I graduated from Millersville State College in 1975 with a Bachelor of Science in English Education. I began my teaching career at Greenwood School District, Millerstown, PA, in the fall of 1975. I taught eighth and ninth grade English and reading. I earned my Master’s Degree as a Reading Specialist from Shippensburg State College in 1978. I retired from teaching in 1998, after 23 years in the classroom. I enjoyed my days in the classroom very much. I was very fortunate to have wonderful colleagues and a very supportive administration.
All posts by Rachel Hicks
AAUW Start Smart Workshop
On Thursday, March 8th from 4-6pm there will be a workshop held by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) in 200 Osburn Hall. AAUW Start Smart is designed to teach you how to negotiate salaries for a new job. Through facilitated discussion and role-play, you’ll gain confidence in your negotiation style by learning different strategies and persuasive responses to fight for that raise.
The gender pay gap, regardless its size, hurts women of all backgrounds and has far-reaching consequences. Working full time, women in the United States are typically paid 80 percent of what men are paid. And that percentage only decreases as ethnicity is added to the equation. AAUW is trying to fight that – and is succeeding. In 2017, 17,000 women were trained by these workshops to negotiate their salary. These workshops employ the latest research and negotiation strategies to help women navigate promotion opportunities and job offers.
AAUW Smart Start is designed for college women who are approaching the job market and is focused on helping you negotiate for a new job. Consider coming out to this workshop to gain important, life-long skills! All Millersville students and alumni are welcome. Tickets can be found here.
Alumna Profile: Nina Theofiles
I graduated in 2010 from Millersville University with my Bachelors of Science in English Education. While at Millersville, I was the News, Opinion, and Lifestyle editor for The Snapper. I switched majors my freshman year from Special Education to English Education after taking a Comparative Literature class with Dr. Carballo. After reading and discussing “Othello,” by William Shakespeare, I realized my love of English could not be contained and that teaching English was my true calling. Growing up, I was extremely dyslexic and struggled with reading during my elementary school days. After finding a love of writing in high school, I fostered my love of reading during my undergraduate program at Millersville.
Following graduation, I went on to be an English Teacher at Crispus Attucks YouthBuild Charter School in York City, PA for three years; I taught grades 10-12. I worked my way up to Department Head and helped students gain college scholarships and be ready for a career or continuing education. This experience helped me with my Masters of Education in English and Communications where my thesis focused on Narrative Writing and Urban Education; I graduated with this in the winter of 2014 from the University of Pittsburgh. While at CAYBCS, I presented at the Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts Conference in 2010 with my Millersville professor, Dr. Timothy Shea. Also while at CAYBCS, my previous Millersville professor Dr. Aaron Porter came to present to my students. Millersville stayed with me wherever I went, and I promoted the school as much as I could because of the connections and experiences I had there. While at CAYBCS, I also held a position facilitating an after school/drug and alcohol prevention program through the Children’s Home of York called the Strengthening Families Program. I did this for 6 years and was a lead youth facilitator by the end of my term – I assisted my supervisor in training new staff and running new programs around York County.
I purchased my first home in 2014 and moved to the southern end of the state. During this move, I got a position teaching English and coordinating the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program in Baltimore County. I am in my fifth year at St. James Academy, and I enjoy teaching at this Episcopal Parish day school; I teach 7th and 8th grade English and I am a 6th-grade homeroom advisor. I am also approaching my fifth summer working at Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. I am a Senior Administrator here and have worked at residential sites in Haverford, PA, and Baltimore, MD, during the summer. I assist in running the sites, training staff, and overseeing summer classes. Most importantly, I use my English degree when reading 250+ student evaluations and editing them for content, spelling, etc. After I graduated from Millersville I began running a small, private tutoring operation assisting students in grades K-12 in reading, writing, math and SAT prep. Since before my time at Millersville and still today, I enjoy riding horses, reading, and exercising.
