Laura Blankenship, who graduated from the doctoral program in 2007, has pursued an exciting career path in academia that has not involved the traditional tenure-track route. Read our interview with her, below, in which she reviews how she came to our graduate program in English, decided on a technology-focused dissertation topic for her English Ph.D., and then explored a range of professional positions, most recently stepping into the role of Founding Head for the San Francisco Girls’ School, an all-girls school that emphasizes a STEM curriculum.
You originally earned your undergraduate degree in English from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, graduating in 1990. You resumed your academic career in 1997, when you began your English M.A. program here at the University of Arkansas. How did you end up deciding to go on for a graduate degree in English, after a few years off, and what made you decide to come here to Fayetteville?
After Rhodes, I actually started in an M.F.A. program in poetry at Indiana University. After two-and-a-half years in that program, I decided to take a break from school and took a corporate job in sales. I’d also met my husband, who was finishing a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Just before we moved to Arkansas, we had our first child. It was while I was at home with him in Arkansas that I did two things. One, I decided to go back to school to pursue an M.A. in English. Two, I learned how to program. Both of these would be important to my future career.
In the abstract of your doctoral dissertation, “Interactivism: Transforming the Composition Classroom through Blogging,” you write, “In this dissertation, I will describe the Interactivist approach to teaching writing that takes advantage of the interconnected nature of blogs to build a collaborative learning environment. I argue that the use of blogs in the writing classroom creates a collaborative learning environment that provides a positive framework for developing writing skills.” This was in 2007, so you were ahead of the curve with your emphasis upon blogging as a pedagogical tool! How did you come to decide on this as the focus of your dissertation, and what was it like to argue for the value of blogging in the classroom at that time (versus if you were making the same argument now)? Was there much secondary research to support that position, or did you have to rely heavily on IRB research you collected yourself?
By the time I decided on my dissertation topic, I was using blogs to teach at Bryn Mawr College. My husband and I were actually co-teaching a course called “Web of Influence” where we explored the sociology and technology behind the Internet and the development of social media. In what ways, we wondered, did social media change our social interactions, how we write and how we approach our audience? How do these new technologies impact issues of censorship and authority? It was such a rich area to explore. It was on a car ride home that my husband and I were discussing all the interesting ways we thought blogs were impacting our students’ writing and ideas (and lives!) that I conceived of making it my dissertation topic. Then I called Pat Slattery to see if he would be my advisor.
It was very difficult to find secondary research on blogs. Most of what was out there was written from or by the technology industry perspective. But Digital Humanities as a field was developing and I was able to find resources through people at the forefront of that field. Much of the work was on static web pages or discussion boards not blogs (though blogs had been around since 2001, they weren’t mainstream yet). I was really interested in audience so I dug back to some older research in that area, an area that hadn’t seen a lot of attention in a while. The best research came from my students, so I got IRB approval (from two institutions) to interview my students and, with some fancy programming, analyzed all the blog information we had from our class blog. I wanted to figure out how student writing on the blog impacted their later work, especially in the final portfolio they submitted. This won’t surprise anyone who teaches English, perhaps, but the biggest factor in improving their outcomes turned out to be how many external links they engaged with in their work. Bringing other sources into their writing and analyzing them, participating in conversation, really, with other sources, turned out to improve their writing overall.
Since you graduated with your Ph.D. in English from the University of Arkansas, you have had a very interesting career, one that has not involved the tenure-track professional path. Instead, you’ve specialized in educational technology, working in that area in positions with the National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (now known as ITHAKA) and at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. From 2010 until June of this year, you’ve worked in various roles–including Chair of the Computer Science Department and, most recently, Assistant Head of the School–at The Baldwin School, a pre-K through 12th grade school for girls also located in Pennsylvania. Since your three degrees are all in English, how did you figure out that this alternative to the more traditional career path for humanities doctoral alumni was the right one for you?
I had always had an interest in technology, since 7th grade taking a computer science class and growing up with video games. As I mentioned above, after my move to Arkansas, I learned how to program, mostly building websites to share pictures of my kids and pets. I used that skill to build course web pages for my classes at the U of A. This was before Blackboard, Canvas and all the other systems we now have to manage all of this. Back then–in 1999–it was all writing HTML. I ended up teaching other U of A graduate students how to write HTML so they could also put their courses online.
