Dr. Gian Pagnucci, interim chair of the Department of English at ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, has been selected as IUP's 2009–10 University Professor.
In 2008, Pagnucci was selected for the Award for Innovative Excellence in Teaching, Learning and Technology from the International Conference on College Teaching and Learning and the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning.
Pagnucci has been at IUP since 1995 and is the winner of a 1999 IUP Teaching Excellence Award from the Center for Teaching Excellence. He was awarded for helping to develop an online system for allowing students to comment electronically on paper drafts.
Pagnucci is the author of three books: "Re-Mapping Narrative: Technology's Impact on the Way We Write," "Living the Narrative Life: Stories as a Tool for Meaning Making" and a children's book of folk tales, "Don't Count Your Chickens! Stories for Kids to Tell!" He has also written and published a number of creative nonfiction pieces about his Italian-American childhood. These stories include "Moscatello Wine" and "The Italian Dentist."
He has edited two journal collections and published 16 articles and book chapters on how best to teach writing, particularly writing in the digital age. He also has given more than 40 national and international presentations, more than 25 regional and local presentations, and 17 workshops, all focused on ways to improve college teachers' pedagogy, principally by bringing technology into that pedagogy.
He has directed or co-directed a number of conferences at IUP and in the region, including the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø Statewide English Conference at IUP in 2001, annual IUP English Conferences and The Future of Narrative Discourse conferences in Pittsburgh. He has been a dissertation director for 25 IUP doctoral students and a dissertation reader for more than 50 IUP doctoral students.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Before working in education, Pagnucci worked as a professional technical writer.
"Throughout my academic career, I have always worked hard to achieve my goal of being a first-rate teacher-scholar," Pagnucci said. "That is why I accepted a faculty position at IUP. Fourteen years later, I think my own success at IUP has come because our university truly does support the work of teacher-scholars.
"If we want students to be successful in the Information Age, we must find ways to teach students how to be powerful writers and readers in the digital milieu. This is the goal I have pursued as a professor at IUP."
During his tenure as University Professor, Pagnucci will launch a Digital English Teaching Project, conducting research on current practices for teaching digital English across the country. Ultimately, he will write a book that outlines a philosophy and pedagogy for teaching English through the use of social media technologies such as blogs, wikis, Facebook and Second Life.
"In developing this project, I've worked to envision how a research project on digital English teaching practices could be used not only to contribute to the field of English, but also as a vehicle for contributing to the technological learning needs of IUP faculty and for electronically highlighting the profile of the University Professorship."