Mentorship Information

Each year, the department offers a handful of graduate research and graduate teaching mentorships, contingent upon Graduate School funding and applications from sponsoring faculty members. These mentorships allow interested MA and MFA students to work closely on a research project with a faculty member or to team-teach with a faculty member an undergraduate course in literature, rhetoric, or creative writing while receiving training in course design, pedagogy, and assessment. Interested students should contact the graduate program manager for details about specific mentorships and their application deadlines.

Mentorships: Winter 2025

Ben Crosby

Research Mentorship, 10 hours per week
Textual scholarship mentorship: The graduate student will play a key, collaborative role in the preparation of a manuscript for publication. The project is an anthology of historical speeches, and it is currently under contract with the University of Illinois Press. The hired student will assess each speech in the anthology to ensure the authenticity of its source, the integrity of its copied version for the manuscript, and its variations from other versions. As needed, the student will also copyedit the speeches to make sure they match the original versions. The student will be compensated with a competitive wage, work closely with the project editors, and be recognized by name in the anthology's acknowledgements section.

Mentorships: Spring 2025

Jason Kerr

Teaching Mentorship, 13 hours per week

London Theatre Study Abroad: This mentorship will provide a qualified graduate student an opportunity to plan and deliver a literature course in a culturally and historically rich setting. The student will work closely with the professor preparing a syllabus and assignments with a particular focus on the kind of experiential learning a study abroad program provides. The student will gain firsthand experience building a course from the ground up, participating in everything from text selection, scheduling, and assignment and rubric design, to lesson planning and delivery. The student is required to enroll in and pay for the study abroad program, though there are some funding opportunities through the department and college.