Nina Batt, M.A. ’18 graduated from Loyola Marymount University’s English M.A. Program with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition. She worked as a Teaching Fellow, helping to teach courses to first-year undergraduate students at LMU. Batt has presented her literary work at multiple conferences, as well as won the English Department's Professional Development Award for her research at LMU. Batt currently teaches at the high school and college level and hopes to earn a Ph.D. or Ed.D. in the near future.
We asked her about her time in the English Graduate Program and beyond:
Q: What were the academic highlights, achieved both within and outside of the university, of your time at LMU? Conferences, publications, awards?
A: While I was in the MA program at LMU, I presented at four conferences: the State University of New York (SUNY) Council on Writing in Syracuse, NY; the Italian Association of North American Studies (AISNA) Biennial Conference in Milan, Italy; the "You Are Here" ID Conference on Space, Place, and Embodiment in Omaha, Nebraska; and the Young Rhetoricians' Conference in Monterey, California, where I co-presented an interdisciplinary paper with [a] fellow LMU English MA cohort member. I presented on more than one topic, but my main focus especially in my second year of the program was my work with literacy narratives, particularly those that explore bilingualism and translingualism, and the potential of those narratives to inspire and enrich culturally aware composition pedagogy.
For awards, I received the English Department's Professional Development Award for Significant Research Contribution at the end of my second year.
Q: What are you doing at the moment in your current job?
A: I am currently employed by the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, which is a non-profit charter network here in Los Angeles. I teach high school English Language Arts at Alliance Marc and Eva Stern Math and Science School (Stern MASS for short!), specifically ninth and eleventh grade English. I am also the Faculty Advisor for our school's branch of Junior State of America (JSA), and I serve on the Alliance's Immigrant Rights Working Group. In addition, I continue to teach at LMU, serving as a Writing Instructor within our First Year Seminar program.
Q: What are your future academic or professional plans?
A: I applied to the MA program at LMU looking to enrich my curriculum as I sought to continue on in my career as a secondary school teacher, but I accidentally fell in love with scholarship and rhetorical and composition theory. I entered LMU as a middle school teacher, was lucky enough to teach at the college level as a Teaching Fellow for my two years in the MA, and then I graduated wanting to find common ground between the two age groups; hence, I found myself teaching high school, which I think is perfect for me as an educator and as a scholar. I plan on staying where I am for the foreseeable future, "Miss" by day and "Professor" by night, but I aim to enter a PhD or EdD program within the next 5-10 years with the hope that someday I can teach emerging teachers as they embark on the journey to earn their credentials.