Biography
Andrea Leary is a Teaching Professor and the Internship Coordinator in the Department of Writing where she has been teaching for over 30 years. A graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, she earned her doctorate from the University of Delaware. In all of her classes, her goal is to guide her students toward excellence in writing while keeping the Jesuit mission of people “for and with others” in their thoughts and actions.
Over the past 19 years, a main focus has included creating community partnerships and service-learning opportunities for her students. Her students have worked with a variety of community partners including The Arc, on behalf of our neighbors with disabilities, Baltimore Reads and Strong City Baltimore, with adult students working toward improved literacy, Tunbridge Charter School and The Loyola School, with elementary and middle school students, to name a few. Her students have had the opportunity to publish their work in newsletters, the “Baltimore Reads Gazette” and “Tunbridge to Reading,” and in a book, Dare to Believe. They have written biographies for women in a senior living community, pen pals letters with elementary school children, blogs, social media packages and more—using their writing in service of others.
For the Loyola community, her students often write for New Hounds—a website packed with information for incoming first-years. You can find it at www.newhounds.org.
Margaret Mead’s reminder guides her teaching: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Education
- University of Delaware, Ph.D.
- Curriculum Vitae
Courses Taught
- WR100 Effective Writing
- WR220 Introduction to Rhetoric
- WR305 Writing for Social Media and the Web
- WR320 Art of the Argument
- WR327 Civic Literacy
- WR322 Gendered Rhetoric
- WR402 Writing Internship
- Service-learning options
Publications
- “How I Live Justice.” IN Commitment to Justice in Jesuit Higher Education 3rd edition. Eds. Allen Brizee and Paola Pascual-Ferrá. Apprentice House, 2016.
- Dare to Believe: Exceptional Stories of Hope, Courage, Faith & Determination. Collaboration with Civic Literacy students and Baltimore Reads, Baltimore, MD: Apprentice
House, 2014.
- “In Pursuit of The Magis: Ilona McGuiness. Loyola Magazine. 24 July 2015. Web.
- “In Service of Spirit” with Lia Purpura. Loyola. April 2010.
- “The Potential This Day May Hold: Helen Whall.” Holy Cross Magazine. 39.3 (Summer 2005).
- “Charlotte Perkins Gilman as a Master of Audience: Newspaper Reviewers Expose a Radical Lecturer,” Resources in American Literary Study Vol. 30, 2005.