Career Profiles
Jon always had a penchant for writing. That made his college major choice relatively straightforward - English.
Satisfying his thirst to write, Jon worked with the
Swinging Bridge staff for about a year. But Jon went beyond just joining pre-existing campus groups: he created one himself. Noticing the decided lack of outlets for creative writers on campus, he and a few friends got together and founded
The Minnemingo Review, the biannual college literary magazine that still publishes the best of Messiah's creative writing.
Jon's experience as an English major trained him to do exactly what he now teaches to his students. "[The major] helped me develop an appreciation for language and good writing," he says, "and gave me a good background in the humanities that I can draw from as a teacher. It also helped me as a researcher and teacher of research."
Around the time of graduation, Jon was offered the sort of exciting opportunity that rarely presents itself to the recent college grad: to travel to a foreign country, in this case Taiwan, to teach English. Jon's networking connections with other students presented the prospect, and he didn't hesitate to accept. "The main reason that I went to Taiwan," he explains, "was that Doug Habecker ('89), who was a friend of Rob MacBride's ('91), invited Rob to Taiwan and Rob invited me along. I didn't really know anything about Taiwan before I went, but I wanted to travel after graduating from college, and going to Taiwan was the most realistic chance I seemed to have of traveling abroad." While in Taiwan, Jon decided that he wanted to attend graduate school. He returned to the States and enrolled at Ohio University.
REMEMBER...
• "If you can be involved in service work or even study or find a job overseas, take that opportunity. Through that, you can learn a lot about other cultures."
• "International experience can lead you beyond tolerance to acceptance of others."
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Jon returned to Taiwan after graduating from Ohio University, largely because the woman who would become his wife, who he had met during his 1990 summer excursion, lived there. Before returning to Taiwan, however, Jon began his career in higher education as a teacher's assistant in the English department of Ohio University. Once in Taiwan, he taught English at the Feng Chia University in Taichung. While at Feng Chia he applied to Tunghai University, and in 1993 was accepted there. Thoroughly content with his work as a professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Jon remains in this position today.
"As with university positions in the United States," Jon says, "my job involves three main areas: teaching, service, and research... First, I generally teach courses in library research methods, composition and oral practice, and intercultural communication... I will also be teaching first-year English (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) to non-English majors.
"Next, service involves serving on committees, helping to write institutional grant proposals, and serving as an advisor to English majors. I'm currently serving on three committees and advising sophomore English majors.
"Finally, faculty are also encouraged to do research... My work is in the area of comparative rhetoric, particularly Chinese rhetoric and Chinese-Western intercultural rhetorics."
Jon finds personal fulfillment in applying his knowledge and interests to the diverse encounters of his life in a different culture. "I consider rhetoric and composition studies my field," Jon says. "I've always been interested in writing. I became interested in rhetoric as a result of my teaching in Taiwan. Rhetoric, as the study of language (or symbol) use for particular audiences and purposes in specific contexts, seemed to me to be an interesting field to go into to start to understand the relationships between culture, history, and the practice of writing."
"I think the best thing I can be," Jon says, "is a good role model to students and colleagues. My wife and I are also involved in teaching English to children, and have many opportunities to teach them ethics and moral values in addition to the language."
Currently Jon's working on his Ph.D in composition and cultural rhetoric from Syracuse University, but he doesn't have grand plans far beyond that. "A long time ago," Jon says, "I decided not to wonder about what 'might have been' and do my best in the situation I'm in. I have to say that I do genuinely enjoy the career and life I'm in here in Taiwan. I can't think of anything else I'd rather be doing or any place I'd rather be."
Discover the career journeys of other Messiah grads who work in higher education:
Stephen Lias, professor of music theory
Fabienne Doucet, assistant professor of family studies
Robin Miller, head of slide library
Kimberly Thornbury, dean of students
Tonya King, associate professor of biostatistics
Owen Byer, professor of mathematics
Profile by Angela Kriebel, 2005
