The WAC Team created this resource to help WAC GTA Award applicants write effective cover letters for their submissions, using text from 2015 WAC GTA Award winner Colleen Kennedy's cover letter.
- There are many ways to begin your cover letter
- Anecdotes, teaching theories that ground your practice, your motivations for teaching, etc
During my time at the Ohio State University, I was selected to participate in Stand-Up for Shakespeare America (SUSFA), a unique pedagogical and theatrical partnership between the Royal Shakespeare Company and OSU. The SUSFA tripartite manifesto is: See It Live, Do It On Your Feet, and Start It Earlier, and I have fully embraced this sort of experiential pedagogy in my own teaching. Engaging students in literature and writing through a variety of approaches lets them discover that “all the world is a stage” and that learning happens in many arenas, not just the classroom. I appeal to students in a diverse and multidisciplinary fashion focusing on experiential learning whenever possible. Incorporating multiple modes of instruction appeals to the various intelligences and ways of learning possessed by students, but close reading skills and frequent diverse writings remain the lodestars of my course goals.
- You should describe one or more pedagogies that are foundational to your teaching—what teaching do you embrace?
My own research is highly interdisciplinary and influences my teaching methods. While focused on Renaissance English literature, my methodologies bring together the processes of the literary scholar, the dramaturg, the cultural historian, and the anthropologist. Likewise, I tend to create courses that appeal broadly to a diverse population of students. In “You Are Who You Eat: Cannibalistic Thinking in Literature,” course readings navigated the Western canon from familiar fairy tales to Greco-Roman myths, from Biblical passages to Renaissance revenge tragedies, and finally to American frontier writings, read alongside and against anthropological case studies and legal precedents.
- And how is writing connected to your teaching?
In an extended analysis of the black comedy Ravenous that synthesized the taxonomy of cannibalistic rituals, students challenged assumptions about societal norms and the concept of the “Other.” In this final essay, students blend the concepts from religious, anthropological, sociological, and psychological secondary sources with a wealth of literary references to create a fluid comparative analysis of this highly synthetic and allusive film.
- Describe why you embrace that pedagogy or pedagogies
- Why do you think it matters in your teaching?
- Provide examples to show the committee what your teaching looks like in practice—how do you do what you do?
In non-literary composition courses at Ohio State, I create a course theme around a topic with which students may already have some familiarity as this allows for students to work closely with a chosen primary text throughout the semester, feeling more at ease to explore new concepts and theories from a familiar vantage point. For example, in a course I designed entitled “The Rhetoric of the Modern Meal” students chose a short primary source, such as a Burger King advertisement or PETA commercial to thoroughly analyze. As the semester progresses, students continue to revise their initial short analysis as they locate, evaluate, and incorporated relevant secondary sources, expanding the paper into a longer academic research paper.
- Analyze your examples—Help the committee make the connections
- What does your teaching achieve (or do) for students?
- How do your writing-related examples enhance the learning objectives and learning environment in general?
- If you have evidence of what resulted from your teaching, mention the evidence in your cover letter
- Ex: Student publications, writing or project contest winners, letters of recommendation that you wrote, etc
Two student projects were even included in a special online and print publication Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed (ed. D. Gilson, George Washington university), a special collection from the academic journal Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies.
- Provide a more comprehensive reflection on your teaching including what students do through writing
- Indicate how writing plays a crucial role in shaping the course/s you teach
- Highlight how writing is a tool that enhances learning across the course/s you teach
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Dos and Don’ts of Cover Letter Writing for the WAC GTA Award Application |
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E.g., As a result of my teaching, students devote their entire lives to studying X subject with enthusiasm.
E.g., Through writing, students learn about X subject.
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