The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) has been the site and inspiration for much of my professional activity beyond Keene State College. Since 1992, ASLE has brought together teachers, writers, students, artists and environmentalists interested in the natural world and its meanings and representations in language and culture. ASLE is an interdisciplinary and international organization with over a thousand members and affiliated organizations in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, India, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. As a lifetime member of ASLE, and a former member of the ASLE Executive Council, I have for the past ten years been the coordinator of the ASLE Mentoring Program. The program is intended to provide graduate students or recent graduates with mentors. The program aims to fill certain needs. For example, some students are at institutions lacking faculty expertise in their areas of specialty and may need mentors to provide valuable research assistance, to give career guidance, and/or to serve as outside readers on their dissertation committees. Increasingly the mentoring relationships have become international. The work of bringing together graduate students and faculty from around the world is a significant development in our efforts to promote the study of the natural world and its meanings and representations in language and culture. Over the years, I have also collaborated with the ASLE graduate students caucus and graduate liaisons to organize sessions on preparing graduate students for the profession, and to schedule job information conferences with experienced faculty and chairs at the past five biennial conferences. In the fall of 2012, I was elected President of ASLE. I will serve as Vice President in 2013, President in 2014, and Immediate Past President in 2015.

Since 2004, I have been an associate editor of the journal Pedagogy. This profession-wide journal-the winner of the 2001 Best New Journal Award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals-was founded to reverse the longstanding marginalization of teaching and the scholarship produced around it and instead to assert the centrality of teaching to the work of scholars and professionals across the field of English studies. I have also served on committees for the Modern Language Association, including a three-year term (the third year as chair) on the Committee for Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR). This work with faculty, staff, students and others is a deeply rewarding part of my professional life.

My contributions to the profession of English and American Studies includes organizing and chairing conferences at regional, national and international conferences.

Service to Colleges and Universities

Invited Consultant (with Gerry Francis, Executive Vice President, Elon College), Moving to Four-Credit Courses, Mount Union College, Alliance, Ohio, March 2010

Keynote Speaker and Discussion Group Leader, Conversations on Moving to Four-Credit-Hour Courses Conference, Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, Virginia, May 2009

Member of Outside Review Team for Self Study, Environmental Studies Department, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, January 2009

Service to the Profession of English Studies

Editorial Advisory Board, IJE: Indian Journal of Ecocriticism, 2008-present

Job Counselor, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012

Editorial Advisory Board, IJE: Indian Journal of Ecocriticism, 2008-present

Associate Editor, Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, 2004-present

Chair, MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, 2003-2004

Member, Executive Council, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, 2001-2004

Acting Chair, Nominating Committee, Northwestern Modern Language Association, 2002-2003

Member, MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities, 2001-2004

Program Director, Mentoring Program, Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, 2001-present

Member, Nominating Committee, Northwestern Modern Language Association, 2000-2003

Mentor, Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment Mentoring Program, 2001-present

Editorial Advisory Board, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 1999-present

Contributing Editor, Dawn M. Formo and Cheryl Reed, eds., Job Search in Academe: Strategic Rhetorics for Faculty Job Candidates, Stylus, Sterling, VA, 199

Contributing Editor, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Bibliography, 1994

Referee Reader and Manuscript Reviewer

Referee Reader, Mosaic: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies

Manuscript Reviewer, University of Massachusetts Press

Referee Reader, Indian Journal of Ecocriticism

Referee Reader, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

Referee Reader, PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association

Manuscript Reviewer, Indiana University Press

Referee Reader, Paideuma: Studies in American and British Modernist Poetry

Referee Reader, Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language,

Composition, and Culture

Referee Reader, JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory

Conference Panels, Discussions, and Readings Organized or Chaired

Chair, “English in an Age of Accountability: Notes from the Small-College Department,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Boston, Massachusetts, January 2013

Chair, “The Small-College Department: A Response to Academically Adrift,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Seattle, Washington, January 2012

Chair, “American Literature and the Ecological Thought,” American Literature Association Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, May 2011

Chair, “Teaching in the Small College Department,” a special session sponsored by the Association of the Departments of English, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Los Angeles, California January 2011

Co-Organizer, “Reading as a Teacher: a Workshop for Teachers of Literature,” a special session arranged by the MLA Office of Research, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania December 2009

Chair, “Scholarship, Tenure and Promotion in the Small College Department,” a special session sponsored by the Association of the Departments of English, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania December 2009

