David Bergdahl Length of Service: 36 years (1968-2004) Quality of teaching/research/service

David Bergdahl

Length of Service: 36 years (1968-2004)
Quality of teaching/research/service:
Although my research has focused on the pedigogical application of linguistics and American poet, critic and dramatist T. S. Eliot, my teaching has shown remarkable breadth, ranging from freshman composition and sophomore genre courses to American and British twentieth-century literature, literary theory, and graduate seminars on areas as different as American dialects to the sources of The Waste Land. I have taught courses on the masters of twentieth-century literature: Saul Bellow, T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Phillip Roth, William Butler Yeats. Courses I have pioneered include the two courses on stylistics, the application of linguistics to literary study, the exploration of the representation of family life in literature with readings in psychology (family therapy).
Of my publications I am proudest of three on T. S. Eliot in European publications:

• 
  [book review] Armin Paul Frank, Die Sehnsucht nach der Unteilbaren Sein: Motive in der Literaturkritik T. S. Eliots in Anglia: Zeitschrift fur Englische Philologie no. 3/4 (1978), 542-545.
  
• 
  [book review] Monique Lojkine-Morelec, T. S. Eliot: Essai sur la génèsse d'une écriture (Paris 1988) in Etudes Anglaises vol. 44 no. 3 (1991), 361-364.
  
• 
  "Genre in a Cognitive Perspective: Eliot's Four Quartets, " Revue Belge de Philologie et d'Histoire, vol. 75 no. 3 (1997), 731-741.
  

Overall contribution to the University:
Initially a member of the English Language and Linguistics group within the English department, I elected to stay with the department when Linguistics branched off to become its own department because in addition to my expertise as a linguist, I had credentials as a twentieth-century English literature specialist. Nevertheless, I continued my relationship with Linguistics including a twenty-two year membership of the Chomsky group (which slowly became the Cognitive Sciences Study Group), a weekly reading group which focused on issues of language and mind. In addition to Chomsky himself, we have brought distinguished linguists and philosophers of language to campus (the latter in conjunction with the Philosophy Department).
As a linguist I taught MA students in our department’s program and—when Linguistics separated—undergraduate English majors and students seeking certification (and then licensure) in the College of Education. There is so much misinformation and outright nonsense about language in the popular mind that part of my service to the university (and the larger community) has been debunking such unscientific claptrap as that associated with “Ebonics” or the mythical community where “they still speak Elizabethan English.”

During the years 1979-1983 I was director of composition. I transitioned the grammar-focused and model-based composition instruction to one dedicated to process (the buzzword of the 1970s) and greatly advanced the professionalization of composition teaching in the university. I opened my composition pedagogy class to interested faculty who were preparing to teach junior composition in their own classes for the first time. Several faculty took me up on it. When I left the composition post the department and university had entered a new phase. As an administrator of the English department’s service component I was able to reduce if not eliminate the paranoia felt by teaching assistants; I furthered the professionalization of the composition program by instituting weekly staff meetings under the English 791-2-3 title, during which faculty assisted in the training and mentoring of new teachers by presenting self-contained units of instruction; the initial training course for TAs was substantially improved during my tenure, from a cafeteria of helpful hints for new teachers to an introduction to composition as a field and to composition pedagogy. Several TAs carried on educational research involving sentence-combining under my supervision. The present 171-2-3 courses were sculpted by me and have remained unchanged for two decades.

In addition in the department I have chaired the undergraduate committee during 1977-1979 and served on the library resources, English language, tenure, promotion B, budget and rating, composition, computer, part time evaluation, administrative and graduate committees as well as several ad hoc committees.

I was the department’s chief academic advisor from 1999-2002: I was available for prospective students and their parents, advised new majors, assigned advisors (and took over the advising load of people on leave or temporarily unable to perform their duties), and maintained the necessary records. I also attended the meetings of the college and university advising council.

At the college level I have served on the Arts and Sciences Curriculum Council and Distributed Learning Courseware Development Service Committees. At the university level I have served on the Academic Advancement Center Advisory Committee, the English Composition Advisory Committee, the University Hearing Board / Judiciaries, the Post Publishing Board, and on the University Curriculum Council.

I directed two dissertations: one on Saul Bellow and another on Raymond Carver and served on numerous English language and 20^th-century literature exams and dissertations. The Carver disseration has since been published. An MA-student whom I directed in 2001 was awarded the departmental award for the best master’s thesis that year. Subsequently she has presented the paper at a professional meeting and it has been placed for publication.

Service to society beyond the University community:

I represented the university at professional meetings: The Modern Language Association, The Midwest MLA, The Linguistic Society of America, The American Dialect Society, The National Council of Teachers of English, Conference on College Composition and Communication, The College English Association of Ohio and The Poetics and Linguistics Association (UK)

Internationally, I was a Fulbrighter at Georg-August Universität in Göttingen (Germany) and participated in a departmental exchange with a professor from The University of Toulouse/Le Mirail (France).
I was involved for many years with the Southeastern Ohio Council of Teachers of English, including as editor of their journal, Focus: Teaching English Language Arts; a few issues which I edited were selected for redistribution by The National Council of Teachers of English—a rare honor. SOCTE, a local NCTE-affiliate, worked with local teachers predominantly but university students also took part in our meetings and activities. So our work improved the teaching of language arts in this section of the state.
I presented public forums on language issues to regional groups in Zanesville, Chillicothe, Ironton, Jackson, Stewart, Waverly, Marietta, Portsmouth, Lancaster and Athens in an Ohio Program in the Humanities-funded project; my forums were the most-requested ones under that grant, administered in 1977-78 by Jim Davis as part of the department’s outreach effort.
I served Hillel on a committee to consider investment choices for money donated over the years.