Faculty Profile

English Instructor
Kaleidoscope Advisor

Education/Degrees:

M.F.A. – English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2007
B.A. – English, University of Illinois Chicago, 2002

Classes Taught:

Campus and Community Involvement:

• Literary/Arts journal KALEIDOSCOPE, advisor and editor
• Gay/Straight Alliance
• Diversity Committee
• Instructional Resources Committee, chairperson
• SRCFA, vice chair

About Me:

Laura Bandy attended the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers from 2009 to 2013, where she received the Joan Johnson Poetry Award. In 2018, she won first prize in the ‘Trio of Triolets’ contest judged by Allison Joseph, and received third place in the Illinois Emerging Writers Competition that same year. She has had work published in Soft Skull’s Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry, Midwest Review, Sin Fronteras, River Styx, Typo, Moist Poetry Journal, The Florida Review, and The Laurel Review, among others, and has work currently or forthcoming in Action/Spectacle, Bennington Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, SWEET: A Literary Confection, RHINO, and Autocorrect. Her chapbook, HACK, was published by Dancing Girl Press in August 2021, and her full collection, MONSTER MOVIE, was published by Gold Wake Press in spring 2023. She hails from Jacksonville, Illinois, home of the Ferris wheel.

Why Spoon River College?

I have taught at SRC for close to eight years (first on the Macomb campus and most recently in Canton). I am the daughter of public school teachers and am fiercely committed to teaching at a community college, where education is accessible and affordable for all. Also, we have such amazing and dedicated instructors at SRC! My favorite part of teaching at SRC is working with my colleagues (lovely humans) and getting to know my students (also lovely humans). Teaching young people is a dream job—they give me hope for the future *and* they tell the best stories.

My Educational Philosophy:

The students who enter my classroom are there for a reason—they have specific goals in their pursuit of an education. It is my duty and privilege to help prepare them for the world they will enter. Students need to be prepared for a spectrum of contemporary rhetorical situations when they leave college. With this in mind, my reading and writing lessons offer students the opportunity to both evaluate and create arguments in a variety of modes and media using multiple literacies. They will be able to think critically and analytically about texts. They will know how to do research and use the information they find effectively, as well as how to correctly document those sources. They will write creatively and flex those creative muscles. They will meet and hopefully exceed all course competencies. All of these skills will teach students to take responsibility for their own work and help them to succeed outside of the English classroom. In addition, these skills can be practically applied in other academic areas, as well as in future careers. The contemporary world asks that students be fluent in multiple literacies, and my pedagogy encourages the development of those literacies, as well as encouraging the students themselves to be confident and self-actualized as they move through their higher education journey and into the life adventures that await them.

Advice for Students:

In college, as in life, you will get out of it what you put into it. Come to class! Join student organizations! Be engaged with your learning! Meet new people and expand your brain *and* your horizons! Do the right thing! Hang on tightly and let go lightly! Enjoy being young and pick up a book (a real, tangible, print edition book) now and again—they are empathy engines.