Payne Named Speaker for Gribben English Lecture Series

Eva Payne, National Chair of the Two Year College Association and Chemeketa Community College faculty member, will be the speaker for the 33nd Annual Jack & Ruth Gribben English Lecture Series. Annually a committee of LCC English faculty arrange and speaker and help host the lecture series in which 30-40 English faculty from area schools, community colleges and universities attend.

Payne shares an academic journey common to nearly half of the students attending community colleges. Her first attempt at college wasn’t her last. She dropped out of a legal secretarial program at Spokane Community College two quarters shy of graduation.

During her long break from academia, she had varied jobs: legal secretary, truck driver, bookkeeper, full-time firefighter for the city of Boulder, Colorado, and stay-at-home mom. At Oregon State, she earned her B.A. and two Master's degrees--one in Rhetoric and Composition and one in Education with a focus on Language Arts.

Payne’s teaching experience includes Oregon State, Linn-Benton Community College—where she was fortunate to teach as part of a human services learning community—and since 2001, as a full-time faculty member at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, Oregon. At Chemeketa, Payne has served as English Program chair, Co-chair and editor of the college’s Accreditation Report, and Academic Integrity Coordinator. She teaches all the flavors of first-year composition, communications courses, first-year experience courses, and technical writing. While literature classes make up a dwindling part of her teaching load, she sometimes teaches introduction to fiction and introduction to poetry. Increasingly, much of her teaching occurs online rather than face-to-face.

Wanting to be a better teacher for her students inspired Payne to become involved with the Two Year College Association (TYCA). TYCA’s practical, regional conferences are a venue for sharing best ideas. In addition, she has been member of the Oregon Writing and English Advisory Committee (OWEAC) since 1999 and collaborated in writing statewide outcomes for first-year composition based on the WPA standards that are currently being updated to reflect the 2014 changes.

Payne has been part of NCTE’s Government Relations Committee in her role as TYCA’s National Chair and has been actively involved in advocating for students at the state and national level. The Redesign of America’s community colleges and its impact on students, as well as ensuring equivalency of rapidly expanding dual credit options have been the focus of her recent research and writing.

Her lecture “Advocating for Student Success by Design” will encourage sharing strategies for inviting academic integrity, writing-to-learn, and designing assignments for clarity and student success. She will bring a national perspective back to that space—our classrooms—where what we do as teachers matters so much in the lives of our students.

The Gribben English Lecture Series will be held on Friday, October 28 at LCC at 9am. To register, contact Jodeci Turner at 620-820-1281.