Time to fess up a little: My freshmen had reached that point in the semester where they clearly felt the grammar and punctuation was getting tedious (because they were still getting so beaten up over it). So for their most recent assignment, I told them to write a letter to the editor arguing that good grammar and punctuation were unnecessary. In ( Read more... )

From the SBU PR Office:( Read on, Macduff.... )

ST. BONAVENTURE, N.Y., May 28, 2013 - Chris Mackowski, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at St. Bonaventure University, has co-authored three new Civil War books published this month.
( Read on, Macduff... )

A central metaphor in my teaching is the phrase "Take the time to take the walk." I guide the students on a walk on the first day of class, and then we go through a series of activities that develop that into a metaphor for writing--but it takes some time to internalize. For their final paper, I asked them to tell me what that phrase now means to ( Read more... )

One of our favorite meditations at the Mountain is "Be still and know that I am God." And that's juxtaposed in a very immediate and intimate way with the idea of community, where we can say, "Be together and know that we are with God." The Mountain combines that silence and solitude with fellowship and community in profound ways.

We've had an ongoing debate ever since I came to the J-School about the usefulness of our Latin & Greek etymology requirement. We used to require two courses and now require one, but I have crusaded to have even that eliminated in favor of something more directly relevant like, say, grammar or even business. Trust me, I love words as much as the ( Read more... )

"Once in a while, my dad drags me to church, and I get a peaceful feeling when I'm there. That's what your class is like. Your class is like Writing Church."

-- from a student in the freshman writing class I team teach with felixwas

I got word from the Provost first thing this morning that I'd been selected as a recipient of this year's Senior Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Publication. It's an award I've aspired to someday win, and with the book deal and all the magazine publications in the last year, I'd hoped this would be a good time. Pauline put in a ( Read more... )

One of the best parts about this job for me comes when I have the opportunity to say nice things about good students. This happens most frequently when I write letters of recommendation, but I'll occasionally have to speak on the phone to folks who are doing reference checks ( Read more... )

On Tuesday, I walked over to my pop culture class literally not knowing what I was going to do for the day. I knew we had to discuss Neal Gabler's book Life: The Movie but wasn't sure how to attack it. I decided, when I got to the classroom, that I'd start with a quote from page 9:

"It is not any ism but entertainment that is arguably the most ( Read more... )