Dr. Sheila Otto
Associate Professor

Office: PH 240; Phone/Voice Mail: 898-5586

Dr. Otto joined the English Department in 2006. For many years, she served as coordinator of MTSU’s Developmental Writing Program. She now serves as coordinator of the Stretch English Program, a two-semester sequence of Expository Writing designed for students who need extra time and practice to develop college level writing skills. Her research focuses on the experiences of undergraduate basic and developmental writing students, on the social construction of identity in writing classrooms, and on the use of discourse analysis in language and literacy research.

See Publications

Selected Conference Presentations

• “The Stretch English Program at MTSU: Assessing Student Achievement.” 2008 Tennessee Association for Developmental Education Conference, Kingsport, TN.

• “What Is College Writing?” Panelist, 2008 Conference of the Two-Year College English Association of Tennessee, Dickson, TN.

• “Stretching the Possibilities for Basic Writing: The Significant Role of Writing Communities in a Stretch Composition Program.” 2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention, New Orleans, LA.

• “Designing and Implementing a Stretch Program to Replace Developmental Writing.” 2007 Tennessee Association for Developmental Education Conference, Gatlinburg, TN

• “Meeting the Needs of Underprepared First-Year Students in College-Level Courses: A Pilot Study.” 2007 International Conference on the First Year Experience, Big Island, Hawaii. 

• “Identifying Writing Studios.”  Panelist/Studio SIG at the 2007 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention, New York, NY.

• “Meeting the Needs of First Year Students through a Transformed Curriculum.” 2006 International Conference on the First Year Experience, Montreal, Canada.

• “Designing a Site-specific Studio Course for Mainstreaming Basic Writing.”  2006 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention, Chicago, IL.

• “Mainstreaming Developmental Writing: A Studio Approach.”  2005 Tennessee Association for Developmental Education Conference, Chattanooga, TN. 

• “Writing and Identity: Examining the Social Construction of Identity in a Basic Writing Classroom.” 2005 Conference on College Composition and Communication Annual Convention, San Francisco, CA

• “The Social Construction of Identity in a Basic Writing Class.”  2002 American Educational Research Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.

• “Investigating the Social Construction of Identity: Examining Students' Writing and Interactions.”  2002 Conversations on Language and Literacy Lecture Series, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. 

• “Adopting, Adapting, Resisting College Writing Practices: An Ethnographic Study of a Basic Writing Class.”  2002American Educational Research Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.

• “The Social Construction of Identity in a Language Arts Class.”  2000 American Educational Research Association Conference, New Orleans, LA.

• “Texts, Practices, and Discourse Analysis: Definitions and Approaches to the Use of Discourse Analysis in the Study of Language and Literacy.”  1999 National Reading Conference, Orlando, FL.

• “Discourse Analysis and the Study of Classroom Language and Literacy Events.” 1999 National Council of Teachers of English Conference, Denver, CO.

• “Conceptions of Time in Classroom Learning Environments.”  1999 American Educational Research Association Conference, Montreal, Canada.