I also often asked my students to do technology-related projects. I had students join discussion lists and analyze the rhetoric. I had them build their own websites, create videos, even create animations. When I briefly taught at Villanova, I was the only English Instructor who requested the computer lab for class. So integrating technology with teaching was something I did in my own classes, and then, ultimately, I made a career out of teaching other faculty how to do the same. For me, using technology in teaching was about really interrogating pedagogy and trying to meet students where they were and have them think critically about the ways they interacted with technology.
I also felt like it was natural as someone in Rhetoric and Composition to be exploring new ways of communication and the impact of those on teaching and learning and our lives as human beings. I also found a great cohort of other graduate students and early career faculty working in educational technology or digital humanities in different ways. They all had blogs. We all read each other’s blogs. Now, most of us just follow each other on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, but there was a wide range of people writing about their use of technology in their teaching or their research related to social media. I connected with people in departments of Education, English, Psychology, History, Philosophy, and Computer Science. It was like having an online salon of people to toss around ideas with. So I knew I wasn’t the only one with this interest and really benefited from having this wide range of thinkers to learn from. While I marvel myself at how I landed into teaching Computer Science, I think my path through the humanities to CS is crucial. Never have we had more need to understand technology from a humanistic and philosophical standpoint than we do today.
You are currently recruiting the first class of students for a 9th through 12th grade school you have recently founded, the San Francisco Girls’ School. Your first students will begin attending next year. How did you make the decision to start this school–one that offers a STEM-focused curriculum, no less–and why San Francisco? What have been your biggest challenges to engaging in this entrepreneurial effort (other than having to deal with COVID), and what have been your most rewarding experiences?
I was hired to be the Founding Head of School by the two co-founders of the school, girls’ school graduates themselves who saw a need for an all-girls school in San Francisco. I’ve spent the last almost 20 years of my career in girls’ schools and have come to love them and appreciate the valuable space they provide for young women to develop their own authentic selves. I think part of why I didn’t end up in a more STEM career earlier was the subtle and not-so-subtle discrimination I faced in my STEM courses in high school and into college. No one really nurtured my interest in technology or in math and science, even though I was just as good at those as English. I don’t want that to happen to any other young woman. Beginning with my time at Bryn Mawr, I’ve really loved being a mentor to young women, helping them see pathways into STEM that might be non-traditional (that might involve a Ph.D in English, for example!). Advocacy for women has always been important to me, and when I landed in all-girls education in a technology-focused career, I really found my groove. San Francisco is the heart of innovation and the tech industry, which suffers from a huge gender gap. Women make up only about 25% of the technology workforce. Having a school for girls focused on STEM is one small way to help close that gap.
COVID has definitely presented challenges, from fundraising to hosting events for prospective students. The biggest challenge is getting people to consider something new and different. And there are a few people who don’t see value in single-sex education. I’m definitely leveraging my writing and communication skills regularly! It’s also hard to be managing so many aspects of the work. I’m managing our website and social media. I talk to parents and students. I’m creating marketing materials and managing the budget. I put up flyers and send out mailings. It’s difficult not just to get it all done, but to switch gears fairly often and to take time to think bigger picture and strategically.
The highlights have been conversations with students. I’ve met some amazing and interesting young women who are wise and funny and creative and who I know have endless potential. They don’t always recognize their own strengths and that’s what I love about working with them, being a part of helping them develop those.
To conclude, I often ask interviewees 1) what they like to do for fun and 2) what they would recommend as a good book to read and/or film (or miniseries) to watch. Could you make a suggestion or two in this regard?
For fun, I do a few things. I like to bake and cook, but really only have time for that on the weekends. I’m currently trying to make a pie or tart every other week or so. I’ve made three so far. I also like to go for walks. I’m just blocks from the Golden Gate Park and from another amazing green belt. Both of them offer green spaces and trails that I like to meander through. And, I still play the occasional video game, most recently, Among Us, which I play with my kids.
I read mostly non-fiction these days and try to read a book a week. The best two books I’ve read recently are Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi and Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol. The first section of Stamped was like revisiting a seminar I had with Dot Stephens!
I’d like to say that my time at the University of Arkansas was really formative for me. I really appreciated the support of faculty like Dot Stephens, Pat Slattery, Joe Candido, Bill Quinn and others. There was a way in which they could challenge you and support you at the same time. I carry that with me to this day in how I approach my own teaching. My fellow graduate student classmates were also a key part of my time there. I remember grading and study sessions at coffee shops and conversations in offices about students we were worried about or how to approach teaching different texts. It was a tremendous community to be a part of.