Deanna M. Mascle

Education

• Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric (2011), Texas Tech University
• M.A. in English (2000), Eastern Kentucky University
• M.S. in Secondary Education in English (1988), University of Bridgeport
• English with a concentration in journalism (1987), SUNY College at Plattsburgh

Teaching Specializations & Courses Taught

• Specializations: Composition, Rhetoric, Technical Communication
• ENG 100
• ENG 200
• ENG 390
• ENG 608
• ENG 609
• First Year Seminar

Affiliations

• National Writing Project
• Kentucky Writing Project (Co-Director)
• National Council of Teachers of English
• Kentucky Council of Teachers of English (Board Member)

Profile

Dr. Deanna Mascle is focused on the teaching of writing whether she is working with struggling first-year students or professionals. She has built on her experience as a professional writer as well as her work with the National Writing Project to develop her philosophy of teaching writing. This philosophy focuses on fostering writing self-efficacy and agency through modeling, discussion, reflection, and building community. This philosophy is inspired by her dissertation: "Fostering Agency and Writing Self-Efficacy: The Making of a Writer." Dr. Mascle loves to support nontraditional students of all types through her fully online classes as well as hybrid classes at MSU’s Mt. Sterling campus and has published and presented extensively in this area. More recently Dr. Mascle has shifted her research focus to Deeper Learning (described as helping students master academic content, communicate and collaborate effectively, think critically, and become life-long learners) and applies these techniques to her writing classes at all levels. In addition, she partnered with Bath County Middle School in 2017 to secure a prestigious Innovator’s Challenge grant to transform that school into a makerschool. As a result of that work she has presented and led workshops around the state.

As the site director of the Morehead Writing Project, Dr. Mascle has transformed a shaky site into a National Writing Project model used to help new site leaders around the country develop leadership capacity. She has established new programs that benefit the region as well as Morehead State education students and English majors including Summer Writing Camps, Writing Eastern Kentucky Conference, Teen Writers Day Out, Tween Writers Day Out, Weekend Writing Retreats, and a partnership with the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards. Dr. Mascle has successfully brought in four national grants (in addition to the Innovator’s Challenge grant) to partner with high-need schools and districts in the region and is currently working on such a grant with Fleming County High School. The most recent grants have focused on bringing NWP’s outstanding College, Career, and Community Writers Program (including participating in a large, rigorous study of its impact) to Eastern Kentucky. She was recently notified that the Morehead Writing Project will receive another national grant to establish a summer journalism camp program.

Finally, Dr. Mascle takes her responsibility to pay forward all the advice and support she has received as both a writer and teacher of writing so she regularly blogs about teaching writing on her blog: Metawriting.