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About The Program

School of Education

English Education

NSU's English program is structured with different areas of emphasis to help you tailor your major to suit your needs and career goals.

At NSU, English B.S.Ed. majors complete courses required for the teaching emphasis and professional education course work in secondary education.

NSU's English degree pairs well with other specializations and students are encouraged to take minors, or even to double major, in areas such as history, business, political science, and art design.

Many English majors earn master's degrees in education or business. Explore NSU's graduate programs to learn more.

Careers

In addition to teaching in middle or high schools, an NSU English education degree can set you on the path to teach at the college level or teach English as a second language in the U.S. or abroad. Teachers who are geographically mobile and obtain licensure in more than one subject are likely to have a distinct employment advantage.

Other career possibilities include employee development or training specialist, interviewer, education administrator, personnel specialist, public relations specialist, sales representative, media relations representative, non-profit administrator or educational consultant.

For more information on careers in your major or help choosing a major, contact the NSU Career Center.

Internships

NSU's English program also supports career readiness through internships that require students to apply their skills in the workplace. Students have interned in such diverse positions as writer/copy editor at their hometown newspaper, grants assistance at the university, public relations for the community theater, archival work in a museum, and web design for a local nonprofit organization.

A three-credit internship is required.

NSU College of Arts and Sciences Internships

Scholarships

Education Scholarships

Arts and Sciences Scholarships

NSU Scholarships

Course Requirements

English Education (BSEd) Course Requirements

Plans of Study

English Education (BSEd) Plan of Study

Our Faculty

Benjamin Harley

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

B.A., Benedictine University

M.A., University of Northern Colorado

Ph.D, University of South Carolina

Resume/CV

Dr. Ben Harley joined the Northern faculty as an assistant professor of English in 2018. His work focuses on rhetoric and composition - ways in which humans create and circulate texts in order to persuade and be persuaded. Many of his courses focus not only on creating persuasive texts, but also on critically and ethically engaging with traditional and new media. His research largely focuses on public rhetorics, both digital and traditional, with his most recent work focusing on how the material nature of sound intimately affects bodies and can be used to create diverse communities. He has published in an array of scholarly journals, including Present Tense, The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics, and Hybrid Pedagogy.

Students in all of his classes can expect to write traditional essays as well as multimodal texts that utilize a variety of communication channels (textual, visual, aural, gestural, etc.) to engage actual audiences. Students are asked to take a rhetorical approach to composition, considering their rhetorical situation in terms of audience, purpose, contexts, design, and the moment of encounter.

Learn more about his scholarship and teaching at bharleyrhetorics.com.

Pen Pearson

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

Lysbeth Benkert-Rasmussen

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

Resume/CV

Dr. Lysbeth Em Benkert arrived at Northern State University in the fall of 1995, one year after receiving her Ph.D from Washington State University.

Her specializations include rhetorical theory and early modern literature, including Shakespeare. She also teaches creative writing. In addition to her academic scholarship, she has published original poems in a variety of literary magazines and a chapbook titled #girl stuff (Dancing Girl Press, 2018).

Elizabeth Haller

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

B.A. University of Northern Colorado

M.A. Central Michigan University

Ph.D. Kent State University

Dr. Haller is an associate professor of English at Northern, having joined the faculty in 2009. She holds a B.A. in English from the University of Northern Colorado (1999), an M.A. in English literature from Central Michigan University (2003), and a Ph.D. in English literature from Kent State University (2009). Dr. Haller has taught university-level English literature and composition since 2003. Before teaching, she was a legal assistant for an environmental law firm in Denver. Dr. Haller was editor in chief of the international pedagogical e-journal Academic Exchange Extra, and worked as a staff writer and freelance journalist for The Muskegon Chronicle, with several of her articles picked up by the Associated Press.

Dr. Haller serves on campus committees and is advisor for NSU's student newspaper, The Exponent. She also has organized and led a two-week summer literary tour of Europe for students and community members, traveling to England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Her areas of specialization include the writings of the Brontë sisters, 19th-century British literature, psychoanalytic criticism, trauma theory, Tolkien scholarship, and Harry Potter scholarship.

