Jeff Fearnside

Bio

I’ve taught for most of the past thirteen years, including seven years full-time at the college/university level, and have been connected with higher education in one form or another over that entire time.

Currently I’m a Learning Coach with the TreeHouse Learning Community in Prescott, Ariz. I’m excited to be working with this innovative organization, which helps students recovering from addiction enter or return to higher education. I came to this position after two years at Prescott College, where I taught writing and was managing editor of its national literary journal Alligator Juniper.

For the previous two years, I taught a variety of classes at Western Kentucky University: Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, Introduction to Literature, Introduction to College Writing, and Writing in the Disciplines. As a Visiting Assistant Professor my second year, I was nominated for a Faculty Award for Teaching, one of that institution’s highest honors.

I taught for two full years (2002–2004) through the U.S. Peace Corps’ TEFL Program as a university instructor at the Academy of Languages in Shymkent, Kazakhstan, later returning at their request for the Fall 2005 semester.

In-between my two tenures there, from October 2004 to October 2005, I managed the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. This prestigious U.S. State Department-funded program sends professionals from former Soviet states in Eurasia to study at the graduate level in the United States.

Working with the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs through the U.S. embassies in Almaty and Bishkek, I oversaw the recruiting, interviewing, and testing of applicants and the pre-departure orientation and training of Muskie Fellows in my two-country region.

After graduating with my MFA, I worked for two years (2000–2002) at Washington State University as a writer for the WSU Foundation, editor for the WSU Press, and instructor in the Department of English.

From 1998 to 2000, while in Eastern Washington University’s Creative Writing Graduate Program (now the Inland Northwest Writer’s Center), I worked first as assistant director and then director of Writers in the Community.

This innovative project oversees the training and placement of Eastern Washington University master’s candidates in Creative Writing teaching positions throughout the Inland Northwest, either as volunteers or for classroom credit. Placements include corrections facilities, hospitals, nursing homes, schools, shelters, and other community organizations.

My primary teaching assignment was at West Valley High School in Spokane, Wash., where I taught Creative Writing weekly to two honors humanities classes for two quarters (Fall 1998 and Winter 1999) in addition to designing and leading WITC’s largest workshops.

Curriculum Vitae (coming soon)

My Writing

Teaching Experience

Me with students at Shymkent

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