Andrew Kinney

In the classroom, I work to ensure every student is valued and every voice is heard. College is an exciting yet, sometimes, intimidating time in our life. As a professor, my role is to encourage, mentor, and advocate for students. Personally, I feel I benefit the most when students surprise me, write something interesting, or challenge me or others to some new point of view. We have a lot to learn from each other and there’s no better place to get started than the college classroom.

I was a pretty big nerd in school. I loved—and still love—reading about philosophy, political science, literature, religion, and technology. Besides these interests, I enjoy watching and playing baseball with my kids. Social media, music, and movies sometimes feel like major distractions, but how amazing is it to live in an era when we can publish our ideas, discover new movies or music, and with a little practice make the new media that others read, watch, or listen to? We may be the first generation to have the resources and skills for creating new messages and accomplishing new goals.

These distractions may be why I care so much about rhetoric. Rhetoric is the careful consideration of and communication with different audiences. Rhetoric requires us to respond to and create messages and meanings. The rhetorical situations in which we find ourselves explain why we think, feel, or act the way we do. Whether I’m teaching first or second year composition, introduction to film or early American literature, or some other class,I’m invested in helping students think about their situations so they might become ethical consumers and producers of meaning.I hope to see you in class soon!