Write to Ignite

2024 Event Details TBD

 

 

 Thank you to our 2023 Write to Ignite guest speaker, Dr. Lisa Dunne!

Dr. Lisa Dunne - President and Founder of Chula Vista Christian University

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Lisa Dunne is a dynamic, award-winning educator, author, and speaker with 20 years of classroom experience, 10 years of academic leadership, and 10 years of nonprofit leadership. In addition to founding CVCU, the first mentor-based university system of the modern era, she has founded more than 20 Kindergarten to College education models across the nation. 

She holds a Ph.D. in human development from Fielding Graduate University. She is the author of several books, including The Multigenerational Marketplace, a guide to developing Christian communication competencies in the workplace, The Science of Social Influence, a primer on media’s insidious influence on identity, and Relating through the Lifespan, a Christian perspective on lifespan development and intergenerational mentoring. Her podcast is The Communication Architect (available on iTunes and Spotify), and her weekly radio show MindsetMatters can be heard every Saturday at 10:30pm on KPraise Radio. Her latest book, Outsourced: Why America's Kids Need an Education Revolution, is available at OutsourcedTheBook.com and on Amazon. 

You can find out more about her here:  https://www.cvcu.us/president?fbclid=IwAR09vAqb52aa-JGFX489Cw6D2WhVTiBysru2xtRm0naqdy88UTCsv5vt7OQ

 

2024 Conference Schedule: TBD

 

Workshop Leaders

 

Ashley Edlin

Ms. Edlin is an Assistant Professor of English at WBU and regularly teaches composition and rhetoric, composition and reading, and professional writing courses. She holds both BA and MA degrees in English from WBU and an MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University. Edlin has published several co-authored journal articles in technical communication and creative works. She and her husband, Mark, have two young daughters. Her hobbies include spending time with her family, cooking, and watching movies.

Dr. Erin Heath

Dr. Heath received her bachelors and master’s from Texas Tech University. She earned a Ph.D. in English literature with minors in cinema and media studies and also gender and women’s studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an assistant professor in the Languages and Literature department of Wayland Baptist University. Check out her book, Mental Disorder in Popular Film: How Hollywood Uses Shames and Obscures Mental Disorder (2020).

Dr. Kimberlee Mendoza

Dr. Mendoza is the Dean of Languages & Literature and an English professor at Wayland Baptist University. She is the published author of twelve novels, five novellas, sixteen plays, as well as several short stories, poems, journal articles, and the non-fiction book, Teaching Squirrels . She has an MFA in Writing, a MA in Humanities & Literature, and a Ph.D. in Leadership & Higher Education. In addition to writing, she moonlights as a cover artist for the Wild Rose Press.

Dr. Maria O’Connell

Dr. O’Connell is an Associate Professor of English in the School of Languages and Literature at Wayland Baptist University and has taught American and World Literature on various levels, from freshman to graduate. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, including social systems theory, gender, translation, and social constructions of persons and environment in Western/Southwestern American Literature. She has recently published “Breaking Borders and Breaking Bad: Using Unconventional Choruses to Build a Narcotragedy” in Breaking Down Breaking Bad: Critical Perspectives ed. Matt Wanat and Leonard Engle, and “Of Judges and Fairybook Beasts: The Male Mentor and Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in Critical Insights: Southwestern Literature ed by Will Brannon . Her current project is examining the role of mothers as heroes in weird literature, and how weird sci-fi in particular is feminist in its approach to women and women’s roles.

Dr. Karen Beth Strovas

Dr. Strovas is Associate Dean of the School of Languages and Literature and Professor of English at Wayland Baptist University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate literature, research, and writing. Strovas is an assistant editor of the peer-reviewed journal Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. She enjoys dividing her time in academia between teaching, mentoring, editing, writing, and engaging in interdisciplinary projects with colleagues. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from Claremont Graduate University.