None of the experiences I have had in the eight years following my graduation from Millersville would have been possible without my degree in English. The English department challenged and pushed me to be a more critical thinker and learner; this helps me with students and helps me with staff. It also has made me more persistent and resilient; from the times I had the ever-challenging Shakespeare class to the experiences I had in linguistics, each class taught me something new while pushing me to the next level of inquiry. I teach my students the items I learned the best with the same passion my professors at Millersville taught them to me. My time with The Snapper makes creating my own newsletters in 7th grade English a fun goal for the students and an enjoyable experience for them to be involved in as a group.
Student Profile: Rachel Hicks, English BA
Rachel Hicks, a first-year English BA major at Millersville University, somehow always knew this was where she was going to end up. Maybe not right here outside Amish country, but definitely this more generalized here, at a university full of kind people studying nerdy things like books and language and the true nature of being alive. As a child, Rachel was the type of kid to see the “Summer Library Reading Challenges” as just that, a personal challenge. The library would ask for three books a week? Rachel would read 15. The library only had 30 slots on the Summer Books Tracking Sheet? Rachel would make her own and print out five. Growing up in a family as the oldest daughter meant she had something to prove, and for some reason that meant blowing her little brothers out of the water when it came to books and reading. Her love for literature stems from picture books, YA novels, poetry, high school English classes, and the idea that humans will never be able to explain or understand everything, though we tragically, doggedly try.
Now as a pretend-adult in college, Rachel is involved with the English Club, George Street Press, and WIXQ. More recently, Rachel works with the English Department collecting alumni profiles, writing stories about current students, and managing the department’s social media. Listening to the stories of past and current students is inspiring – an English degree from Millersville unlocks unlimited potential for creativity and career trajectories.
Not all people who love to read as children become English majors, or even continue reading as adults. English majors have this need to not only devour books, but to let those ideas marinate in their brains for the inevitable creation of their own works. Writing takes the intangible and makes it concrete for the reader, opens doors for possibility and revelations that a person might never have on their own. Rachel, like other people in this major, feels that innate need to explain the world and the strange nature of humanity, even if most of life feels frustratingly ineffable.
Student Profile: Gabrielle Redcay, Digital Journalism
Gabrielle Redcay, a Digital Journalism Major, will be graduating this spring with a resume full of different, interesting internship opportunities she experienced over the past four years at Millersville University. From interning at a newspaper to blogging about food, Gabrielle has seen the positive impacts internships have on narrowing down a career path or building necessary work-place skills.
Starting as a content strategist, Gabrielle was a content writer for the digital marketing company Income Store where she performed search engine optimization research. She worked with teams to discuss content and plans for improving return on investment.
Since then, Gabrielle has been working for Millersville in the Communications Department as a Communications Assistant. In this job, she creates press releases for the community, runs social media accounts, and conducts interviews with the faculty, staff, and students of Millersville for articles in University publications. It was through this job that Gabrielle had the opportunity to intern with La Vos Lancaster over a summer.
La Vos Lancaster, Lancaster County’s only publication focused on the local Hispanic community, gave Gabrielle the opportunity to witness all aspects of running a print publication. Pushed out of the classroom and out of her comfort zone, she was forced to stretch herself and meet real people while interviewing for current event, profile, and feature stories. This internship was especially satisfying because the skills she learned at the paper mirrored her classes the next semester; it was easy to see how her classwork was applicable to the real world. Even while on the job Gabrielle was always networking for new opportunities; it was by interviewing for the paper that she met her next internship opportunity through Jim Chaney.
All it took was one email and Gabrielle found herself interning for Jim Chaney, a traveling blogger from Uncovering PA. The Millersville Internship Office is very willing to work with students to help them find the best internships, and Gabrielle found it easy to collaborate with them in establishing this internship. Gabrielle always joked that she would love to become a food blogger someday–and Jim Chaney helped her realize that her dreams could easily become a reality. Internships, especially ones with companies or people you are less familiar with, can open the world up for different employment opportunities.
