I am a person who loves stories and writing.

I began my doctoral studies after a decade in academia. I have worked in writing centers, student affairs, the president's office, and the registrar's office. I have also worked with many different student populations, from traditional undergraduate students at both two-year and four-year institutions to adult degree completion students. Currently, I am the Associate Director of English 100 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I teach engaged first-year students and support the diverse instructors of English 100 courses.

My dual passions are teaching and writing. I have experience with upper- and lower-division writing courses, having taught classes in face-to-face, hybrid online, and online formats. Both inside and outside the classroom, I enjoy collaborating with writers of all ages and experiences to improve their communication skills in order to fulfill their rhetorical purposes.

My research interests lie in the intersections between creative nonfiction and women's rhetorics. My dissertation project, What a Way to Make a Livin': Women Constructing Ethos in Contemporary Professional Memoirs, analyzes how contemporary female public figures in male-dominated careers build their ethos through popular professional memoirs. Other research interests include composition pedagogy, multimodal composition, popular culture studies, and religious rhetoric.

I received a BA in Writing and Literature from George Fox University in 2009, and an MA in English Literature and Language from Baylor University in 2015. I completed my PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at Texas Christian University in May 2021.

Please feel free to contact me at sakelm [at] wisc [dot] edu.