Chair, “Teaching in the Small College Department,” a special session sponsored by the Association of the Departments of English, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, San Francisco, California, December 2008

Chair, “Tenure and Promotion in the Small College Department,” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, December 2006

Chair, “Teaching Environmental Literatures,” Northeast Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, April 2006

Chair, “Mobility and Place in North American Environmental Writing,” Northeast Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, April 2006

Chair, “Graduate Education and the Small College Department,” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Washington, D. C., December 2005

Co-facilitator, “Teaching North American Environmental Literature: A Roundtable Discussion, Sixth Biennial ASLE Conference, Eugene, Oregon, June, 2005

Coordinator and Mentor, ASLE Professional Mentoring Conferences,” Sixth Biennial ASLE Conference, Eugene, Oregon, June, 2005

Chair, “Less is More/More is More: Poetry Criticism,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Eugene, Oregon, June 2005

Chair, “The Poetry and Prose of Mary Oliver,” Northeastern Modern Language Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 2005

Chair, “Ecocriticism and the Practice of Reading,” Northeastern Modern Language Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 2005

Chair, “Ecocriticism and Ethics,” Northeastern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, March 2004

Chair, “Teaching Environmental Literature,” Northeastern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, March 2004

Chair, “Reading Mary Oliver,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, June 2003

Chair, “The ASLE Mentoring Program: Reflections and Prospects,” Roundtable/Workshop, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, June 2003

Chair, “Gary Snyder and the American Consciousness,” American Literature Association Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2003

Chair “Ecocriticism and the Urban Environment,” Northeastern Modern Language Association, Cambridge, Massachusetts, March 2003

Chair, “Professional Rights and Personal Responsibilities: Narratives from the First Year of Faculty Life,” the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional

Rights and Responsibilities, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, New York, New York, December 2002

Chair, “The Practices of Ecocriticism,” American Literature Association Conference, Long Beach, California, May 2002

Chair, “Teaching Environmental Literatures,” Northeastern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, April 2002

Chair, “Field Work: Old Patterns and New Directions in Ecocriticism,” Northeastern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, April 2002

Chair, “The Consequence(s) of Transience: Mobility in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Flagstaff, Arizona, June 2001

Chair, “Wandering and the Road,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Flagstaff, Arizona, June 2001

Chair, “Modernist Environs,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Flagstaff, Arizona, June 2001

Chair, “Ecocriticism and the Practice of Reading,” American Literature Association Conference, Cambridge, Massachusetts, May 2001

Chair, “The Consequence(s) of Transience: Mobility in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture,” Northeastern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Hartford, Connecticut, March 2001

“A Poetry Reading by Two Award-Winning Poets: Chard DeNiord and Kevin Craft,” Keene State College, February 2001

Chair, “Teaching, Literature and Environmental Literacy,” Northeastern Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Buffalo, New York, April 2000

Chair, “Teaching Environmental Literature,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Portland State University, Oregon, November 1999

Chair, “Literature and the Environment,” Annual Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, Cortland College of the State University of New York, October 1999

Chair, “When a Sense of Place is a Sense of Motion: Rethinking the Poetics and Politics of Place,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 1999

Chair, “Environmental Poetics,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Kalamazoo, Michigan, June 1999

Chair, “American Literature After 1865,” Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Scripps College, Claremont, California, November 1998

Chair, “Teaching and the Interconnectedness of Reading and Writing,” Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, Illinois, March 1998

Chair, “Constructing the Canon of Nature Writing,” Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Biennial Conference, Missoula, Montana, July 1997

Chair, “Ecoconsciousness and Ecology,” Letters of the Spirit: The Texts and Contexts of Romanticism, The Fourth Annual International Graduate Student Romanticism Conference, University of Washington, April 1997

Chair, “The State of the Art: Renewing Theory, Reading Literature,” Annual Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, Cortland College of the State University of New York, October 1997

Chair, “The Cultural History of American Romanticism: Traditions, Continuities, Affinities,” Annual Central New York Conference on Language and Literature, Cortland College of the State University of New York, October 1997

Professional Affiliations

Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, 1996-present
Association of American Colleges and Universities, 1998-present
Northeastern Modern Language Association, 1998-present
The Academy of American Poets, 1998-present
National Council of Teachers of English, 1992-present
Modern Language Association, 1990-present