Internships, while great resume builders, also offer necessary skills and experiences for the real-world job-market after graduation. Gabrielle would like to tell Millersville University students to enter the search for internships and to be open to new experiences. Millersville is very connected to the real world and it is important to take advantage of that – learn from everything!
Alumna Profile: Alyssa Leister
My work experiences while in college, primarily at the Provost’s Office and establishing the Honor’s College Research Newsletter, gave me the confidence and experience to apply for a position at Sight & Sound Theatres. Through the past five years, I’ve worked in several positions, most recently finding my fit as a Project Manager in our Creative Services department. I get to use my creativity to help manage the retail offerings for our theatre, my organizational skills to support projects for our HR and Facilities’ teams, and even my love for Christmas to coordinate the Christmas decorating efforts at the theatre. While my job is diverse, there are elements of my English degree that I use, as I frequently am counted on to be the copy editor for large and small projects. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work at a place that is known for exceptional productions and service, and know that I’m here thanks to my Millersville degree and education.
Alumnus Profile: James Senft
My degree was English with a Print Journalism Minor. I worked in journalism for about 8 years after graduating from MU, spending most of that time working for weeklies produced by Engle Publishing out of Mount Joy. It was a fun job and I was getting paid to write, which was great, but I eventually decided print journalism wasn’t the way I wanted to go anymore, as the newspaper industry continued to suffer. I was fortunate to find a job with Auntie Anne’s soft pretzels in Lancaster as an internal communications specialist. There, I spent five years learning how to transition my writing and communications skills into a business environment. After my time with Auntie Anne’s, I transitioned into an internal communications role with Burlington Stores and moved to Philadelphia, where I spent a few years eventually getting a different job with a company called CSL Behring. They’re a biotechnology company based out of King of Prussia, with a global presence of more than 20,000 employees in more than 30 countries. I’ve been with CSL Behring for about two and a half years and was recently promoted to a senior specialist role. I’m traveling more with this job than I ever have in my career and last fall had the pleasure of attending a conference with some of my global colleagues in Bern, Switzerland.
The most exciting part of this job for me though is that it’s given me an opportunity to get back to my roots in journalism. Our company recently launched a news site called Vita, where we share stories from our company about our patients, our culture, science and our viewpoints on biotech topics. Through this job, I not only have the chance to write articles for this site, but I also create videos to tell stories. Here is one of the videos I’m most proud of.
I definitely wouldn’t have the career I have without my time at Millersville, and I’m always grateful for what I learned from the professors in the MU English Department. I think my career path shows that even if you don’t go a traditional route with your career, you can still often find a way to do what you love if you follow your passions, as cliche as that sounds. Find things you like to do that others value and do them well and it’s likely that someone will want to hire you.
First Experiences on the River of Dreams
If someone were to ask you, “What is Environmental Advocacy?” would you be able to provide an answer for them?
The students of Millersville University’s first environmental advocacy class, led by Dr. Justin Mando, spent a semester trying to pick apart the meaning of that question together.
Their investigation began with a trip down the River.
Shank’s Mare Outfitters, located in York County, Pennsylvania, became the site of their discovery. On a field trip funded by the River Stewards, a non-profit organization whose main intention is to raise awareness and appreciation for our water resources, a class of about 20 students strapped on their life vests and got a hands-on, feet-wet education from the Winand family on the history of the Susquehanna.
After returning to the classroom, the students discussed their experiences on the river and were able to make some interesting connections. The students were able to relate their experience paddling on the river with readings that Dr. Mando had shared with them throughout the first weeks of the class. The concepts of close observation that Charles Fergus and Annie Dillard had offered them through their writings had suddenly gained meaning and the students found a deeper connection with the Susquehanna and those concerned with it after discussing the narrative rhetoric offered by these authors.
