Education and travel: TAMIU's Dr. Ellen Barker

By Karina Moreno

“I am as surprised as anyone that I'm here,” said Dr. Ellen Barker, Texas A&M International University's new director of composition and associate professor for the College of Arts and Sciences.

Barker is originally from Mississippi , but she was educated for the most part in Indiana . “I attended elementary and high school in Indiana , and I did my undergraduate degree in English Education at Ball State University , also in Indiana ,” she said.

Her master's degree was in modern and contemporary American literature from the University of Missouri - Columbia , and her Ph.D. studies at Georgia State University specialized in rhetoric and composition.

“This job gives me the opportunity to do more in my area,” she said. Barker is currently teaching three sections of English 1301 and is a member of the Pilot Program at TAMIU, a group in which several professors meet and strategize on how to improve students' writing and performance on the University Writing Assessment.

“What I love the most of my career is teaching,” Barker said. “I love to see the progress in writing and trying different approaches to teaching writing. Teaching at the college level is very intellectually challenging for me.”

Barker began teaching 9th and 10th grade students after completing her bachelor's degree. “I taught at a high school in south Georgia for two years,” she said. “The high school was in a very poor area. The students lived in shacks with no water, and I got paid $7,000 a year. It was a very interesting experience nonetheless.”

Barker entered college-level education when she was offered a teaching assistant position by the University of Missouri - Columbia as she worked on her master's degree.

Upon completion of her degree, Barker was hired by Ball State University to teach composition. She then transferred to the University of Tennessee , where she also taught composition. After one year, she was hired by Eastern Oregon State University to teach composition, advanced composition, and American literature. She did so for two years.

Barker enrolled in a teacher exchange program, which took her to the island of Truk in Micronesia. “I taught at Truk for one summer, and I also taught in England during the summer for four years,”she said. “I also studied in Cuba for one summer.”

She returned to Georgia and taught composition and literature at the State University of West Georgia.

Georgia Perimeter College hired her subsequently, and this was where she taught for the following 12 years. “I was assistant to the department chair at this college,” she said.

“One of my goals is to travel to every continent and visit every country, and I am happy to say it is something I'm nearly done with,” Barker said. She is currently lacking two states, North Dakota and Alaska , as well as Antarctica, China , Malaysia , Poland , and Russia .

Barker was interviewed in July and traveled to Laredo from Atlanta . “I was also offered a job at a school at Mississippi , so I flew to Corpus Christi , rented a car, and drove down here to think about it,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘Okay, I could do this,' and I actually accepted the job from my cell phone while driving the rental car back to Corpus.”

Currently, her plans are to stay and make TAMIU her “home institution.”

“I want to explore the area on both sides of the border. I want to learn Spanish, and be more involved in the community, particularly through choir activities since music was my minor and I've been in a chorus before,” she said.

“It's been a nice adjustment so far,” Barker said.