Research Interests

Social influences and implications of the Victorian novel

19th-century gender studies

The labor reform movement

Awards/Recognition

Dr. Haller's article "Guise and the Act of Concealment in Jane Eyre" was recognized by literary critic Harold Bloom as recommended reading in his critical study Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations), New York: Chelsea House Publications, 2007.

Dr. Haller received the 2007 Mid-Atlantic Women's Studies Association's Award for Scholarly Excellence in Women's Studies for her conference paper "Red Flood of Reform: Lola Ridge's The Ghetto and the Role of Women in the Labor Reform Movement."

Publications

"The Events of My Insignificant Existence": Traumatic Testimony in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë." Under review with Palgrave Macmillan.

"Dante Allighieri". Icons of the Middle Ages. Ed. Lister Matheson. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio/Greenwood, 2011. 243-270. Print.

"Perception and the Suppression of Identity in Villette" Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society 35.2 (2010): 149-159. Print.

Encyclopedia of Themes in Literature. Ed. Jennifer McClinton-Temple. 3 vols. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 2010. Print.

"Introduction to Willa Cather's O Pioneers!" - vol. 1

"The Role of Nature in O Pioneers!" - vol. 1

"Responsibility in O Pioneers!" - vol. 1

"Suffering in O Pioneers!" - vol. 1

"Introduction to Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House" - vol. 2

"Physical and Moral Illness in A Doll's House" - vol. 2

"Identity in A Doll's House" - vol. 2

"The Role of Ethics in A Doll's House" - vol. 2

"Guise and the Act of Concealment in Jane Eyre.". Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society 28 (2003): 205-213. Print.

Specialized reader for Brontë Studies: The Journal of the Brontë Society (2011-present)

Brontë sisters specialized reader for LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory (2010-present)

Personal Interests

Dr. Haller enjoys national and international travel, hiking, and old movies.

Peter Ramey

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

M.A., Ph.D., University of Missouri, Columbia

Dr. Peter Ramey came to NSU in August 2012. His research interests include Old English language and literature, aesthetics, and liturgy and hymnody. He is NSU's English Club advisor.

Publications

“Crafting Strangeness: Wonder Terminology in the Exeter Book Riddles and the Anglo-Latin Enigmata.” Review of English Studies 69.289 (2017): 201-15.

“The Riddle of Beauty: The Aesthetics of Wrætlic in Old English Verse.” Modern Philology 114.3 (2017): 457-81.

“The Poetics of Caxton’s ‘Publique’: The Construction of Audience in the Prologues of William Caxton.” English Studies 96.7 (2015): 731-46.

“Writing Speaks: Oral Poetics and Writing Technology in the Exeter Book Riddles.” Philological Quarterly 92.3 (2013): 335-56.

“The Audience-Interactive Games of the Middle English Religious Drama.” Comparative Drama 47.1 (2013): 55-83.

“Variation and the Poetics of Oral Performance in Cædmon’s Hymn.” Neophilologus 96.3 (2012): 441-56.

“Beowulf’s Singers of Tales as Hyperlinks.” Oral Tradition 26.2 (2011): 619-24.

“Oral Theory and Medieval Literature.” Co-authored with John Miles Foley. Medieval Oral Literature. Ed. Karl Reichl. 71-102. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2011.

Andrzej Duszenko

Department

College of Arts and Sciences

Languages, Literature and Communication Studies

Programs

English

English Education

M.A., Wroclaw University, Poland

Ph.D, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

Website

CV/Resume

Dr. Andrzej Duszenko has been a faculty member at Northern since 1989. In addition to teaching, he has served on Northern's Information Technology Planning Committee, the South Dakota Board of Regents' Web Advisory Council and the NSU Taskforce for Mobile Computing. He is website advisor for the NSU English Club and Northern Lights, and an editor of the NSU College of Arts and Sciences newsletter.

Publications

"Abnihilization of the Etym: Joyce, Rutherford and Particle Physics." Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies 46.2 (2016).

"Contemporary Science and the Image of the World." Stopping the Process? Contemporary Views on Art and Exhibitions. Helsinki: The Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, 1998.

"The Relativity Theory in Finnegans Wake." James Joyce Quarterly 32.1 (1994).

"The Joyce of Science: Quantum Physics in Finnegans Wake." Irish University Review 24.2 (1994).