Instructor Spotlight: Navigating the Teaching Space with Dr. Casey White

Dr. Casey White began teaching in the English department at ISU as a graduate student in 2009 and was hired as a term faculty member after finishing his Ph.D. in 2014. In 2019, he became Assistant Director of the ISUComm Advanced Communication program. While he got his undergraduate degree at Missouri State, White is an ISU Cyclone at heart: “I did my PhD here in Rhetoric and Professional Communication, and I was presented with an opportunity to work in the Advanced Comm program, and then a few years after that I became assistant director. […] I had just graduated, so I wanted a job so I could have some time, but then I really grew to like everybody at Iowa State. I really like my job. I like the program I’m in.”

Clearly a passionate instructor, Dr. White shared one of his favorite activities with technical writing students: creating a paper airplane in pairs. One student has the written instructions, and the other must fold the paper airplane by listening carefully to the directions read aloud by the first student (and cannot look at the visuals). The two students must work together to create the paper airplane, so the activity teaches students the importance of communication and precise language. White says, “It’s such a simple thing, like a simple activity, but it teaches them multiple important things about writing good instructions.There’s a lot of laughing.” Dr. White is returning to the ENGL 1500 classroom this semester for the first time in many years, which excites him “because it offers the opportunity to build foundational skills that will serve [students] throughout their academic careers.” White is particularly looking forward to “helping [students] become more confident readers and writers.”

On the importance of rhetoric and communication in the classroom, White pointed to the job market students will enter and that the number one thing businesses often want is strong communication skills. Many of Dr. White’s Advanced Comm students are majoring in business or engineering. He says, “the tech side, which is where I am sort of focused, these engineers think they can just learn the math, learn the principles, and be good engineers, [but] working on projects, working in teams, communicating concepts to executives, bosses, CEOs, that aren’t engineers themselves–if you don’t have these crucial skills, you’re not going to succeed.”

Besides teaching and working as the Assistant Director of the ISUComm Advanced Communication program, Dr. White enjoys spending his time outside of work watching movies, and he expressed interest in teaching film classes someday. His top piece of advice for new TAs and even current ones is to “never be afraid to ask questions and ask for advice or feedback on things that you’re doing. I [increasingly find] that [people don’t want to bother you] when you’re a professor, but if there is something about your teaching that you want feedback on or a lesson plan you want feedback on, you should never ever hesitate to ask someone who’s more experienced to look at it…because they always will.”