Overview
Darlene Evans is Senior Lecturer and Director of Writing Outreach with the Knight Institute. As a writing instructor, Darlene teaches classes in the Writing Workshop, the First-year Writing Seminar program and courses supporting the Public Service Scholars program and the McNair Scholars program. While her teaching focuses on research and analysis, cultural studies and the literatures of social action, the primary goal of all her courses is helping students develop their power through writing.
Darlene particularly enjoys the opportunities for mentorship that her position provides, including serving as a mentor for the Chicago-based Posse Program, supporting the writing of students in other programs at the Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives, and working individually with students in her office.
A strong believer in the value of experiential education, Darlene has developed courses that include community outreach and participates in projects that support the ways in which university curriculums can enrich and be enriched by the communities of which they are a part. Her service-learning courses include collaborations with the Ithaca City School District and provide grounding for students engaged in a variety of community projects. Her work has been supported by grants from the Public Service Center, where she has served as a Faculty Fellow in Service and Engaged Cornell, where she has served as Faculty Fellow.
Before coming to Cornell, Darlene taught at the University of Pennsylvania in the English Writing Program, the College of General Studies, and at the Graduate School of Education (GSE). At Penn’s GSE Darlene both mentored student teachers training in the Philadelphia public schools and taught Methods for Teachers of English. She also pioneered a community outreach course for the Writing Program that joined Penn freshman and local high school seniors in shared learning experiences. Prior to her work at Penn, Darlene taught at Georgetown University and at secondary schools in Indiana.
Darlene earned an M.A. in English with specialties in multicultural literature, critical theory and critical literacy from Georgetown University, a M. A. in cultural anthropology with focus on gender theory and Native American studies from Southern Methodist University, and a B.S. in English education from Indiana University, Bloomington.