Bio for Jeff Andelora
Professional
I began my career as an English teacher at Mesa High
School in 1986 and ten years later joined the English
department at Mesa Community College (MCC).
This was the job of a lifetime, and I knew then that I wanted
to work at MCC for the rest of my career. Because my
primary assignment was teaching first-year composition, and
because I wanted to be as effective a teacher as possible, I
enrolled in ASU's PhD program in rhetoric and
composition. The degree took me nine years to
complete--I was married with children and working
full-time--but it remains the academic accomplishment of which
I'm most proud.
As current chair of MCC's English department, most of my duties are administrative; however, I do teach two classes each semester--generally one section of First Year Composition (ENG 101 or ENG 102) and, recently, one section of Teaching Composition in the Two-Year College (ENG 295), a course for current and prospective community college English faculty. I'm also active in a number of professional organizations, including The Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), and the National Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA).
Personal
I was born and raised
in Buffalo, New York, the eldest of five children. One
of my biggest joys as a kid was playing soccer: I began
playing when I was ten, and went on to play for my high
school, for a local club that toured Europe in three
Volkswagon buses during the summer of 1974, and then for the
University of Buffalo. When I was twenty years old, I
decided that before getting too rooted in Buffalo, I needed to
see more of the country and moved to Tempe, Arizona to attend
ASU. Although never part of a conscious plan, Tempe
became my long-term home, and I've lived here ever since.
I'm married to Amy, who teaches high school English and is one
of the most amazing people (and writers) I know. We live with
Chelsea and Caitlin, our two teenage daughters, and Charlie,
our bouncing, 90-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback.
Like Thoreau, one of my literary
heroes, I try to live deliberately, tending carefully to the
relationships and activities I'm involved in. While most
of these activities are happily rooted in my roles as father,
husband, and teacher, I also spend a fair amount of time
reading and writing, tramping through the rough searching for
errant tee shots, cheering for Cait at her soccer games,
muttering apologies to Bach for what I'm doing to his
three-part invention in B-flat, and sitting quietly. 
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