Dr. Meagan Malone

Have you ever struggled with your writing process? Have you ever considered taking a class at UAB that deals with communication and the English language? Meet one of our newest professors, Dr. Meagan Malone. She is, like many of our great professors, bringing years of experience and multiple degrees in various concentrations and, like all our professors, is extremely qualified.

According to Malone, cultural diversity was part of what drew her to UAB. She was excited about the prospect of teaching “so many different students from all walks of life.” Two other factors contributing to her decision were being a self-identified “Southern person” and “being close to family.”

Malone is currently in her second semester at UAB and is already at work trying to connect with her students. The classes she currently offers are primarily Composition and Professional Writing. She also hopes to teach more classes in the future that focus on online communication. She is looking at courses “that are practical in a sense but ask us to reflect on the possibilities that we might not have thought of.”

She believes there is a need to teach courses dealing with online writing like commenting on videos. She is looking at the limitations of conversing online and how we can analyze those communication channels. She is currently studying YouTube and would love to teach a course that “deals with how we use online sites like YouTube and social media like Instagram to achieve persuasion.”

More specifically, she is interested in “how creators use visual enhancements and looking at the comment sections of multiple videos seeing how people are interacting.” She is attempting to “understand the impact of the comments below” and the types of interactions going on in these comment sections that connect back to the video. She hopes that “using rhetorical analysis and combining it with some software will provide an understanding into a possibility of civil discourse in these spaces.”

In her classes, Malone likes to focus on helping and encouraging her students find their writing process. She “loves to break the process down with her students.” Before her students start writing she asks questions like, “Are you the type of person that needs a lot of breaks, setting timers, and having to be in a certain space to write?” She describes her own writing process as “getting it on the page” and doesn’t really care how it sounds at first. She finds that “going on a run” can help her take a step back and see the big picture. Lastly, she likes having “two-three eyes on her work and discussing it.”

The most important thing Malone wants is for her students to be “engaged with their process and have agency in their works and be able to communicate effectively.” She says she “wants people to feel secure and confident in that journey they take in their life.” Most English majors will continue writing in one form or another for the rest of their lives and she wants her students to leave “feeling confident to say they are a writer.”