Teaching

Courses

Awards and Recognition

"This award focuses on graduate students who go above and beyond their required teaching expectations. By teaching extra courses, getting excellent marks in evaluations, or by creating and leading their own courses, this award is given to multiple students each year. Recipients receive a certificate and a financial award."

Statements from mentees

Heather Chamberlain-Irwin, Ph.D. student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Iowa State University:

I would personally like to thank Kristin for her assistance in understanding the criteria for the applications and organizing my ideas in a way that expresses how unique the project is. I work with CCE staff often to continually improve my writing, but what was unique about Kristin was that she went above and beyond by also supplying words of wisdom and encouragement. I would highly recommend anyone who would like to be competitive on awards to reach out to the CCE. 


Sebnem Kurt, Ph.D. student in Applied Linguistics and Technology at Iowa State University:

I highly recommend Kristin as a mentor. As someone who is a few years ahead of me in the program, she has been an invaluable resource in providing guidance and advice about the next milestones in the program and helping me feel more prepared for the next steps. 

In our conversations, Kristin has been extremely helpful in providing advice on selecting and working with a major professor, strategically planning a dissertation project, and utilizing professional development resources. She is always willing to listen and offer support and has been a great sounding board for my ideas and concerns. 

Additionally, as a Thesis/Dissertation trainee working with her, she provided excellent guidance and feedback on my progression in the training program. Her insights and expertise have been invaluable in helping me develop my skills and advance in the training. 

I am an international student. Working with Kristin throughout the program has been an outstanding experience. She is well aware of the challenges that international students face, and she has been able to provide the necessary guidance and support to make my transition to graduate school in the US as smooth as possible. 

Overall, Kristin is an exceptional mentor who goes above and beyond to support and guide her mentees. I highly recommend her to anyone seeking a mentor.


Natalia V. Rios, 2022 Truman Scholar

When I first met Agata, I had a rough draft of a general idea for my policy proposal. Agata helped me organize my ideas and come up with a clearer structure, and I ended up with outstanding, well-written essays. Agata addressed my concerns and gave me the necessary tools to implement the suggested revisions. One of the most useful things I gathered from this experience was that Agata took the time to explain the logic and the reasoning behind her suggestions. Kristin helped me tremendously near the end of the writing process. She provided a new and different perspective, gave clear directions, and always looked out for my best interest. Their expertise helped me become a better writer, which is important to me as a non-native English speaker. Both of them were an essential part of my success. Meeting with them made all the difference in my application, and for that, I am eternally grateful. Thanks to this scholarship, I will be able to pursue a career in public service as a lawyer fighting for social justice. 


Wei Chen, Ph.D. student in Geology & Environmental Science at Iowa State University

It is my pleasure to strongly recommend Kristin Terrill for the GPSS teaching award. I am Wei Chen, a PhD student at Iowa State University. Kristin is my favorite consultor at the Center for Communication Excellence (CCE), and I have made appointments with her for more than 20 hours. She is one graduate student I have met who uniquely stands out.

Kristin is a professional consultor and educator. We have worked on personal statement writing for at least six national scholarships. During the consultation, she created a positive and engaging learning environment that inspires my passion for consciously learning. For example, at the beginning of our consultation, I had no idea how to write a personal statement. My professor said that my statement was just like a research plan, and he suggested me to put more feelings in the statement. I got confused about this suggestion and asked Kristin for help. We brainstormed and analyzed others’ statement together, which greatly improved my writing skill for personal statement. Now, when I sent the personal statements to my professor, he started to respond that “the statement appears to be a well-written. Good job!” I could not get this positive feedback without help from Kristin.

An old Chinese proverb says, “Better to teach fish than to give fish.” Kristin is a teacher who can teach me how to fish instead of giving fish. We have worked on four research proposals together and submitted to national competitive fellowships, including NASA and Link Energy Foundation. Kristin’s help not only includes checking grammar errors in the research proposal, but also teaching you how to write a competitive research proposal. When we work on a new research proposal, she always carefully guides me to read proposal solicitation guideline and enlightens me to find out good-fitted content. Her teaching philosophy helps me win the Brown Graduate Fellowship this year, a competitive graduate student fellowship at our university.

Out of the consultant hours, Kristin is also a supportive friend who can give me career advice. We had a lunch meeting together to have a deeply personal conversation. When she knows that I am finding a postdoc position, she immediately shares a lot of useful information with me. She also gave me her valuable time to help me prepare application material when my submission deadline approached. She is an open-mind, warm-heart friend who can give me sincere support. I really enjoy talking with her, and her accompany is one of the most cherished times I had at Iowa State University.


Tim Kochem, Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics and Technology

While Dr. Levis and I were able to put together a very good draft of the grant proposal, we're both pronunciation researchers, so we have a lot of background knowledge that may have been implied in the proposal without being explicitly stated. Having Kristin as an outside reader, who's also a trained consultant in competitive awards writing, was invaluable. She was not only able to point out all of these implied messages, but she was also very helpful and knowledgeable about crafting explicit examples and descriptions to clear any confusion caused by those implied messages. In the end, I truly believe that these explicit details were the difference maker in being awarded the grant, and I will absolutely bring any future proposals to Kristin! 


Amber Baughman, Master's in Nutritional Sciences

Both Kelsey and Kristin have been phenomenal to work with! Kelsey helped me to make my thesis more concise and clearer. She also assisted me with four presentations, and her fantastic ideas took each presentation to the next level! I truly believe her guidance and support helped me win the $150 cash prize for the GPSS competition. Kristin also was very easy to work with and met with me not once, but twice, to help me perfect the formatting of my thesis. I was shocked to receive an email from the Dean of the Graduate college congratulating me on my flawless thesis document, all thanks to Kristin! I am so grateful for Kelsey, Kristin, and everyone else at the CCE for going above and beyond in helping me in all of my endeavors at ISU! I am excited to continue using the communication skills I learned from them as a clinical dietitian! 


