Coretta Pittman

Transcript

Derek Smith:
Hello and welcome to Baylor Connections, a conversation series with the people shaping our future. Each week we go in depth with Baylor leaders, professors and more discussing important topics in higher education, research and student life. I'm Derek Smith, and today we are visiting with Coretta Pittman. Dr. Pittman serves as Associate Professor of English and as Associate Dean for Diversity and Belonging in the Baylor College of Arts and Sciences. A teacher, mentor, researcher and author, Dr. Pittman's work is featured in the 2022 book Literacy in a Long Blues Note: Black Women's Literature and Music in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. She joined the Baylor faculty in 2003. She's got a multifaceted role and she's with us today on the program. Dr. Pittman, appreciate your time. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Coretta Pittman:
Thanks for having me.

Derek Smith:
Well, we can talk as we visit here over the next 20 minutes or so about writing, about authors, about working with your students and your role as associate dean. So, let's dive into what's hopefully a fun topic for you right off the bat, a few of your all-time favorite authors. Can you tell us a few of your all-time favorite authors to read and maybe a short reason why they are?

Coretta Pittman:
I would say my two favorite, and not in any special order, would be Alice Walker and Tony Morrison. And then I would say my third person is a woman named Cynthia Bond. I like Alice Walker because she just seems to write in a magical way and she writes about periods in history that I'm interested in, like early 20th century is a period that I research, but I'm just also fascinated by that time period. And so I like to read her novels because they tend to focus in those eras.
I like Tony Morrison because reading her is working through a puzzle. And some days I want a puzzle. Some days I want to be challenged and engaged in a way where my mind can't slip because then I'll miss something. And so I'm fascinated by the fact that I have to pay attention when I'm reading Tony Morrison.
And then Cynthia Bond, I don't even know how to describe what she writes. She wrote a book called Ruby, and I forget when it was published, and she reminds me if Alice Walker and Tony Morrison had a child, it would be Cynthia Bond in terms of how she writes. And so I think of her as a mix between the two of them. And so those are my top three.

Derek Smith:
Well, let me ask you this, Cynthia Bond, Alice Walker, Tony Morrison, I asked you your favorite authors to read, who are your favorite authors to share with your students? Is there a lot of overlap there?

Coretta Pittman:
Interesting question. Those writers are very complicated, the content is, and so I do tell my students that these are the people that I read. I don't know if you want to read them, because the subject matter is sometimes difficult. So Tony Morrison talks about enslavement, she talks about Jim Crow, and I know that students who take literature classes if they haven't read some of that material, it can be a bit jarring for them. And so I always like to do a, "Okay, let me set this up. Let's talk about it." Because sometimes there's rape in the novels as well, and I'm not suggesting that students should shy away from those topics, but I always like to say, "Okay, let me explain what's going on here, why it is important to have those discussions." So I always tell them, "Look, the women I'm reading, these aren't fun tales. So I don't want you to go out on the Baylor lawn, kick back and think, 'Oh, I'm going to read a great novel.' You are, but you also may come away with it with some questions." So, I give them a heads-up.

Derek Smith:
Kind of the right timing, I presume, in some ways, people are ready. And you teach all ages at Baylor, is that correct?

Coretta Pittman:
I do. I do. Yeah. Yeah.

Derek Smith:
From intro and on up?

Coretta Pittman:
I do. To be honest with you, I even tell my friends, "Hey, this book that I read from Cynthia Bond titled Ruby," I said, "... read this when you're in a good mood. Don't read this after a long day at work and you want a novel." I said, "No, no, no. Read this when you're already up and then you can read Ruby." So, I even tell that to my mature friends as well.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Coretta Pittman. And Dr. Pittman, let's zoom out just a little bit, because I know English Professor really only begins to scratch the surface of what you do. So, how would you describe, you mentioned some areas you're interested. How would you describe your role and focus first as a professor?

