Katt Blackwell-Starnes, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor & Writing Director
Department of English and Modern Languages
Lamar University

Service Biography

I serve in a variety of roles and on a variety of committees that serve a diverse community of students, fellow faculty members, and national colleagues.

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National Service Highlights

Writing with Current, Former, and Future Members of the Military Community. A Standing Group of the Conference on College Composition and Communication.

I currently serve as Senior Chair for the Standing Group (effective March 2018), responsible for coordinating with the Junior Chair to elect a Sponsored Panel for the 2019 conference and to coordinate our annual outreach event. In previous years, I served as Junior Chair, and I aided in the hosting of two outreach workshops, and I co-hosted and successfully funded the group’s 2017 Outreach workshop, Storytelling for Business Settings, with Vetwork PDX. The funding proposal is viewable here.

Journal of Veterans Studies

My role at the Journal of Veterans Studies is that of the New Media Editor, ensuring quality reviews of new media content devoted to veterans in society. The journal is an open-access, peer-reviewed publication that seeks to “sustain research in veterans studies, facilitate interdisciplinary research collaborations, and narrow gaps between cultures, institutions, experiences, knowledge, and understanding” and presenting new research on media pieces focused on veterans is only one way in which we achieve our goals. As New Media Editor, I am also a member of the editorial board. You can view and read archives online at this link.

University Service Highlights

Veterans Advisory Board

I serve several roles connected to the Veterans Advisory Board at Lamar. On the board itself, I serve as the Faculty Liaison, helping to meet the needs of both faculty and students, while also helping community members to understand the needs and requirements of the academic setting. I also serve as the faculty advisor for our student veteran organization, ensuring that our student veterans have opportunities to network and relax. In the past, the organization sponsored family events, including a day of water safety training and kayaking with Heroes on the Water and a welcome week barbecue to welcome new student veterans to the campus.

I am also a researcher and grant writer for our veteran center team, which means that I am on hand to locate data and generate necessary documents as we navigate the process of securing space and funding to make a veteran center a reality on our campus.

LUCARE Team

Lamar’s Critical Assessment Response and Evaluation Team (CARE) is a collaboration among the Dean of Students and representatives from all student support offices on campus. The team coordinates specific campus services as well as campus and community resources to assist students of concern. As the Faculty Representative, I work closely with the team to provide input from the faculty perspective and to aid support services staff in shaping resources that have a classroom or faculty impact for the individual student served.

College Service Highlights

Student-Faculty Relations Committee

The Student-Faculty Relations Committee serves to resolve conflict between students and faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences. The committee meets to hear both sides of a dispute confidentially before making a recommendation to the college dean about the ideal solution to the problem. I serve the committee as a Faculty Representative.

Lamar Journal of the Humanities

The Lamar Journal of the Humanities is an endowed journal and a collaboration between the the Department of English and Modern Languages and the Department of History. As Business Editor, my role is to ensure each journal is mailed to subscribing universities and individuals and to work to secure new subscribers.