Keynote Speaker - Dr. Cynthia Selfe

Topic: "Digital Literacy in the 21st Century:  The Challenges We Face"

We are very pleased that Dr. Cynthia Selfe has agreed to be our keynote speaker for our SEED Conference 2009!    This is guaranteed to be a stimulating and useful session as Dr. Selfe will describe the digital literacies our incoming students have come to expect, and how instructors and support staff can meet these needs. In a follow up talk on Friday, she will discuss more specifically how a "culture of support" can be built for these students using Centers for Teaching Excellence and Teaching, Learning and Technology centers as locations for change. All institutions - large and small, public and private, liberal arts focused and professional - face the challenge of trying to best help our incoming students and to support faculty teaching these students.

Cynthia L. Selfe is Humanities Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at The Ohio State University, and the co-editor, with Gail Hawisher, of Computers and Composition: An International Journal.  In 1996, Selfe was recognized as an EDUCOM Medal award winner for innovative computer use in higher education—the first woman and the first English teacher ever to receive this award.  In 2000, Selfe, along with long-time collaborator Gail Hawisher, was presented with the Outstanding Technology Innovator award by the CCCC Committee on Computers.  Selfe has served as the Chair of the  Conference on College Composition and Communication and the Chair of the College Section of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Selfe is the author of numerous articles and books on computers including Literacy and Technology in the 21st Century, the Perils of Not Paying Attention (SIU Press, 1999), Creating a Computer-Supported Writing Facility (Computers and Composition Press, 1989), and Computer-Assisted Instruction in Composition: Create Your Own (NCTE, 1986); and she is a co-author of Literate Lives in the Information Age:  Narratives of Literacy from the United States (with G. Hawisher, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), Writing New Media:  Theory and Applications for Expanding the Teaching of Composition (with A. Wysocki, J. Johnson Eilola, and G. Sirc; Utah State University Press, 2004), Computers and the Teaching of Writing in American Higher Education, 1979-1994:  A History (with G. Hawisher, P. LeBlanc, and C.s Moran, Ablex, 1996), and Technical Writing (with M. Lay, B. Wahlstrom, S. Doheny-Farina, A. Hill Duin, S. Burgus Little, C. Rude, and J. Selzer, Irwin, 1995 and 2000).  

Selfe has also edited or co-edited several collections of essays on computers, including Multimodal Composition:  Resources for Teachers (Hampton Press, 2007), Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century (with G. Hawisher, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), Technical Communication:  Outcomes and Approaches (Baywood, 2007), Global Literacies and the World-Wide Web (with G. Hawisher, Routledge, 2000), Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies (with G. Hawisher, Utah State University Press and the National Council of Teachers of English, 1999), Literacy and Computers:  Complicating Our Vision of Teaching and Learning with Technology (with Susan Hilligoss, MLA, 1994), Evolving Perspectives on Computers in Composition Studies:  Questions for the 1990s (with G. Hawisher, NCTE and Computers and Composition Press, 1991), Computers and Writing:  Theory, Research, and Practice (with D. Holdstein, MLA, 1990), and Computers in English and Language Arts:  The Challenge of Teacher Education (with D. Rodrigues and W. Oates, NCTE, 1989), Critical Perspectives on Computers and Composition Instruction (with G. Hawisher, Teachers College Press, 1989).

With Kathleen Kiefer (Colorado State University), Selfe founded the journal Computers and Composition:  An International Journal for Teachers, which she continues to edit today with Gail Hawisher (University of Illinois).  Selfe and Hawisher have also edited several series on computer use in composition classrooms including:  Advances in Computers and Composition Studies (Computers and Composition), New Directions in Computers and Composition (Ablex), and New Dimensions in Computers and Composition Studies (Hampton).