Potter College News

“I just want students to know that I'm really happy to be here and I want to know them. I want them to take my classes. I want to get to know them. And talk about language and linguistics, and if anybody's interested in those things, just come and knock on the door and say, hey, I want to talk about language, and I'll say, come on in.”

Daniel Keller is a new Assistant Professor here at WKU and is originally from Sierra Vista, Arizona. Dr. Keller will mainly teach Grammar, English Language, Language Acquisition, and TESOL-related subjects. However, English is not his only passion. 

Dr. Keller originally started studying Computer Science because of his interest in computer languages. “I just thought it was really intellectually fascinating that you could design a system that would allow, in a meaningful way, communication between a person and a machine,” Dr. Keller says. 

However, Dr. Keller says once he started taking classes in Computer Science, he had a change of heart. “I just hit a wall. It was so hard. So, I quit and I went to a second love, which was philosophy, and started learning a lot about the philosophy around language,” Dr. Keller says. “I first encountered linguistics in philosophy courses, but I really moved into literature because I love literature. I think literature is in some ways kind of like applied philosophy because you can kind of work through really complex philosophical questions in lit.”

What Dr. Keller wanted was a career that combined Philosophy, Literature, and Computer Languages. Thankfully, he found exactly what he was looking for in his career in Linguistics. 

“I thought I like teaching and I like English, so I'll do an English Ed degree. Then as part of that English Ed, I took a course in linguistics. And then that was it,” Dr. Keller says. “And I was like, okay, this is, this is how everything combines. This is the computer languages, this is my love of that kind of systematicity, plus the philosophy, plus the literature, this is where it all intersects.”

While he has only been here for a semester so far, his background in teaching is expansive. Dr. Keller has taught for almost 19 years, and his first full-time teaching job was in Thailand.

“My first full-time teaching job was in Thailand, at a place called Khon Kaen University. I got that job straight out of school, and it was great. I taught English language, but also second language acquisition and teaching methods. I liked that job a lot, but there was a coup in Thailand and the government was overthrown,” Dr. Keller says. 

From there Dr. Keller went to work in Korea for 9 years but eventually left there as well. He moved back to the United States in 2007 and began working at Northern Arizona University before coming to WKU 6 years later. 

“The job I was doing in Arizona was composition. So I was teaching writing. I like teaching writing but it's not my passion. But, this job at WKU is an assistant professor position and here I get to teach the things I love, linguistics and grammar especially, and teaching. So, I mean, it's just perfect,” Dr. Keller says.

During all those years of teaching, however, there is one accomplishment that Dr. Keller is extremely proud of. “One year, when I was in Korea, I had two sections of a course that were ranked number one in the university for student satisfaction. So they were tied for first place.” 

“It mattered to me because I feel like the reason I'm here is for students. I try to do everything for students. So, that just showed that what I was doing was mattering,” Dr. Keller says. 

Dr. Keller is also working on his own research projects; as a matter of fact, Dr. Keller is getting his own book published! It will come out from Cambridge University Press, which he is excited about because it is “One of the top academic publishers in the world. That was great. But then the other thing is it's a computer programming book, so, it's kind of like I've kind of come full circle,” Dr. Keller says. 

Dr. Keller is a very passionate teacher who wants very much to connect with his students. If you ever want to talk about linguistics, he’s your guy to ask!