Coretta Pittman:
Well, my specialties actually in writing studies and rhetoric. So I mainly teach, for the most part, writing classes from first year students to graduating seniors. And then sometimes I teach a pedagogy course for graduate students. That's actually my training. And sometimes I will teach an African American graduate course. I taught one on Jazz and Literature a couple of years back, and so I can fill in some gaps because I do have a real love of literature and I include literature in my research area. That's sort of one part of me. I'm really interested in helping students communicate effectively. I mean, I just really enjoy that. I know people look at me funny sometimes when I say, "I like to teach students how to write or how to enhance their writing skills they already come to me with." So, that's sort of one part of me.
The other part of my job is I really, really enjoy mentoring. And so, because I teach writing classes, I sometimes teach smaller groups of students between sometimes maybe 12 to 20 students. And so I really get an opportunity to get to know them as writers, but I get to know them as people. And sometimes out of those relationships as professor-student, I also become a mentor to my students, which again, I truly, truly enjoy that part of my job.
And then most recently I became the director of the new ethnic studies minor. I've worked with colleagues for a few years on that. My colleagues were great. And so I would say I'm doing curriculum development as well as part of my job. I didn't go to school for that, but I've been doing some of that since I've been at Baylor. And then lastly, in August of 2023, I started the role as the Associate Dean for Diversity and Belonging at Baylor. And for much of my time at Baylor, I've been kind of involved in issues around race and social justice. Although I didn't see that coming, it has been a natural fit because I've been doing the work mostly all of my career here at Baylor.

Derek Smith:
That's great. So that opportunity came along. The title kind of met what you'd been doing.

Coretta Pittman:
Yeah. Yeah, it was really great.

Derek Smith:
That's great. Visiting with Dr. Coretta Pittman. I want to ask you about topics like writing and helping students become better writers and communicators. When did that idea first grab a hold of you as an area of focus?

Coretta Pittman:
It was really strange. I went to graduate school for my PhD and I thought I was going to do African American Literacy. And the first day I arrived on campus to register for my classes, I met a gentleman, this tall guy was standing behind me, really friendly guy, bald head and was like, "Hey, who are you?" And I was like, "Oh, I'm Coretta. I'm new, first year, first PhD student." And he was like, "Oh, you should take my class." It was a class on Composition and Literacy. And I thought, "That's interesting. Okay." And he was so friendly, I thought, "I'll take his class, why not? It won't hurt me." I took his class. It was the first time we talked about how our subjectivity, who we are, where we come from, influences how we write and how we think. I never really learned that in my undergraduate English courses or in my writing courses.
And so from that moment on, I switched my degree focus from African American Literature to Literacy, The Composition and Rhetoric. I mean, I was so taken by what I was learning that I thought I can still do the African American Literature work. I can even do that on my own because I love to read, but this stuff I want to know. I want to understand the theory, I want to understand writing, how to communicate effectively and then teach that to other people. So it was just happenstance, this tall gentleman behind me, his name is Richard Marback, was behind me talking really friendly and told me to take his class. And I did and I never looked back.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Coretta Pittman, Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean for Diversity and Belonging at Baylor College of Arts and Sciences. And I want to ask you about writing and teaching students to become good communicators and good writers. I think we all know what's important, and I think there's always a generational thing. Maybe not always, but sometimes you'll hear the [inaudible 00:09:52] next generation like, "Oh, kids today can't write." Or I know there's headwinds with texting and things like that, but take us inside what you see as you get to teach this generation of students to write and their openness to learning and growing.

Coretta Pittman:
I know we all say that these students can't do this, and we could. A friend of mine used to always say, "I think we misremember ourselves." She would always tell us that we were talking about students. But I would say for the most part, the students that I work with at Baylor, they already know how to form a paragraph. So, they know that you need four or five sentences in a paragraph. What our students actually need help with is developing those ideas into a coherent essay or thought or idea. They need help enhancing what they already have. We have really talented writers, students at Baylor.
The other thing our students, probably that I tell them they should do more, is read more widely. So a lot of our students, I know that they have assignments they have to do in high school. They have a sort of script that they have to follow. But I tell my students, "Read as much as you possibly can and read nonfiction." Students love fiction, which I love as well, but I became a better writer, I think, by reading other writers that I admire and I learned their patterns. How do they actually construct a sentence? What do their topic sentences look like?
So when I'm in my classroom, I'm talking to my students about, "Talk to me about this topic sentence. Why does this work for you or not work for you? And how do you develop ideas beyond that particular topic sentence? How do you sequentially make an argument in an essay?" And then I show them using, again, one of my favorite writers. I say, "This is the argument they're making. And then let's talk about how they support those arguments. Those ideas that are out there in the writing." It's corny, but I tell students, "Read, just read."
And reading online is fine. Reading newspapers, that's okay too. Reading magazine articles, that's great. Reading books, that's great. So, I just try to tell them to read as much as possible. I know they say, "Oh, I'm busy, Dr. Pittman, I've got this." I know, put the phone down and read something. And I work on that. And I say that you also just learn other things, other ideas when you are reading. You're engaging with other people who don't look like you, who don't come from the same kind of family structure as you. It's really important to do that. So, I say we read, read and read.

