Rachel Carl

rcarl@bgsu.edu
(714) 474-5531

To the University of Michigan hiring committee,

I am writing on behalf of Dr. April Conway in regards to a full-time lecturer position at your
institution, the University of Michigan. I am writing as a former student of Dr. Conways; during
this past year I had the privilege of taking Dr. Conways General Studies Writing 1110 and 1120
classes during the Fall of 2016 and the Spring of 2017 at Bowling Green State University
(BGSU). These classes serve as an introduction to academic writing for first year students. Dr.
Conway demonstrated her extensive knowledge of academic writing in various contexts that
students encounter during their collegiate career throughout her time of teaching both of these
courses. Throughout the course of my time as a student of Dr. Conways, I was able to create a
lasting academic and personal relationship and I was also able to meet not only the academic
course goals in terms of writing, but my own personal goals in terms of writing. This is because
Dr. Conway is an exceptional teacher and leader in terms of her ability to inspire students to
participate in class activities and engage her students in utilizing the unique resources on
campus.

Since I had the privilege of taking two of Dr. Conways courses in one year, we were able to
create a lasting academic and personal relationship. Dr. Conway was successful at this because
she encouraged us to write about topics that we, personally, found interesting, which made it
easy for her to get to know us on a personal level. Dr. Conway facilitated this by having us speak
with her one-on-one when choosing topics we wanted to explore in our writing, therefore
creating a special relationship with each and every one of her students. An example of this was
when I had set up a conference with Dr. Conway to discuss what topic I wanted to write about
for our second project, the Multiple Source Project, this past Spring semester. I decided I wanted
to explore how and why sorority women are portrayed in the media so negatively, but I wasnt
quite sure where to start, or how to incorporate the correct sources. Dr. Conway helped me
narrow my topic into a viable thesis, that being that the inaccurate way sorority women are
portrayed in the media is a form of sexism that is still present in todays society, and helped me
incorporate the necessary sources to support my thesis. In our conference, I also discussed with
Dr. Conway how I wanted to compose my project in podcast form, given the audible nature of
my sources, which consisted of sound clips from movies featuring negative depictions of sorority
women and audio interviews from my fellow sorority sisters. Dr. Conway was able to give me
the resources and help I needed to create that podcast. With Dr. Conways help, I was able to
create a compelling argument and my podcast turned out to be very successful, because of this,
Dr. Conway encouraged me to submit my work to Bowling Green State Universitys
Undergraduate Symposium for Scholarship and Research. My work was accepted, and I gave a
presentation at the symposium to a panel and an academic audience which included not only my
supportive sorority sisters, but Dr. Conway as well. Dr. Conways support at the symposium is a
prime example of how she supports her students and creates a lasting relationship inside and
outside the classroom.
Another one of Dr. Conways many strengths is her ability to inspire her students to participate
in classroom activities. She not only does this through her aforementioned ability to create a
relationship with her students, but she is able to structure her classroom activities in a way that is
not only functional, but also engaging. Dr. Conway does this by asking us to explore and discuss
what matters to us personally, and how we can successfully incorporate this into our academic
writing. By asking us to find what matter most to us, we completely engage ourselves in the
topic at hand and discover ways to make our writing more engaging and effective. An example
of this would be when Dr. Conway was instructing us on how to incorporate proper synthesis
into our writing, so she asked us to explore, in our own writing, where we could be using better
synthesis and how using that made our own writing, specifically, more effective and engaging.
By asking to explore our own writing, we became more engaged in the topic of synthesis and
began to fully understand how to apply a classroom topic to our own writing, and learn how to
make our own writing better for the future.

Dr. Conway is also skilled in engaging her students in on-campus resources. On BGSUs
campus, we have several resources, as Im sure the University of Michigan has, that are essential
to a student's academic collegiate success, but not always commonly known. Dr. Conway helped
us to utilize these sources not only in our General Studies Writing coursework, but also helped us
understand how we could utilize these resources in our future college courses. An example of
this was when we were starting our research process for our fourth project of the semester.
During this time, Dr. Conway introduced us to and encouraged us to utilize the unique resources
available for research on BGSUs campus. She did this on several occasions, but one example of
this was when she held class in the Jerome Library on campus one day and had us communicate,
in person, with the library staff to discover not only books, but several other resources such as
podcasts, movies, and, in some cases, professors on campus who were experts in the subjects we
were researching. By facilitating the personal communication and physically holding class in the
campus library, we were able to learn about and come in direct contact with the resources that
are available on our campus, as opposed to simply learning about them in the classroom.

Due to these reasons and many more, without a doubt, I confidently recommend Dr. Conway to
teach writing at institutions of higher education. Dr. Conway is skilled at creating a lasting
relationship with her students, engaging her students in class activities and giving her students
the resources and tools to succeed in their college careers. Personally, I have learned and grown
so much in the last year of taking Dr. Conways classes, and I have no doubt that growth can be
attributed to Dr. Conway and her successful teaching methods.

Please feel free to contact me by email at rcarl@bgsu.edu should you like to discuss Dr.
Conways qualifications and experience further. I am happy to expand on my recommendation
and experience with Dr. Conway.

Respectfully,
Rachel Carl