Where Do We Go From Here? Interview with Professor Alyse Knorr

By: Carly Compesi, Staff Writer

Photo courtesy of Alyse Knorr

I was lucky enough to interview Alyse Knorr, an assistant professor in the English Department who teaches creative writing and Women and Gender Studies, about college life and beyond. Professor Knorr expressed profound gratitude for where she is now in her career at Regis, and also for the friends, mentors, and teachers who have been there since the start of her journey.

“I got my Bachelors in English with a double major in Journalism from Elon University in 2009,” Knorr began. “I’ve loved reading my whole life, since I was tiny. I loved reading and making books—I was making books with my dad before I could even write...so it’s funny how, sometimes you always know what you’re supposed to do, but then you get derailed from that.”

Knorr explained her attempt at a psychology major, having originally assumed that her love of literature and poetry stemmed from a fascination with feelings. “That was a really bad idea,” Knorr laughed. “I took my first psychology class and I was like, ‘Wait, why are we talking about numbers and graphs and charts?’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, this is a social science. We don’t just philosophize about feelings or talk about them. That’s what literature is for.’ And in my English classes, I was having so much fun writing and thinking about how language works and how to make beauty out of words. I mean, it’s incredible.”

After dropping the psychology major, Knorr ended up an English and print journalism double major, journalism being her “more realistic,” career-related back-up plan. Unfortunately, that back-up plan was formed at a time when journalism was struggling to contend with the digital age. This was further complicated by the economic recession, which started just a year before Knorr graduated.

“In the lobby of the journalism building, they had hundreds of copies of the two local papers, the USA Today, and the New York Times,” Knorr recalled. “We were supposed to read all of them everyday. That was our job as journalism majors. It was really fun. You’d go to the dining hall and you’d have your whole newspaper out on the table. And I remember, in 2009, looking at the stock market crashing and looking at what was happening in the journalism industry.

“I did an internship at a newspaper, and it was just scary. All they talked about was, ‘Get out while you can.’ Journalism is fine now, but at the time, it was just a crisis because they didn’t know what was happening. I remember interning for this newspaper, and they were in this huge skyscraper in Atlanta, and there were whole floors—it was like Pompei had happened. One time, I got off the elevator on the wrong floor...all the lights were off and there were old books and everyone’s stuff was on the floor. It was like they’d disappeared.”  

In the face of the recession and the collapse of print journalism, Knorr went to graduate school to “buy more time.” That way, she would have access to the stipends and benefits that can come with MFA programs in creative writing. (“I ate a lot of ramen,” Knorr added when mentioning the size of her stipend.) Knorr had already found herself in the world of writing and publishing, and she had participated in a few journalism internships with mixed success. “You have to be pretty tough and you have to be pretty fearless, and that’s not me,” Knorr shrugged. “I’m a Hufflepuff, you know?”

The problem—or perhaps the solution—came when realizing that her path led to teaching. Prior to being a TA in graduate school, Knorr was set against teaching, having already watched her parents work long hours as educators. “My life’s calling is something I never ever saw coming,” she explained. “My first day of [teaching] class was a lot like my first date with my wife. I wasn’t looking for a serious relationship—we went on our first date and I was like, ‘Oh, this is it. I just found her.’ It was the same thing with teaching. I was immediately in love with it. I’d never had a job that gave me more energy when I was done. It’s the biggest privilege.”

Thus began Knorr’s path in the world of academia, which was not without its challenges. She explained that the world of higher education has few positions like hers, in which she is paid to teach and to write. Because Ph. D. and MFA students are applying for these rare positions, the competition and pressure is high. “I’m extremely lucky, first of all, [to have] ended up here at Regis. The path to get here: I went through grad school and got teaching experience there, and I was trained really well. I had pedagogy classes—that’s really rare at grad school. Usually, they just throw you in the classroom.

“My first year out...I adjuncted, and it was really, really hard. [Kate Patridge and I] lived in subsidized housing, and we had bed bugs. It wasn’t nice. I was teaching five classes a semester—a normal load is more like three. I was teaching all the time, and I was trying really hard to get my book published because you can’t really get a fancy teaching job unless you have a couple books published. So I was teaching and teaching and teaching, and then I was doing professional development to build up my CV. I was trying to give presentations whenever I could at conferences. I was trying to write poems and send them out for publication. I was working all the time and it was really hard.”

Knorr’s luck changed when she was offered a term position at the University of Alaska Anchorage, which eventually turned into three years of teaching students that she called “fascinating.” Many were nontraditional students with backgrounds and cultures that contributed to the “rich diversity” she saw in her classrooms. This diversity was what Knorr considers her training in inclusive pedagogy. The open enrollment, community college feel at University of Alaska Anchorage forced her to accommodate students with needs of all sorts, which caused her to reevaluate her teaching style.  

