Instructor Spotlight

Communication in the classroom and on the farm with Josie Wickman

Josie Wickman’s time at Iowa State began in 2014 as an Animal Science major. She ended up switching to English as a major with a minor in Technical Communications. Josie then went on to pursue a Master’s in English Literature at ISU and recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing through a low-residency program in Pennsylvania, where her thesis focus was fiction. For the past three years, she has been a lecturer at Iowa State, teaching English 1500, 2500, and 3020 (Technical Business Communication).

Josie always knew she wanted to teach because she enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for writing and communication. She began teaching composition during the pandemic, which led her to realize the importance of composition because of how most information we encounter is in written form, even in electronic formats. She considers rhetoric particularly relevant for undergraduate students because they might be leaving their parents’ home for the first time and trying to establish their identity and perspectives on different topics. In this context, “being able to understand why they think the way that they do, what their position is, why they might disagree with somebody, and how to kind of close the gap between them and somebody else is very important to understand,” Josie states.

In the summer of 2024, Josie helped redesign the ISU Foundation Courses curriculum, specifically in relation to AI literacy. In her classroom, she does the initial AI reading with students, but then adds a second activity after some weeks to evaluate what AI can and cannot be used for. She doesn’t discourage the use of AI but tries to emphasize that there are right and wrong ways to use it because of its own limitations and ethical considerations. She has discovered that some students come to ISU without having previously interacted with AI and are hesitant to use it, so Josie addresses their concerns, tries to explore what they know and don’t know about AI, and uses this information to frame her writing class. Her goal is to have students feel more confident in navigating around it and become AI literate.

Beyond teaching the ISU Comm Foundation courses and ENGL 3020, Josie has been working on the marketing and recruitment action team, spreading the word to current and new students about the work of English Department faculty and improving student enrollment numbers. She aspires to teach creative writing courses in the future and has been working on manuscripts and trying to get published. Josie enjoys gardening, and when she’s not on campus, she works at a greenhouse. She used to live on a family farm and currently owns a goat farm and attends goat shows during the summer. This is where her initial interest in Animal Science comes to light. When she teaches students majoring in Agronomy or Animal Science in ADVcomm (English 3020), she tailors the activities with an agricultural approach, helping students understand how business communication can be applied to livestock situations. “So, for example, for their final project, I had them go out to one of the teaching farms, and then they had to develop a recommendation report for improvements to one of the farms,” Josie notes.

A piece of advice for all instructors–incoming or experienced–that Josie shares is the importance of listening to students to identify where base knowledge is lacking or where more explanation and instruction is needed. Listening not only refers to oral questions, but also body language, like the expressions on students’ faces, or being mindful of what students are doing outside of class and how that might affect their attendance, participation, and performance in English classes. She encourages instructors to consider how they can improve their instruction, for example, when several students are asking the same questions; as well as to understand the reasons why a particular time of the year might be more tense, or conversely, why students might be more engaged at a different moment in the semester.

Josie Wickman explains that her pedagogical approach is very process-based. From her own experience as a student and from what she has heard from other instructors, she considers how freshmen students don’t necessarily know how to study or write a paper, so part of the process is showing them how to write an essay from the beginning to the end. She enjoys coming up with ideas for English 1500 and does a lot of scaffolding assignments to help students become familiarized with the writing process. Central to Josie’s teaching philosophy is encouraging collaboration and communication among students. Activities such as peer review become opportunities for presenting their work and building community. Through a low-stakes and non-judgmental environment, students build relationships and feel open to share their work with their classmates. “If I can open that type of environment up in their classes, at least in my English class, then maybe they’ll be able to make some connections just because they’re encouraged to, and they don’t feel so afraid to talk to somebody that maybe they don’t know as well,” she says. This welcoming learning environment helps our students thrive.