DJ Quinn

Program: Certificate in the Teaching of Composition, 2012

Employer & Current Position: PhD student at UC Davis

I had been teaching for a few years, mostly at a variety of community colleges, when I joined the certificate program to make up for some of the composition theory and practice I felt I was missing. I enjoyed working with everyone in the program so much that I wanted to stay in the department, so I started teaching composition at SF State. The work I did in the certificate program convinced me that pursuing more education was the right choice for me, and the encouragement and support of the English department made it possible for me to pursue a PhD in Education at UC Davis. The certificate program also filled in gaps in my knowledge, and saved me from more years of trial-and-error. I’ve learned that it’s important to know not just what you want to teach, but why it matters and what approaches have worked, in the past. For a long time, I had to figure that all out on my own, and the program at SF State helped me to speed up the trial, and make fewer errors along the way.