“You’d get an email from them like, ‘I’m still flying my plane and I’m going to be late for class today,’ and you’re like, ‘Stop emailing me from your plane,’” she explained. “They need support in different ways—students who are working full time, students who have families, students who have kids, students who have to go home to their village for a month to do the whaling expedition—[and] you have to become more flexible and adaptable and welcoming and inclusive. I think that all those experiences have made me a much better teacher because I got on the ground training in inclusive pedagogy.” 

When budget cuts jeopardized Knorr’s time in Alaska, her and Partridge sought out Ph. D. programs and tenure track positions, which eventually brought them to the Denver metro area and Regis University. Here, she’s had the chance to watch her vocational and career interests divert and intersect. Not only is she a professor, but she is also a writer, bandmate, and mother. Knorr and Partridge run a small feminist poetry press, and Knorr puts together a podcast. However, none of these vocations seem to eclipse her love of teaching.

“It seems unique to feel so lucky to have, not only a job in this field, but to have a job in a city I love at a school that I love with colleagues and students that I love,” Knorr smiled. “I’m just so grateful everyday.”

As for advice to soon-to-be graduates, Knorr suggested entering with an open-mind. “You never know what you might end up loving. And if you can be open to that, it’ll make you less stressed. Also, realize that your career doesn’t have to be the first job you take after college. You’re not glued to that for the rest of your life. You’re not even glued to that career path for the rest of your life. Trust yourself...if everybody else wants you to do one thing, or your parents want you to do one thing...they don’t know they way you know, and it can get really confusing if you start to think that they know better than you. You’re in good hands with yourself. You’re your own best ally.”

With this came advice to stay connected to those you love, however that may look. “I always had so many wonderful friends and mentors and teachers who were there when things were hard, you know? I was coming out in grad school and I got really depressed, and that was really really hard, and I wouldn’t have made it through without the support of my community and my chosen family and my teachers...I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on how grateful I am. Now that I know what hard work teaching is and how you stay up late thinking about your students, worrying about them, and wanting the best for them, I’ve been very grateful [realizing] someone did that for me. A lot of people did that for me. [So] keep in mind whoever you’re most grateful [for]. I think it’ll make you happy.”

Where Do We Go From Here? Interview with Dr. Michael Chiang

Faculty headshot of Dr. Michael Chiang by Regis University

By: Carly Compesi, Staff Writer

I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Michael Chiang, the head of the History Department, about his path after graduating from his undergraduate program. While Dr. Chiang told me that there’s something worth missing about the “ramen and textbook” side of undergraduate life, he also talked about his global adventures as a graduate student.

“I was a history major in college,” Dr. Chiang explained. “I was a history, art history double major to start out with, actually, but after taking classes in college, I learned that I just loved what my history professors were doing.”

Dr. Chiang always planned to enter graduate school following undergrad, having been “inspired” by the teachers, young professors, and TA’s he had. Before fulfilling that goal, he took a two year break that took him down an entirely different path. “The job I got was at a medical device company. It’s pretty funny, right?” Dr. Chiang asked, smiling. “I’m a history major, I have no quantitative or science background, and I end up working at a medical device company in the R&D department, if you can really further believe that. It was actually kind of fun because it was something really new to me. Really new. I wrote all these reports, and I had never written a science lab report before, so it was all fun and interesting. I think, somewhere in the company today, there must be these dozens and dozens of reports that I wrote. It was like a totally different life.”

Shortly after, Dr. Chiang ended up in a Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan. Chiang mentioned his initial opinions of the Midwest as someone who grew up in Southern California, but he quickly discovered those initial prejudices to be false. “There’s lots of stuff going on in places outside where I grew up,” he said.

However, Dr. Chiang didn’t spend all of his extensive—and I mean extensive—time as a Ph.D. student in Michigan. “A history Ph.D. is a long haul, especially if you’re studying something other than U.S. History because you need to know a couple different languages,” he told me. “Just the language training could take a number of years, and that doesn’t include field research. I was in grad school for a total of eight years. Coursework for my Ph.D. program was only three or four years, and the rest—I went to Japan for a year to learn Japanese, I did field research in China and Japan and Taiwan, and then I went back to the University of Michigan to write up my dissertation. That took two or two and a half years to write.”

His dissertation? Bureaucratic Politics in 18th Century China. “I love reading a lot of what people [consider to be] boring things about bureaucratic statues,” he shrugged. “People [from] 250 years ago are the same as we are now. They don’t like each other, they attack each other—it’s kind of fun.” 

When asked whether his path was typical of history Ph.D. students, he explained that, “people would study what helps them. In East Asian history, you need to know two foreign languages in addition to English. I decided I wanted to learn Japanese because there’s a lot of scholarship in Japan on Chinese history. I had a friend in grad school who was studying Chinese immigration to Cuba, so her languages were Chinese and Spanish. It could be very different depending on what you want to do. You’re always applying for scholarships, fellowships, funding from your university [to do so]. It’s a lot of traveling in general. You can do the things you want to, but also the things you need to.”

The time in grad school was not without its consequences, but those consequences seem much less important to Dr. Chiang in hindsight.

