Alumni Highlights and Stories

Juan Valdez (2015), Content Writer, Plenty

The semester after I finished my M.A., I began teaching as an English and Synergy program adjunct faculty member at the University of Wyoming. After a few years of teaching English and Composition, I accepted a position at Bright Agrotech, a hydroponic farming equipment company, writing web, educational, and blog content. A few months after my hiring, Bright Agrotech was acquired by Plenty, a Silicon Valley startup, with the aim of building hydroponic farms that can feed the world.

My experience with the English M.A. program prepared me for the fast paced, mercilessly poised work environment that Silicon Valley culture expects from their content creators. My team creates video, blog, graphic design, and podcast content for a variety of external and internal use. With frequent content requests that give less than twenty-four hour turn-around, we’re forced to work quickly and efficiently to move from the whisp of an idea, to a focused outline, to a well-planned draft, and finally through a grueling editing and feedback process.

The M.A.’s focus on repeated outlining and writing of high-level work aimed at literature, rhetoric, and philosophy prepared me to be able to rapidly gloss any type of media and quickly turn it into a simple, teachable, and digestible format. Most importantly, the M.A. taught me that perfect is the enemy of good - there’s always improvements to be made in our lives, but with so many problems in the world to fix, writers and thinkers need to work quickly and confidently to deliver lessons and solutions where most needed.

Elissa Hansen (2007), Manager, Oxford University Press

After graduating from the MA program at Wyoming, I completed my Ph.D. in English at the University of Minnesota in 2012. I taught professional writing and composition as an adjunct at Holy Names University in Oakland, CA, before my family moved to the UK in 2014. After starting on the ground floor of Oxford University Press’s Law production team that year, I was given increasing responsibility there and I’m now the manager overseeing 80 percent of OUP’s US/UK academic book production and all of its US/UK academic book manufacturing operations.

At Wyoming, I focused on medieval literature under the guidance of an inspiring and supportive committee, which prepared me to ace the English subject GRE and gain admission to Minnesota with a first-year fellowship. Despite adding on a Medieval Studies minor and (on the personal side) a baby, I completed the program a year ahead of schedule, in large part because I won a final-year dissertation fellowship that allowed me to focus on writing.

While at Wyoming, I was selected for a graduate assistantship at Eighteenth-Century Life, where the editor of the journal gave me a crash course in the considerations around copy-editing, proofreading, peer review, typesetting, and readership for an academic journal. This experience enabled me to go on to build a clientele as a freelance proofreader and copy editor, and to be signed on as part of the proofreading pool for Oxford University Press. When my family moved to Oxford, this experience was instrumental in OUP’s decision to give me a chance at a production role, despite my purely academic background.

My second graduate assistantship while in the MA program, at the local Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center, not only honed my ability to create technical documentation and edit it for multiple audiences, but also socialized me to work toward a shared goal with a variety of personalities in an office environment. I used both skill sets daily as a manager responsible for building a strong production team and liaising with a wide range of internal and external stakeholders globally.

Kristen Thoen (1999), Global Marketing Manager, 3M Technologies

Technical Writer. Corporate Trainer. eBusiness Leader. Sales Operations Manager. Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. Sales Trainer. U.S. Product Marketer. Global Marketing Manager. These are job titles one could hold with a MA in English. I know because I have held them all while working at 3M, a Fortune 100 Company. 

For some of the jobs, I was surrounded by people with Masters in Information Science degrees, engineering degrees, and PhDs. Today, in the Healthcare Business for 3M, I work closely with people who hold MD/PhDs, Bachelors in Nursing, JDs, and MBAs. Occasionally, however, I find other liberal arts majors, and we share a hidden love of complex ideas, well-reasoned arguments, and the exquisitely-worded paragraph. 

Each time I have started a new role, I have had at least one colleague wonder how someone with a different degree from his or hers could perform that particular role. They ask, “How can you do this job that ‘relies heavily on statistics and analysis,’ ‘where all of your other colleagues have an MBA,’ or ‘where you are the only one in the room without a PhD in science?’” They quickly learn that the skills acquired while earning my MA at UW are transferable. Examples of these skills are being able to analyze, write, think critically and strategically, research, identifying one’s audience, and persuasion.

For example, the skills I first used to analyze poetry I have since used to analyze manufacturing processes. The skills my thesis advisor taught me have proven equally useful for writing a six-word ad for a medical device, a technical bulletin, or a strategic marketing plan. 

Literature, however, still speaks to me, and I have relied on extracurricular activities to continue to fulfill my love of the written word: I edited a book about day trading that was featured on the New York Times Bestseller List; wrote the lead article for an internationally published book about Early American Theater; presented a paper adapted from my Master’s thesis at a conference in Spain.

To the curious students asking themselves what they could do with a MA in English, I would answer: anything you want.

Dr. Marlene Tromp (1990), President, Boise State University

My experience at the University of Wyoming was characterized by intellectual challenge and real professional support. My coursework as a student opened up new horizons for me, and the faculty engaged with my writing and thinking in ways that showed genuine care and thoughtfulness. I have genuinely wonderful memories of the classes I took at Wyoming.  Moreover, the support that the department offered as I moved on to a Ph.D. program and, later, into my career, was invaluable. They humanized the profession for me with their interest in my intellectual growth and well-being, and I will always be grateful for the support they provided. 

In April 2019, I was named the 7th president of Boise State University.  Prior to that, I was dean of Arizona State’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences.  I was a Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Denison University. I served for six years as Chair of Women’s Studies, and I have also served as Chair of the Faculty and Chair of the Faculty Development Committee.  My service at the college and in the profession at large, on the Board of the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association and in my work with junior colleagues in my field, is modeled on the generous support the University of Wyoming faculty always gave. 

In addition to a number of articles, I am author of Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian Spiritualism (SUNY, 2006) and The Private Rod: Sexual Violence, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England (UP Virginia, 2000). I have written a new book entitled Force of Habit: Life and Death on the Titanic, which is under review. I have also co-edited and contributed to Fear and Loathing: Victorian Xenophobia (Ohio State UP, Forthcoming), Victorian Freaks: The Social Context of Freakery in the Nineteenth Century (Ohio State UP, 2007) and Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Beyond Sensation (SUNY 2000). I am presently at work on a new book that considers the Victorian connections between murder and money.