The UCSB Writing Program is pleased to welcome Dr. Michelle Grue as Assistant Teaching Professor in a joint appointment with the College of Creative Studies. Dr. Grue has been teaching for the UCSB Writing Program since 2016 and for CCS for the last year as the Writing and Literature Fellow. She earned her B.A. in Creating Writing from Pepperdine University and her Ph.D. in Education from the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her interdisciplinary research in Education and Writing draws on Black feminism to investigate diversity issues in academia, creative writing, and digital writing. The Journal of Multimodal Rhetoric recently published an article she wrote exploring the rhetorical performances in the dress practices of Black women professors and an essay about Afrofuturism as a frame and resource for literacy instruction.
Dr. Grue’s teaching philosophy was shaped by her undergraduate experience in which she never saw herself represented in front of the classroom. Dr. Grue feels a strong sense of responsibility to teach in a way that serves all the ways her students diversify the classroom. She is guided by three research-based concepts: audience matters, culturally relevant pedagogy adds to academic rigor, and teaching rigorously requires academic playfulness. She is currently teaching Approaches to University Writing and Academic Writing and anticipates teaching Writing and the Research Process, Multimedia Writing and Writing and Gender Studies in upcoming quarters.