Born and raised in Omaha, UNO English Alum, Thom Davis graduated from Omaha Central High School. Then, in 1993, he finished his first degree at UNO in Dramatic Arts. Having a passion for teaching, he returned to UNO to pursue a Master of Arts in English in 2014.
After taking his first seminar with Dr. Christensen, he decided to dedicate his studies within Composition and Rhetoric. He discovered how much he loved language, so Composition was “natural.” Along the way, he also found Linguistics fascinating and enlightening. In 2016, he completed the TESOL Certificate-in-Course with Dr. Mordaunt.
Currently, he is starting his first full-time teaching position with the College of IS&T. He explains that without the knowledge and experience he gained while a grad student taking UNO English classes, he never could have been qualified to teach Advanced Composition for IS&T. He started as a Graduate Teaching Assistant and kept contact with the College after his graduation.
As a non-IS&T person, who is a member of an IS&T faculty, he is excited to explore interdisciplinary approaches and develop more effective methods to teach writing to STEM majors. Besides his continued focus on English language learners with the TESOL Community of Practice, he also hopes to collaborate with the English Department's First-Year Writing Program on approaches for teaching Composition II to STEM majors. In the future, he will work to interact with area high school teachers and students on the mechanics and practicality of technical writing. He explains that although “I am not an IS&T guy, I have learned much from my students, and a discipline specific area that I want to research is deploying machine learning to improve teaching practices in the Composition classroom.”
