Emily Pitts Donahoe
Associate Director of Instructional Support in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric
Emily Pitts Donahoe Associate Director of Instructional Support in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi.
Research Interests
Alternative grading, authentic assessment, artificial intelligence in the writing classroom, combatting systemic barriers to student success in higher education, student partnership
Biography
As CETL’s Associate Director, Emily supports teaching initiatives for instructors at all levels, with a particular emphasis on graduate instructors and TAs. As leader for the university’s Graduate Teaching Orientation and facilitator of the Fundamentals of Teaching Learning Community, she frequently works with graduate students to help them successfully navigate their first teaching experiences and prepare for the academic job market.
Emily also collaborates with instructors across disciplines to develop effective, evidence-based teaching practices that support all students and help to mitigate opportunity gaps in our educational system. She is currently the co-leader of CETL’s Faculty Learning Community and frequently facilitates teaching workshops on topics like alternative grading, authentic assessment, and AI in teaching and learning.
In addition to serving as CETL’s associate director, Emily works as a Lecturer in UM’s Department of Writing and Rhetoric and has taught previous courses in literature and screen cultures. Her recent LIBA 102 course, “Examining Higher Ed: Teaching and Learning in the College Classroom,” invited first-year students to draw on research and personal experience in writing about contemporary issues in higher education.
Emily also writes publicly about her teaching experiences for a variety of venues. Her forthcoming books, Collaborative Grading: A Practical Guide (University of Oklahoma Press) and How to Grade: Alternative Models for the College Classroom (with Josh Eyler, Princeton University Press), both focus on innovative grading methods for college educators. Her blog Unmaking the Grade, which has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education teaching newsletter, documents her explorations of alternative grading and other progressive teaching practices. She appears frequently on podcasts and in higher-ed news media to discuss grading, AI, and other urgent issues in teaching and learning.
In her previous position as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Teaching Scholar at the University of Notre Dame, Emily launched and co-piloted the Inclusive Pedagogy Partnership, the university’s first student/faculty pedagogical partnership program.
Request a Teaching Consultation with Emily
Publications
Employing customizable digital observation tools to support classroom-focused pedagogical partnership. International Journal for Students as Partners, October 2023.
Selected Conference Presentations
Pedagogical Improv: A Game (and Workshop) to Expand Teaching Imaginations. POD Network Conference, November 2024.
“This bootless chat": Humanist Education, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of Writing Instruction.” The Shakespeare Association of America Conference, March 2023.
Reimagining Connections through Student-Faculty Partnership: What are the Possibilities? POD Network Conference, November 2022.
Selected Media
Faculty Perspectives on AI, John Kane and Rebecca Mushtare, Tea for Teaching
Learning About Grades from an Emerging Failure, Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed
AI and Threats to Academic Integrity: What to Do, Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed
Unmaking the Grade, John Kane and Rebecca Mushtare, Tea for Teaching
ChatGPT Has Changed Teaching. Our Readers Tell Us How, Beth McMurtrie and Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education
An instructor reveals the ins and outs of ungrading, Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education Teaching Newsletter
ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it, Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review
Courses Taught
- LIBA 102 Examining Higher Ed: Teaching and Learning in the College Classroom
- WRIT 101 First-Year Writing I
- ENG 617 Teaching First-year Composition
Education
B.A. English, Austin Peay State University (2014)
M.A. English, University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) (2016)
Ph.D. English, University of Notre Dame (2021)