Derek Smith:
Do people who are well beyond college ever ask you for writing advice? And if so, are there... I mean, read seems like one of them for sure, read and read widely, but are there any other basics you ever pass along if you're in that situation?

Coretta Pittman:
I do. I do have people sometimes, like, "Can I send you my novel?" I say, "No. Look, I have no idea how to tell you if you wrote a good novel." I do tell students and people I meet, industry, when I tell them what I do or at some kind of event, that it's always good to have a grammar book or a handbook with them, because sometimes I need a word. I can't come up with a word. And so in a really good composition textbook, there are words in the back, commonly used words. Even I sometimes have to go back and say, "Okay, that works better for what I'm trying to say here." So, I always, when I'm writing, I have a dictionary next to me, I have a thesaurus next to me and I have a composition handbook next to me, because sometimes I still need to go and make a reference to something.
And I know I could go online and look things up, but I also tell students and people too, that concentration is really important when you're writing and you don't want a lot of distractions. And so, if there's a computer in front of me and I'm writing and I'm looking up a word online, then I might go look something else up online, and then I might go look up something else online. So for me, tangible things next to me help me to concentrate. And so I do, I say, "Get you a good grammar book, composition book, get you a good dictionary and a good the source, and get going and just write." Because people always sometimes talk about like, "Oh, I want to say the perfect thing." No, you just want to get it on the page. And then you can work on a revision process, which is equally important as getting it on the page.

Derek Smith:
Visiting with Dr. Coretta Pitman. And Dr. Pittman, I want to ask you, you mentioned, I want to transition to your role as Associate Dean for Diversity and Belonging. But I also want to ask you, you mentioned the new course of study at the top of the show, again, that you've been working towards with your colleagues in the English department. Would you mind just giving us kind of the one-on-one on that again?

Coretta Pittman:
Right. It was about eight other colleagues over a two and a half year period worked on a new ethnic studies minor. And what we were wanting to do, or a couple of things. One was that, in 2020, students at Baylor created an Instagram post called Dear Baylor. I don't know if you remember that?

Derek Smith:
Yeah.

Coretta Pittman:
And so, a friend of mine alerted me to that. I went and read that and the students were talking about their experiences. Students of color were talking about their experiences in some of their classrooms and sometimes even in my own department. And some of those experiences were very uncomfortable for them and it made them sad. They were sort of writing about that in the wake of also all the issues, COVID, George Floyd, all that came out in these Dear Baylor posts. And so I got together with my colleagues and we talked about what can we do to make those experiences better?
So that's sort of one thing. We want to make sure that we're teaching students who feel comfortable, a sense of belonging in our classrooms. The other thing is that we have a number of experts in fields related to ethnic studies. So, we have people who do Chicano history, we have people who do African American history, I have a colleague who works on Asian American Christianity. And so we were like, and of course there are many, many others, and so we're thinking, how do we create a minor that allows us to bring together all our expertise and make that available to students in a kind of coherent manner? So that was another way of us thinking about belonging, but also expertise in specialty areas.
And then prior to that 2020 Dear Baylor post, I had been in conversation with a colleague in Arts and Sciences, Dr. Kim Kelsey, and we had been talking about ethnic studies for a while. And so it just kind of came together in this one big moment in 2020, my colleagues, we got together, Dr. Ryan Sharp in English, Gary Park in Sociology and others, and created the minor. And I think part of the other thinking too is that we have students who understand that they look different on campus, they sound different, but they don't know historically why they may feel a certain kind of un-belonging on campus or in their daily walks outside the Baylor bubble, or whatever, in their home communities.
And so, we wanted a minor that can help them wrestle with these sort of difficult, complicated issues around race and ethnicity, gender, class, all of those things that make us who we are, but sometimes make us uncomfortable. And so that's another reason why we thought it would be really good to create a minor, to give them the history of the context, the culture, the sort of vernacular, how to understand and have those conversations with themselves, but also with others. And so, that's part of our thinking around why we needed a minor such as that.

