Theresa (Russ) Covich
Adjunct Professor of English
Office Location: VL 306 
Email: tcovich@westmont.edu

Office Hours
Fall 2019
VL 306 Thurs before/after class
or Research Help Desk 1-3p M-F

Theresa (Russ) Covich has 6+ years' experience teaching college and university courses. In her composition classroom, she encourages students to cultivate their own research interests, to read for contexts and conversations as well as analytically. Over the semester, her students' intensive and extensive reading helps them to recognize rhetorical conventions of academic writing, while she coaches them through the writing process--research, drafting, and revising.In her literature classes, students rediscover the value of reading verse aloud so that they listen more attentively as well as annotating visually.

Her academic research interests include early modern British literature and culture, especially poetry of the long eighteenth century, literature and the environment, and poetics of sustainability. Her current research project shows how English georgic verse (poetry which celebrates life and work in the countryside following a model from the Roman poet, Virgil) is a poetics of care. Georgic poets strive to encourage an ethic of cultivation for literary and arable fields—promoting good stewardship.


 

Anna Jordan
Adjunct Instructor of English
Office Location: RH 102
Email: ajordan@westmont.edu

Office Hours
Fall 2019
TBA
by appointment

Anna Jordan graduated from Westmont with a BA in English Literature in 2007. She received her MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2012, and since then she has led a number of writing workshops and instructed learners of all levels and abilities. Her work has been published atVerily Magazine, Scary Mommy, Chicago Literati, Flash Fiction Magazine,and The Broadcast. She is both writer and Creativity Director for Coffee and Crumbs, a collaborative blog about motherhood. Additionally, Anna is a collaborating writer on the forthcoming book The Magic of Motherhood (HarperCollins 2017). She lives in Goleta with her husband and three small children. 

Beth Werner Lee
Adjunct Instructor of English
Office Location: RH 103
Email: betlee@westmont.edu

Office Hours
Fall 2019
TuTh 3:05-4:05 PM
and Lunch by appointment

Beth Werner Lee has a BA in English Literature from Wheaton College and an MA in English from SMU in Dallas. She has taught at every level, in public and private schools and in homeschool settings. When she first taught ENG-002 at Westmont, she was amazed at how students discovered the fun of writing well as they wrote on subjects they enjoyed.

Robert Speiser
Adjunct Instructor of English
Office Location: VH 215
Email: rspeiser@westmont.edu

Office Hours
Spring 2021

W   11:00-12:00
Th   10:00-11:00
and by appointment

Robert Speiser is a Ph.D. candidate in Education at UC Santa Barbara. At UCSB, Professor Speiser has been teaching academic writing as well as Shakespeare and American literature. He previously taught at CSU Northridge, where he earned an M.A. in English and became certified in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). Professor Speiser has taught numerous English courses at LA-area colleges as well as Applied Linguistics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. His undergraduate years were spent at UCLA, where he earned a B.A. in English, and he has an additional M.A. in International Relations & Environmental Policy from Boston University. Professor Speiser is fully bilingual in English and Spanish, and his experience with ESL students is extensive.

John Keith McGovern Wilder
Adjunct Professor of English
Office Location: Reynolds Hall 105
Phone: (805) 969-9931 
Email: johnwilder@mac.com

Office Hours
Fall 2019
2:00 - 3:00 PM
or by appointment

Specialization: Screenwriting, producing, directing 

John Wilder is an award-winning writer-producer-director of quality television programming. He has received the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Long-Form Television Drama, the Western Writers of America Award for Best TV Script and Best TV Film, two Western Heritage Awards for Best Western Drama, the Chicago International Film Festival Award for Best Television Series, two Emmy nominations for Best TV Series, and two Golden Globe nominations for BestTV Movie. Among his many credits areCentennial, Return to Lonesome Dove, Spenser: For Hire, The Streets of San Francisco, The Yellow Rose.  His play Coach, An Evening With John Wooden is in development at UCLA.

He is currently writing his second film for the Halmark Channel, which he will produce in the fall of 2018. His first novel, Nobody Dies in Hollywood was published in October, 2015. He lives in Santa Barbara, California where he is Writer in Residence and Adjunct Professor of English at Westmont College, and was recently honored as Adjunct Professor of 2014-2015.