Ann M. Bomberger

  • Associate Professor
    English Department
  • Vice President Faculty Senate
    Faculty Senate
  • Associate Professor
    Fine Arts Program

I love big ideas and reading books as much as most academics, but I also have a strong practical streak running through me.  I combine those dueling passions through a love of service-learning and travel.  Both of those strategies get students thinking about big issues while giving students very tangible communication skills.  The National Association for Colleges and Employers lists communication skills as one of its core competencies for all college graduates. I help students learn strategies for flexible, effective communication. In my classes, I emphasize

  • Community-based learning: Community-based writing and video projects can be particularly important for students because, as in life, there are many different voices, interests, and tasks vying for attention that they need to negotiate. 
  • Use of emerging technologies. Technology and writing are interlinked. For instance, Generative AI is a powerful tool that can help and hurt students' learning and communication skills. My classes encourage students to think carefully about when to use AI and teach them how to use it in productive ways. In addition, I encourage students to think about how images and design can impact their message. 
  • Discussion.  I encourage students to talk through ideas regularly.
  • The Importance of diversity: People come from a variety of backgrounds and their assumptions and values are shaped by those backgrounds (for example, geography, race, ethnicity, gender, class, religion, and sexual orientation). This diversity is a strength of communities but can also cause misunderstandings.

Undergraduate courses:

  • English 319: Writing with AI: This course explores the rapidly evolving role of generative artificial intelligence in writing, focusing on both creative and critical dimensions. Through hands-on projects, students actively engage with AI tools to compose texts in a variety of genres.
  • English 273: Literature and the Healing Arts:This course explores literature about medical and medical humanities issues.Through the literature, students learn the power of narrative and language to bring coherence and meaning to people experiencing physical and emotional crises. As an Integrative English course, Literature and the Healing Arts focuses on critical reading and analysis of texts. The course asks students to apply the principles of formal argumentation and university-level information literacy to research-based writing projects.
  • English 354: African American literature students went to the Erie library archives to explore Erie's African American history Erie and discussed all sorts of  thought-provoking African American literature.  They also delivered poster presentations at Celebrate Gannon. 
  • Arts 254: Art of film students watch and discuss indy films they might not have encountered before. 
  • ENGL 101 prepares students from all majors for the demands of college-level writing.
  • Students in her first-year seminar (English 100: Intergenerational Dialogues) interviewed senior citizens at Villa Maria Apartments and created video profiles of them.
  • English 240: Leadership Studies: How Leaders Communicate: Students created a video for their a local on campus or off campus site.

Graduate courses:

  • Students in her Graduate Seminar in African American literature interviewed senior citizens who were involved in Erie's civil rights movement and created videos.  See an example on Gannon's Edge magazine.
  • Graduate students in Research and Composing studied how computers are impacting communication.  Students created videos connecting the theory they were reading with their personal experiences.  One student, for example, explored the intersections of teaching dance and composition, while another investigated the connections between gaming and creative writing.  They also crafted a proposal for original research that they might conduct for their master's thesis.
  • SUNY Stony Brook, PhD in English, "The Politics of Cross-Racial Writing in Contemporary African American and White Women's Historical Fiction," 1997.
  • Allegheny College, BA in English, cum laude, 1990.
  • Bomberger, Ann. “Taking Steps for Change by Writing about the Environment” Community Works Journal. September 2013. Web.
  • Bomberger, Ann and Vesta Silva.  Raise Your Voice: Composing Written and Spoken Arguments.  Spokane, WA: Marquette Books, 2012. Print.
  • Bomberger, Ann. "Ranting about race: Crushed eggshells in computer-mediated communication." Computers and Composition 21.2 (June 2004). 197-216. Print.
  • Bomberger, Ann. "The Efficacy of Shock for Feminist Politics: Kathy Acker's Blood and Guts in High School and Donald Barthelme's Snow White." Gender Reconstructions: Pornography and Perversions in Literature and Culture. Eds. Cindy L. Carlson, Robert L. Mazzola, and Susan M. Bernardo. Ashgate, 2001. Print.
  • Bomberger, Ann. "The Servant and the Served: Ellen Douglas's Can't Quit You, Baby." Southern Literary Journal Fall 1998. Print.
  • Bomberger, Ann. 'If I Was Colored . . . I'd Know Who I Was!': Yearning White Women, Guilt, and the Past." Women's Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 27.6 (November 1998). Print.

Selected Academic presentations:

  • with Michelle Homan. "Using the web to sustain and promote local environmental partnerships: The GreenEriePA.org project" Community-Campus Partnerships for Health.  Chicago, Illinois.April 30-May 3, 2014
  • “The GreenEriePA.org project: Helping Communities Communicate about Environmental Assets,” Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences, Pittsburgh, PA, June 19-22, 2013.
  • “The GreenEriePA.org project: Building Cultures of Writing about the Environment”, SUNY Council on Writing, Buffalo, NY, March29-30, 2013.
  • "Unabashed Interlopers--Composition Poaching in Public Relations Land with the Help of Service-Learning: The Erie-GAINS Newsletter Project," College English Association, Richmond, VA March 29-31, 2012.
  • with Shay Meinzer, "Which stories get told?”  Public relations in Community Development Initiatives with Shay Meinzer at PA Campus Compact, 2011.
  • "Composing written and spoken arguments: Collaborating across disciplines” at the SUNY Council on Writing Annual meeting in Binghamton, NY, 2011.
  • “Remixing Empathy & Challenge in First-year Students’ Reflections on Commonality & Difference,” Conference on College Composition and Communication (March 19th, 2010).
  • “Electronic Commenting on Student Projects: Tips and Theory” at the Mid Atlantic Educause conference on Jan. 13, 2010. (http://www.educause.edu/Community/MemDir/Profiles/AnnBomberger/138215).
  • Roundtable Discussant, "Real Writing Worlds of Students," NCTE, Indianapolis, IN, November 2004.
  • Co-presenter at Colloquium Vinosum, "Service-Learning: A Vehicle For Deeper Learning," Allegheny College, November 2004 (with Don Goldstein).
  • Participant in Computers in Writing Intensive Classrooms, June 2004.
  • Participant in crafting an Action Plan for Service-Learning at Allegheny College at Pennsylvania Campus Compact's Service-Learning Institute, April 2002 (with Dave Roncolato, Elizabeth Weiss-Ozorak, Karen Hoerst, and Andy Bennett).
  • "Service-Learning in First-Year Seminars: Adding Coherence to Multifunctional Courses" presenter and chair of panel, CCCC Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, March 2002.
  • "Virtual Flames/Real Pain: Racist, Homophobic, and Sexist Remarks in Course-Related Computer-Mediated Communication, " 21st Annual Lilly Conference on College Teaching, November 2001.
  • Upgrading the Server: Reanimating the Liberal Arts Through Computer-Mediated Pedagogy," in collaboration with Ben Slote, Karen Stone, and Susan Fenton," Degrees of Value: Technology, Markets, and the Aims of Education at the Association of American Colleges and Universities Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, January 2001.
 
  • Gannon's committee on the educational aspects of Artificial Intelligence
  • Advisor to the Relay for Life Club of the American Cancer Society.
  • Hold professional development workshops on Artificial Intelligence
Ann M. Bomberger

+1 8148715366
Office: PC 3226

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