Emmanual Nsamba, Stanford University Postoctoral Recruitment Initiative in Science and Medicine (PRISM) Recipient

Since 2019, I have been an active member of a PRG every semester. During the sessions, I received feedback from fellow graduate students in diverse research disciplines that significantly improved my skills explicitly communicating my research to a diverse audience. Additionally, Suzanne introduced me to various writing resources available at the CCE. Kristin was invaluable with grammar, logic, and knowledge of competing for national awards. From PFF to CCE PRGs and writing consultants, I was able to prepare a nationally competitive application. 


Andrea Flinn, Critical Language Scholarship Recipient

The CCE was incredibly supportive and encouraging throughout the application process. I’m grateful that I can continue working with Nationally Competitive Award consultant Kristin Terrill when I reapply. She has a real talent for improving essays’ organization. I’m not sure I understood the value of getting a second pair of eyes on a paper until I went to one of her writing consultations. 


Juan Bibiloni-Rivera, 2020 Truman Scholar

My written application would not have been successful in moving me forward to being named a 2020 Truman Scholar if not for the incredible guidance and help of Kristin Terrill from the CCE. My campus application was rough and in need of a lot of revising before I submitted it nationally. As an engineering student, this represented an especially difficult challenge for me. Nonetheless, Kristin went over every word with me to understand what message I wanted to communicate, and then discuss options for how I could communicate that message even better. Every week leading up to the application deadline, I would make an appointment with Kristin at different stages of my writing, and she always knew exactly how to structure our sessions to fit my ever-changing needs. 


Chase Krug, National FFA Proficiency Awardee

Kristin provided valuable feedback on my National FFA Proficiency Award in Plant Science. The application required the use of different writing styles, and Kristin helped me create a cohesive story that highlighted the most important features of my research and provided individual feedback on how to improve multiple sections of the application. Over multiple sessions, we were able to revise all portions of the application. Kristin was extremely helpful in generating ideas and topics that made my application stand out. 


Martha Broadnax, Marshall Scholarship Finalist

I credit the success of my essays to the CCE and Kristin Terrill. I came in with rough idea of what I wanted to present in my application, but Kristin really helped me polish my essays. This experience was more than just having someone edit my application. Kristin made it a point to ask what was most important to me and what I wanted to convey to the selection committee and helped me create my own voice. The CCE not only helped me create a strong personal statement that reflected who I was, but also helped me gain the confidence to apply for other Nationally Competitive Awards. 

Teaching Philosophy

My philosophy in teaching is rooted in social constructivism—the ontological stance that knowledge is constructed through social interaction. I believe that learning involves restructuring identity; through learning, we change who we are and how we relate to the people and objects we encounter. Within this process, I believe that the roles of teacher and student are fluid and dynamic. Both are knowers, and both are learners; both are becoming future selves during the encounter. Honoring the knowledge that students bring to the learning situation allows me to continuously improve my teaching by integrating what I learn about their needs and expectations. It is also important to me to pass this knowledge along through the development and expansion of programs to better serve diverse student populations.


Teaching has been a consistent priority for me throughout my Ph.D. study at Iowa State University. I am confident teaching a variety of English subjects to students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. My experience includes developing curriculum for, and designing, new courses, and teaching in online and in-person classrooms. I also have extensive mentoring experience as a graduate peer mentor at the Iowa State University Center for Communication Excellence. In this role, I contributed to the development of two consultant specializations: English speaking and nationally competitive awards. In designing curriculum and materials for communication skill development, I draw on knowledge from various fields—not only rhetoric and applied linguistics, but also technology and digital ethics.


Teaching English at Iowa State University, a predominantly White institution, demands that I maintain awareness of, and sensitivity to, the experiences of students whose social and linguistic backgrounds are underrepresented in classrooms and on campus. The identities that we bring into communities are not only cultural, but are linked to physical and mental configurations as well as gender identity and who and how we love. These identities may not always come to bear in every academic situation, but as a teacher and researcher in a position of power, it is critical to understand how these differences can shape individuals’ experiences, and especially how harmful biases can negatively impact their ability to thrive in an academic environment. I strive to promote equity and inclusivity in my teaching by designing curriculum that highlights and celebrates diverse perspectives and by establishing a climate in which students feel comfortable and confident about sharing their experiences and expressing their needs. A positive theme in my feedback from students is that I helped them develop their voice and emphasize what matters to them in their writing.


I am enthusiastic to teach writing at a time when overlapping historical pressures are likely to cause major disruptions in how writing is taught at the college level. Students starting college after 2024 will have relied on computers to mediate their learning to an unprecedented degree, due to the Covid 19 pandemic, and will also have had their computer use scrutinized, surveilled, and called into question more than any previous cohorts. The brief for college writing instruction of the future is to foster students’ imagination and discretion in their application of technologies. For this instruction, principles of writing education will be as essential as understanding the computational mechanisms underlying artificial intelligence (AI) applications. My approach to teaching AI and writing will emphasize critical thinking informed by sophisticated knowledge of writing and computer science, as well as intensive self-reflection. I am prepared to address AI in basic writing courses for undergraduates as well as advanced courses on technology, writing, and rhetoric for graduate learners. I have a demonstrated record of establishing learning environments of respect and trust such that students experience freedom, empowerment, and accountability.