SUNY Online Teaching Ambassador 2021: FIT – Amy Lemmon

Dr. Amy Lemmon, Professor and Chairperson of English and Communication Studies, has taught at FIT since 1996 and joined the college full-time in 2000. She is the recipient of a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2004-05) and the FIT Faculty Excellence Award (2015). She has taught a wide range of writing and literature courses and currently focuses on creative writing and creativity studies.

Dr. Lemmon is the author of five poetry collections including Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press, 2009), and The Miracles (C&R Press, 2019). Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared in Rolling Stone, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The Journal, Marginalia, and many other magazines and anthologies. Her work has been translated into Spanish and Chinese and was selected for The Best American Poetry 2013. Dr. Lemmon has contributed articles to The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry, and the Facts on File Companion to Twentieth-Century British Poetry. She served as Poetry Editor of the online literary magazine Ducts.org, and is co-creator and editor of The CDC Poetry Project. She has judged the Poetry Out Loud NYC regional competition since 2015 and in 2019 will judge the New York State Finals. She holds a BA in English from Ohio Wesleyan University, and an MA and PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati.

I have taught online classes for over a decade and a half, since first learning best practices under the expert guidance of Bill Pelz in 2004. Having navigated many changes in LMS and related tools as well as developments in my discipline, I am continuously open to innovations in online learning. In the past year or so I have significantly revamped my strategies for teaching Creative Writing online. Thanks to interactive tools like Padlet, I can engage students in multimodal discussions and assignments and enable them to participate in and reflect on their own creative process, while sharing their creativity with others. Students particularly enjoy the Padlet discussions and the small group discussion boards, where they share drafts of their poetry and prose in a supportive community. I can’t wait to see what the future holds for online learning!