“It was pretty long and grueling, but I think my friends sort of envied me—the ones who graduated from college and went to work right away—because I was traveling around. I was kind of envious of them because they had jobs and money and cars and houses,” he laughed. “I was working off $12,000 a year in grad school.”

After pursuing what he called the “standard” route for those “long and grueling” years, Dr. Chiang began his career in academia.

“I worked at a couple different schools. Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts—that was a really great experience because being in a place where it’s just women can be really good for a lot of students. Women don’t have to deal with men, and you know how men can be kind of condescending or discouraging. So I thought it was great to be in that environment where women are encouraged to be whatever they want."

“I taught at Drake University in Iowa for a number of years, and then I wanted to move out of Iowa. As much as I love the Midwest and Michigan, I didn’t want to spend all my time in the Midwest. But nothing against Iowa,” he added. “And then six years ago, maybe seven now, I came to Regis. Colorado gets me a little closer to California, it’s in the West, and that’s the story of how I ended up here.”

His advice for the soon to be graduate students planning to live on the no-house-no-car life is, in his words, “very Regis-y.” He explained that, throughout his path, he ignored the money-related realities that came with following his passion. Though he found himself occasionally envious of the friends who earned promotions and bought houses while “all [his] stuff fit into this tiny storage place,” the importance of learning motivated him to continue his path.

“For me, it’s that old hat stereotype of ‘do what you love.’ Especially when you’re just out of college. You can try different things and find out that you don’t like them, or maybe find out that you do. I think, if I really wanted to continue working at a medical device company, I could have...even though I’m not sure how I could do well in something that involves science,” joked Dr. Chiang as he explained how his time at the medical device company contributed to his success and motivation as a graduate student. “I have a cousin who was a French major in undergrad. She’s now a pediatrician. Even if it’s a detour, [you] have the time to try and do what you love. You can fail, but when you’re 23 or 25, it doesn’t really matter.”

Where Do We Go From Here? The Fulbright Program

By: Carly Compesi, Staff Writer

With the Spring semester in full gear, more and more students are thinking about their post-graduation plans. For anyone who falls under that category, Regis University’s Dr. Eric Fretz has a suggestion: the Fulbright program.

Dr. Fretz believes the Fulbright program should be considered by students with an interest in studying or teaching in a different country. In a previous statement, Fretz said, “The Fulbright program is a post-graduate scholarship. Students are encouraged to begin the application process the fall of their senior year. Students may apply for Fulbright scholarships as many as 10 years after receiving an undergraduate degree.”

As for location, the Fulbright program’s size and sponsorship allows for scholars to  travel to an impressive number of different countries. “The Fulbright program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs,” explained Fretz. “The Fulbright program is the largest U.S. international exchange program, offering opportunities for students to undertake international graduate study, advanced research and English teaching in schools and universities in over 140 countries.”

The Fulbright program offers three types of grants. The Study/Research/Academic supports students for an academic year of study at an international university. The Study/Research/Creative & Performing Arts which support students for a year of study or professional training in the arts. The English Teaching Assistantships allows students to teach English or American Studies in over 80 different foreign countries. Students are only allowed to apply to one type of grant per annual competition cycle, but they may apply to whichever type of grant best fits their interests.

As Regis University’s Fulbright Program Advisor, Dr. Fretz is responsible for facilitating students in their Fulbright application process. Recently, I interviewed Fretz to learn more about the Fulbright program.

Carly: So how do you think all scholars could benefit from Fulbright...regardless of major or interest?

Fretz: Well, that’s a good question. It’s a hard one, too. I think the benefit for anybody is the opportunity not just to travel abroad. Because the funny thing about Fulbright—it’s not just about going abroad. It’s about going abroad to participate in cultural exchange. Anybody can go abroad. Any student could get on a plane to Barcelona or wherever they want to go, and that would have it’s own benefits, but the Fulbright scholarship comes with another set of benefits, and at the root of that is an opportunity to participate in cultural exchange in a way that, frankly, you wouldn’t be able to do if you hopped on a plane to Barcelona. [While] that would be really fun, you wouldn’t have an opportunity to live and work with people from a different country. And I’ll say this, too—given the political and cultural climate of the United States right now, this is a time when the Fulbright program is probably more important than it ever has been.

Carly: What resources...or who can they reach out to if someone wants more information on Fulbright?

Fretz: Well, me. (laughs) For students who are specifically interested in Fulbright, the first step would be to go to the Regis website because that has all of my contact information on it. The Fulbright website is embedded in the Regis website, anyway. I’d start there, and I want to make it very clear that nobody should ever hesitate to contact me if they have any questions.

Carly: That’s really kind! Is there anything else that you want to touch on more specifically?

Fretz: Yeah. Fulbright has made it very clear that they want to encourage a diverse pool of applicants, so I want to be a part of that recruitment. I really want to get first generation students involved in applying and thinking about Fulbright. And students of color, obviously. Women as well. I mean, we want everybody to apply if they’re interested, but we want applicants who look like the rest of America.

For more information, visit the Regis/Fulbright site and/or contact Dr. Eric Fretz (efretz@regis.edu) for more information.