Cohort Programs

(ICSR 590)
Personal Webpage
jane.olmsted@wku.edu

I’m the coordinator and advisor of the Social Responsibility & Sustainable Communities Master’s program, director of the Women’s Studies Program, and a professor in the English Department. After three years of planning, we can see the results of collective effort across disciplines with the final approval of the SRSC master’s. The SRSC is a cohort program, which means that our students will be moving through the degree requirements together. The core courses emphasize “learning in action” and the electives allow students to emphasize areas of interest—gender, aging, community planning, environment, and (crucially) sustainability as it relates to social networks and long-range, ethically sound thinking.
It’s conventional wisdom that “online courses can’t replace f2f courses.” Maybe, but online courses offer many benefits—if they’re done right, and for many people. I enjoy the range of students we get in our online courses—from all over the country and with widely divergent backgrounds and interests. Our discussions are challenging and stimulating. As someone trained in literary studies, I’ve also been impressed with how well our written discussions proceed—reflection, response, questioning, disagreeing, changing—it’s very rewarding.

I earned a Ph.D. in English, with a minor in feminist studies, at the University of Minnesota, in 1996. My scholarly work has focused on American, African American, and Native American literature, with an emphasis on race and gender, and I have articles in Contemporary Literature and African American Review, and another about Langston Hughes’ fiction that originally appeared in Black Orpheus and was reprinted in Short Story Criticism. My colleague Elizabeth Oakes and I founded and edited the Kentucky Feminist Writers Series, which led to three volumes, of poetry, fiction, and life writing: Writing Who We Are, Telling Stories and I to I.

I love my profession and believe strongly that social change is best served by people with a sound education, with a keen understanding of how gender, race, class, and other elements of difference shape us as individuals and the worlds in which we live. My current project involves research a rather large collection of family letters and journals—particularly written by my mother and her brother. My blog, at http://bettybobhiatt.blogspot.com/, is a way of exploring the process and sharing some of my discoveries. I have also returned to writing poetry, after a long hiatus involving other work, other priorities.

I’m married to a professor of philosophy and religion at a community college about an hour from Bowling Green. We have three sons, the youngest of whom was killed in October, 2009. This makes my work on family all the more precious to me. Our oldest son is working on his MFA in ceramics at the University of Florida, and our middle son is enjoying his work in mortgage financing in Louisville. We have two beautiful granddaughters and share our family with their mothers, who are our good friends and who are in school at WKU and at KCTCS.