Laura Jones-Pettit

In 2019, Michigan State University hired me to teach First-Year Writing. My appointment built on six years of experience teaching first-year writing in diverse contexts: prior roles were at The Pennsylvania State University, Elmira College, and Southern Maine Community College. These varied institutional settings have given me a wide-angle view of how general education courses function as both gateways to higher learning and as sites of equity and opportunity work.

Beyond the classroom, I have held leadership roles that sharpened my understanding of the intersections between academic and co-curricular learning. As Interim Associate Director of Penn State’s Program of Writing and Rhetoric, I worked on assessment, curricular consistency, and faculty development. As a Class Dean for sophomores at Colby College, I managed student support services, disability accommodations, crisis response, and co-curricular programming. These experiences reinforced a central truth: students succeed when they see themselves as scholars both inside and outside the classroom. Belonging, transparency, and timely intervention are key factors of educational success for all students.

This context has profoundly shaped my work at MSU. Since 2019, I have intentionally layered frameworks of student success and wellness over the existing individual-oriented writing curriculum shared across the MSU First-Year Writing Program, using honed approaches to evaluation, scaffolding, and iterative reflection not only to improve writing but to cultivate student resilience, agency, and confidence.