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Director for Campus Life Operations | Campus Life | rumpzari@plu.edu | 253-535-7655 | After years of owning and operating her own music studio in the Puyallup Valley, Rebecca joined the PLU family in 2007.  From seismic renovations to large divisional events, Rebecca loves logistics and planning.

Executive Director of Education Leadership Programs | School of Education | dragoab@plu.edu | 253-535-7273 | Allison Drago is an accomplished educator with over 20 years of experience in P-12 public schools, serving in roles ranging from teacher and school principal to central office leader.

Founding Director, In Memoriam | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | Judith Kitchen (1941-2014)  was the co-founder of the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA program at PLU.  She is the author of four collections of essays, most recently The Circus Train (Ovenbird Books, 2014).

Professor Emeritus | Music | After a successful 30 year tenure at PLU, Richard Nance retired in May 2022.

Fiction | MFA in Creative Writing - Low Residency | April Ayers Lawson is the author of Virgin and Other Stories, which was named a Best Book of the Year by The Irish Times and Vice, and a Best Foreign Book of the Year by Spain’s Qué Leer Magazine.  Virgin and Other Stories has been (or will be) translated into German, Spanish, Norwegian, and Italian.  She has received The Plimpton Prize for Fiction, as well as a writing fellowship from The Corporation of Yaddo.   Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Die Welt, ZYZZYVA, and Oxford American, among others, has been cited as notable in Best American Short Stories, featured by Huffington Post, and anthologized in The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from The Paris Review.  Her nonfiction has appeared in Der Spiegel, Granta, Vice, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung Magazine, and been named a Most Popular Read of the Year by Granta.  She has taught in the creative writing programs at Emory University and the University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now teaches at Clemson University. Mentor.  Workshops and classes in fiction. Statement: “The most important thing your writing can be is interesting.  And by that I mean interesting to you, because when you’re deeply engaged in the process, the work sparks alive.  This level of engagement involves writing into places you didn’t expect and opening to the risk of surprise.

Lecturer - Composition | Music | dsonntag@plu.edu | 253-535-7602 | Raised in Minnesota and Wisconsin, Dawn Sonntag received a D.M.A.

Associate Professor | School of Education | gardinwl@plu.edu | 253-535-8342 | Wendy Gardiner teaches literacy courses in the Education Department.

Professor of English | Department of English | marcusls@plu.edu | 253-535-7312 | Lisa Marcus joined the English department after completing a PhD in English at Rutgers University in 1995.  She has been active in campus-wide diversity education and advocacy; she chaired the Gender, Sexuality, and Race Studies program for many years, and is a founding member of PLU’s Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program.  She is deeply committed to first year education and regularly teaches a popular writing seminar on Banned Books for the First Year Experience Program.  Her constellation of courses in the English department include:  The Holocaust in the American Literary Imagination; American Literature 1914-45: Race, Sex, and War; Anne Frank as a Holocaust Icon; a senior seminar on History & Memory in US Slavery and Holocaust texts; an English Studies course on Gendered Literacy; Feminist Approaches to Literature; Women Writers and the Body Politic; and a first-year seminar on Holocaust Literature developed with Professor Rona Kaufman.  Lisa also regularly teaches courses in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Race Studies Programs. Her current research project is Snapshots of a Daughter:  A Feminist Genealogy, a critical exploration of letters between Marcus’s mother and the poet Adrienne Rich, 1979-82. You can read a poem she published about visiting Auschwitz here.     .

Clinical Instructor of Nursing and Lecturer | School of Nursing | yoos@plu.edu | Substantial and progressive education and experience in the medical field as a registered nurse, researcher, lecturer, and unit manager, providing knowledge, skills, expertise in:  Primary care expertise in ICU/ER, Med-Surg/Psychiatric/School Training/teaching field/student nurses Management of critical care units/ acute care setting/ general ward/home care/school health Nursing language: NANDA, NIC, NOC Nursing data management: Linkage Database on NANDA, NIC, NOC Research methodology: Quantitative/Qualitative .

Professor of French | French & Francophone Studies | wilkinrm@plu.edu | Coached by Professor Wilkin in French soccer slang, the French team won the Hong International Hall World Cup. Professor Wilkin teaches in four different programs at PLU: French & Francophone Studies, the International Honors program, the First Year Experience program, and Global Studies.