Alumni Spotlight: Passing Along the Support He Received
A clerical job at UNO gave Joel Thomas the chance to finish his college degree. He loved the experience so much that he went on to graduate school, and he now teaches college students of his own.
Thomas’s family had largely settled in the Niles, Michigan, and South Bend, Indiana, area by the time he was 10. He earned an associate degree in general studies from Southwestern Michigan College in 2000. He wanted to finish a four-year degree but had no specific plan, and UNO hired him for a clerical job that allowed him to do so. He completed a Bachelor of General Studies with an English major in 2004, then earned a master’s degree in English and a graduate certificate in advanced writing, both in 2008.
His return to college started with a struggle. Thomas felt unprepared in a rhetoric course during his first semester back and considered quitting. Faculty member Joan Latchaw insisted he work with her during office hours and keep redrafting after feedback. “Dr. Latchaw proved a true mensch and mentor over the next few years,” he said. He tried teaching as a graduate teaching assistant only because she talked him into it. She also asked him to revive the English Graduate Organization, and he served as both club president and the student graduate representative to English department meetings.
Today, Thomas teaches at a small, rural Midwestern college that is now part of a Franciscan university system, with a high percentage of first-generation and working-class students. He has taught there since 2008 and full time since 2011. Outside his faculty role, he volunteers by teaching a creative writing class at the county jail as part of an addiction recovery program.
“I’m not much for big moments,” Thomas said. “Every day I can show up and help a student see their own potential and develop their skills, it’s a direct tie to UNO and my professors there.”
He said his professors’ influence shows up in his work every day, in how they treated him and other students, the ways they taught and how they went about their professional lives. His advice to current English majors: “Do the work no one else will do because that will lead to opportunities no one else will see.”
