She joined UPEI in 1996 as a graduate of the University of Toronto, with interdisciplinary specialties in nineteenth-century poetics, the rhetoric of music and gender, and writing/writing-across-the-curriculum (WAC). Her primary teaching areas are Writing Studies and American Literature. For her, writing, reading and interpretation, speaking, and listening – in short, language “arts” – are core not only to the Arts but to meaningful engagement in all areas of academic study, workplace success, civic participation, and ecological human/environmental health.