Elizabeth Stainton Walker is a familiar figure in the Department of English due to the many ways she has helped our students and faculty over the last decade. In our interview with her for the alumni profile blog, she talks about the extra time she took to wrap up her M.A. degree; the value she sees in our M.A. program’s new portfolio option; strategies she recommends for locating competitive alt-ac job opportunities; her capacity to transfer skills from graduate school to the corporate sector; her advice to department graduate advisers for how to further support M.A. students’ exploration of alt-ac positions; and one particular Walmart service students might try out to relieve graduate-school-related stress.

Since 2015, doctoral alum Jenn Mallette has been working as an Assistant Professor of English at Boise State University. We recently visited with her about a number of topics, including the importance of Ph.D. students getting published before they graduate, the art of interviewing on the tenure-track job market, and the importance of balancing personal time with professional obligations.

Jessi Schnebelen was recently hired as the new Tutor Coordinator for the Business Communication Lab at the Walton College of Business. Read about how she has applied the skills she acquired in the English M.A. program to her current alt-ac work; why she’s decided not to go on for a Ph.D. (for now); what were some of the important lessons she took away from Dr. Szwydky’s job market course; whether her views on her thesis topic have changed a year after graduating; and where she recommends you go to find the best tea in Fayetteville!

Edward Ardeneaux and Rebecca Quoss-Moore just finished their year of working as Fulbright Teaching Fellows with the English Department’s Program in Rhetoric and Composition. Before they headed off to start the next stage of their careers, we checked in with them to see how their post-doc experiences have been so far.

Jeremy Burns earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Arkansas in 2014 after studying post-1945 American literature and culture, with a focus on post-apocalyptic fiction and film. He is now Director of Communications for the Enrollment Services Division at the University of Arkansas.