Derek Smith:
Absolutely. Great new opportunities for students to engage in that. And as we wind down on the program, I want to ask you as well about your role as Associate Dean for Diversity and Belonging. And you talked about helping students in that minor, maybe there's some tie in here. But I'm curious, what are you excited to do in this role as you serve students and maybe even your fellow colleagues?

Coretta Pittman:
Right. So this particular role in the Dean's Office is really more, I would say, more faculty centered. So, I was maybe like 70, 30, 70 faculty, 30 students, but it all works together. The College of Arts and Sciences has a Diversity and Belonging Committee, made up of representatives from 27 departments and programs. And so, what that particular committee was tasked to do was to come up with proposals, recommendations from five subcommittees that the dean, Dean Lee Nordt, could implement to impact diverse communities on campus. And so those five subcommittees, Faculty, Research, Curriculum, Student Support and Special Events, those folks were in those committees, created about 35 different proposals for the dean to work through. And the dean is very busy and so are his other associate deans. So he created this position so that that person who was in that role could implement some of those recommendations.
And so, one recommendation was that the Curriculum Subcommittee wanted a DEI teaching fellowship. So, what they wanted was somebody who, or bodies, plural, who would focus on whose research or teaching would focus on topics around Diversity and Belonging or a person maybe in those communities. And so what I've done right now, one of the new programs that came out of that particular proposal, was the Diversity and Belonging Brown Bag Series. And so we had our first Diversity and Belonging Brown Bag Series in February. And those folks who were presenting in the Brown Bag, they have a teaching innovation award. And that award allows faculty to redesign a course or create a new course or go to a workshop or to a conference. And those people who decided to create a new course to impact diverse student populations on campus, I pulled from those awardees to create that Teaching and Belonging, the Diversity and Belonging Brown Bag Series.
And so, the first two people who presented last semester, I mean last semester, last month, presented on a new intro to Ethnic Studies course and then a redesigned Museum Studies course. And then we had a Brown Bag on Monday and a colleague in History, Ricardo Alvarez, talked about his new course that he's creating called Waco's Mexican American Experience Course. And then we had a colleague from Religion on Monday as well, who had a new course on Women and Gender in the Old Testament.
And so, the idea is that we want people to know in Arts and Sciences that we have faculty who are thinking very seriously about pedagogy, about the material, the content that they're teaching, their students, but also trying to address some of the student needs on campus. I mean, students want to have a course on Mexican American History. What better way to do that than to have a colleague come in and create a class for their purpose, or women who want to know more about women's role in the Old Testament. And so, that particular, again, Brown Bag, is to highlight diversity and belonging that's happening from a curricular standpoint. And I'm really, really excited about that. There's more to come, but that's the first program initiative that's coming out of this office.

Derek Smith:
We'll look forward to hearing more as it comes from the work that you and your colleagues are doing there and the work you continue to do with students here at Baylor in the English department. Dr. Pittman, we're out of time, but I want to thank you for your time today. Really appreciate you jumping on with us today.

Coretta Pittman:
Thank you so much for having me. It's been fun.

Derek Smith:
It's been great to have you here. Dr. Coretta Pitman, Associate Professor of English and Associate Dean for Diversity and Belonging in Baylor College of Arts and Sciences, our guest today on Baylor Connections. I'm Derek Smith. A reminder, you can hear this and other programs online at baylor.edu/connections, and you can subscribe to the program on iTunes. Thanks for joining us here on Baylor Connections.