blakesley, prolific publisher and professor, has shown me the value of the classics while scholars like Professor Kelley Coblentz Bautch have made arguments using rhetorical theories of memory and place. I am committed to mentoring students as I have been mentored. Passing the baton to the next generation is of great value.

About Me
I am a neighbor, bookworm, award-winning English teacher, gardener, and river rat from Texas who calls Upstate South Carolina home. Raised in Italian-American and first-generation Polish cultural contexts, my intellectual interest in global Englishes and argument primarily focuses on space and place as envisioned by rhetorical study and alienation, or human experiences of loneliness. Incidentally, community and creativity are essential to my teaching and writing practices. I pull from writing conventions used by writers in the genres of non-fiction investigative long-form magazine writing (Aviv, Colloff, Remnick) and the American short story (Murakami, Saunders, Dahl). Interdisciplinary studies to me represents the coming together of knowledge with rhetoric as a key ingredient.

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Areas of interest: First-year writing, global Englishes, creativity, positive habits, universities and colleges in southeastern US, cross-cultural rhetoric, composition studies