Diversity Statement Edward Anderson Instructor of Composition and Literature

For four years, I was employed as an assistant professor at Montgomery College in

Rockville, MD. MC is one of the most culturally diverse student populations in the country, and

I was pleased to note that your posting for this position emphasizes finding a candidate who is

experienced with and adaptable to a broad range of student concerns. At MC, my pedagogy was

greatly enriched by my interactions, including those with ESL students from several regions,

veterans and other non-traditional learners, and students with cognitive issues that necessitated

various pieces of lesson and assignment scaffolding. Subsequently, during my time as teaching

assistant at Georgia State University—an urban university in downtown Atlanta—I have seen

how local history and culture can have profound effect on the very politics of teaching. While

DC allowed me to experience the dynamics of a multitude of international cultures, Atlanta has

shown me how natives to an area find their places within a more cohesive—if divisive—regional

identity.

Meanwhile, experience has brought me to a better understanding of how variations in

student demographics, meeting time and place, and educational goals can shape the learning

process within a course; I have paired this experience with my own teaching philosophy to

successfully tailor curricula to suit specific learning situations, including evening and weekend

course meetings. Further, as distance learning technologies represent the future of academic and

workplace communications across a wide swath of the socio-economic spectrum, I place a high

priority on training my students to represent themselves to their best benefit within all sorts of

communications spaces. In teaching hybrid and on-line courses, I pursue emerging technologies

both as learning tools and as skill sets in their own right, while the particular dynamics of the that

technology compels me to consider each student in ways quite different from what is called for

in the classroom: students find themselves interacting with each other in similar ways, and I

believe that such experiences will help individuals better relate to the problematic situation of

evolving technologies that we all, as a race of people, face together.

Edward J. Anderson