The class continued their curiosity by examining the works of Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson. These works led the class to think about the implications that human action can have on the environment and therefore, the inherent obligation to make up for the destruction that we may cause.
The remainder of the course of these students’ semester was shaped by the “Tiny Ecology” project they were assigned. Dr. Mando encouraged them to pick an environment, be it a lake or a street corner, and observe it, nothing more. He asked the students to post bi-weekly updates on their chosen space and relate what they observed to the topics discussed in class. Much to their surprise, the students developed much deeper connections with their chosen space than they thought possible.
The class was visited by Kristen Wolf, the Chesapeake Bay Coordinator of the Department of Environmental Protection, who spoke about the importance of raising awareness of environmental issues around the globe. Wolf emphasized the importance of citizen scientists and what it takes to motivate people to care about an issue that may not directly affect them. She explained the work that she has done with the Chesapeake Bay Program relating to species and resource protection, and how the threats affecting local bodies of water travel downstream and affect the larger bodies they empty into. In the case of the Susquehanna River, contaminants that enter the water are carried all the way to the Chesapeake Bay, where their potency is amplified.
With these ideas in mind, the class began to further their knowledge by reading Garrigan and Carbaugh & Cerulli. These readings gave the students the insight to consider the importance of “place.” Considering these new ideas, the students of Mando’s class entered the next phase of their class and began constructing their own “Susquehanna story.” These stories took the form of many different media styles, including fiction and non-fiction pieces, videography, photographic stories, and poetry. Every student took the time to observe and investigate the Susquehanna River and really take into consideration the significance that the river has for those who use and enjoy it, both recreationally and as a resource. Ranging from the native Susquehannock Indians, who relied on the river for spiritual guidance and physical sustenance, up to modern-day fracking debates, the students became advocates and voices for the river to tell its story.
Dr. Mando, along with one of his students, Madeline Giardina, took what they had learned to the Susquehanna River Symposium at Bucknell University. Here, they shared the experiences the class had investigating and interacting with the river. They reflected on their experiences and spoke about how important it is to be respectful of not just the Susquehanna River, but of all land and rivers, for the history they preserve and the life they provide for.
The rest of the class was given the opportunity to share their personal work at an open-mic held at Saxby’s, a café on campus. If they chose to, students were able to share the stories they had produced with each other and with other interested students. The goal of these readings was to share the stories that were crafted about the river and emphasize the importance of raising awareness for relevant issues.
One observer present at the reading was Chris Steuer, Millersville’s Sustainability manager. Steuer became actively involved with the Advocacy class and came to speak about the University’s sustainability efforts and the logistics that surround sustainable action. He highlighted sources of funding and resistance to change as being two key factors that make completing sustainability projects difficult.
The students took these ideas into consideration and applied them to real-life scenarios. Each student chose a subject under the larger umbrella of “sustainability,” and did extensive research and evaluations of the ways these topics are presented in science writing, in public writing, and in current campaigns. After examining various forms of literature, they began to construct their own “Environmental Advocacy Campaigns.”
These campaigns inspired and challenged students to recall the various forms of writings that they had studied throughout the semester and use them to build informed opinions on the way these issues are addressed in society. The subjects chosen ranged from issues influencing large-scale populations, such as water pollution and trash disposal, to the current sustainability efforts acted out at Millersville University. The finished campaigns included critical evaluations and comparisons of environmental discourse representing their topics, a report representing their findings and how this discourse could be improved in the future, and their own individual collections of work depicting what they determined to be successful advocacy campaigns for their chosen subjects.
Using all of the information and knowledge that they had collected through the semester, the Students of Environmental Advocacy gained the insight and skill to critically evaluate and produce effective forms of environmental discourse. So what does “Environmental Advocacy” mean, exactly? After experiencing Dr. Mando’s class, his students conclude that environmental advocacy means being honest and responsible for your actions and how they affect the environment; it means sharing important, scientific information with the general public in a way that they can understand; and above all else, it means stewardship and speaking up for those who cannot speak up for themselves.
