Finding Meaning and Justice in the Classroom
SCU English professor researches first-year motivation, inclusivity
By Riley O’Connell ‘19
Writing composition and rhetoric specialist Professor Matt Gomes joined Santa Clara University’s Department of English in September. A native of Fresno, Gomes is excited to be back in California, especially at SCU, an institution in which he has personal pride because of its “values [that] speak so specifically to justice and speaking back to the community.”
Gomes’ diverse academic background includes a Ph.D. in rhetoric and writing from Michigan State University’s highly regarded writing program, a master’s in English composition theory and dual bachelor’s degrees in English and music composition from California State University, Fresno.
At SCU, Gomes aims to incorporate justice and meaning into his writing studies courses. This sense of moral responsibility is present in Gomes’ teaching and within writing studies communities, especially when it comes to students for whom English is a second language. These students, Gomes observes, “are often put at the outside of the curriculum and most likely historically to need remediation.” This, Gomes says, “compels institutions to ask what types of language practices are really important within the context of their university, because those linguistic formations change from campus to campus as demographics change.”
A teacher of first-year, often mandatory writing courses since 2009 when he began his MA at CSU Fresno, Gomes says “it is very important to me that [these courses] were meaningful and spoke to students’ own motivations for going to school.” For this reason, Gomes has been researching the helpfulness of first-year writing courses. From his students, he learned four primary desires for the classroom: inquiry-based practices, process-based reading and writing practices that allowed feedback and self-revision, transferable and transformational learning, and inclusivity for all identities. He hopes to continue this research with his students at SCU.
Gomes’ writing has been recently published in Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity, and is forthcoming in Community Action for Social Justice: A Digital Archive. He also has produced podcasts for the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication.
At SCU, Gomes teaches CTW 1 & 2, Teaching Writing (ENGL 10), Writing Studies and Educational Justice (ENGL 103), and Writing Digital Audio (ENGL 110).