—- Madeline Giardina
Upcoming Events
February 9th – Lincoln in the Bardo with George Saunders, 7pm at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore
- 2017 Man Booker Prize Winner and #1 New York Times Bestselling Author George Saunders will appear at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore to present his new novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. Saunders will give a reading of his novel and answer questions from the audience. More Information
February 19th – Overthought Thoughts of a 21-Year Old by Angela Prendergast, 3pm in Ford Atrium
- Angela Prendergast, a 2016 Millersville BSE graduate, will be reading/presenting from her book of poems Overthought Thoughts of a 21-Year Old. This forum will be an event for open discussion about her writing and publishing processes for prospective/new authors.
February 23 & 24, March 1, 2, 3 – “Radium Girls,” 8pm in Rafters Theatre, Dutcher Hall
February 25 & March 4 – 2pm
- “Radium Girls” by DW Gregory, guest directed by Joanna Underhill, will show in Millersville during the end of February and beginning of March. Tickets are available here or at the SMC Ticket office or email Dena McEwan for free tickets for English students on an evening to be selected by the English Club.
February 28th – “Little Stones” On Screen/In Person, 6:15pm at the Ware Center
- “Little Stones” is a documentary that profiles four women activists, each of whom is contributing to the woman’s movement through her art. There will be a community activity or panel discussion at 6:15, the film will screen at 7:00, and will be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker. More Information
- Panel Members include: Ms. Almaz E. Amante, Keystone Human Resources/CWS volunteer. (Ethiopian native experienced in women empowerment and micro-financing.) Dr. Carol Davis, Franklin & Marshall College, Professor of Theatre. (Runs health-through-drama project in rural Nepal.) Ms. Brittany Leffler, YWCA Certified Trauma Practitioner. Dr. Kimberly A. Mahaffy, Millersville University, Professor of Sociology and Director of Latina/o Studies / Coordinator, Office of Diversity and Social Justice. (and a faculty member in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program) Dr. Wanja Ogongi, Millersville University, Professor of Social Work (Interest in Human Rights with focus on women and children.) Ms. Julie Peachey, Director, Innovations for Poverty Action. Dr. Elizabeth Powers, Millersville University, Professor of Education. (Chair of Commission on Status of Women)
March 10th – Odyssey of the Mind
- Students from over 40 regional schools will compete in Odyssey of the Mind, an annual competition where students use their creativity and teamwork skills to compete in developing various problem-solving methods at the international education program.
- If you are interested in volunteering at the event (need clearances) or more information, contact Dr. Craven
March 22nd – Carter Woodson Lecture: Ibram Kendi, 7:30-9:30pm in the SMC Multipurpose Room
- Ibram X. Kendi, an award-winning historian and New York Times Best-Selling Author, is Professor of History and International Relations and the Founding Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. His second book, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, was published by Nation Books and won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction. At 34 years old, Kendi was the youngest ever winner of the NBA for Nonfiction. He grew up dreaming about playing in the NBA (National Basketball Association), and ironically he ended up joining the other NBA.
March 27th – Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, 7-8:30pm in the SMC
- Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, co-authors of All American Boys, the 2017-2018 One Book selection, will be the keynote speakers in the SMC Multipurpose Room. Here’s Reynolds on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah
April 5th – “Resilience” Film, Panel will begin at 6pm and the film will start at 6:45 in Clair Hall (in the Winter Center).
- “Resilience” is a film about a dangerous biological syndrome caused by abuse and neglect during childhood and the trailblazers in pediatrics, education, and social welfare who are fighting the toxic stress. There will be a panel before the showing of the film.
April 17th – Made in Millersville, 8am to 5pm in the McNairy Library
- Made in Millersville: A Celebration of Student Scholarship and Creativity highlights the world of MU students.