Jill Dahlman, PhD
Associate Professor of English
Phone: (916) 378-3569
Jill.Dahlman@cnsu.edu
Education and Postdoctoral Training
- PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at University of Hawaiʻi – Mānoa
- MA in Writing Center Studies at University of Hawaiʻi – Mānoa
- BA in Writing (Cum Laude) with Minors in Geology at University of Hawaiʻi – Hilo
About
Hailing from Hawaiʻi, Dr. Jill Dahlman is an Assistant Professor of English with California Northstate University College of Health Sciences. She teaches Composition I (ENGL110), Composition II (ENGL120), both English Writing Labs (ENGL110L and ENGL120L), Writing in the Health Sciences (ENGL320), and Scholarly Project (COLL320). She co-directs the writing center, the Media and Communication Studio, with Dr. Nicholas Valley.
Dahlman is a writing specialist whose primary area of research is student self-efficacy in the first-year composition classroom. She has interests in pedagogy, service-learning, and rhetoric of the Cold War era, including protest songs, comic books, and Star Trek.
A product of the University of Hawaiʻi system, Hilo for undergraduate and Manoa for graduate, conducts research that builds upon her dissertation, falling on social constructivism. Recent research focuses on using grading conferences to raise student self-efficacy. This method of assessment provides students with a say in their grade, which she believes is far more egalitarian than the professor silently bestowing the grade.
A strong believer in preserving the planet for future generations, Dr. Dahlmanʻs assignments include a partnership with both Lassen Volcanic National Park (ENGL120) and Chihuahuan Desert Inventory Monitoring Network (COLL320). Using authentic assignments featuring multiple audiences, students provide displays, zines, social media posts, web pages, and an analysis of data, working alongside scientists from these public institutions.
Dr. Dahlman is an active member of several national organizations. Her largest role is with Rocky Mountain MLA, sitting on both the Executive Board and Editorial Board. She is a peer-reviewer for journals under the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) umbrella. She is a member of the Editorial Review Board for the WAC Clearinghouse (Writing across the Curriculum) and was a co-creator of the Exemplary WAC program award. She is the chair of Open Educational Resources (OER) for the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) Special Interest Group (SIG) on Online Writing Instruction (OWI) and a member of the Online Writing Center Association (OWCA), sitting on its Virtual Events and Conference committees. She has presented at numerous conferences. With the co-director of the writing center, Dr. Nicholas Valley, they are members of the International Writing Center Association's Research Incubator.
Prior to returning to academia, Dr. Dahlman was an accomplished feature writer for Kauaʻi Magazine, Inside Kauaʻi, The O’ahu Databook, and Off the Beaten Path: Hawai’i. Her current publishing follows traditional academic routes, with publications in Composition and Big Data, Iʻm Just a Comic Book Boy: Essays on the Intersection of Comics and Punk, and as a contributor to textbooks as a content writer and a curriculum writer for both Bedford St. Martin (Macmillan) and Norton. She is the series' senior editor for Beyond the Frontier: Innovations in First-Year Composition, which series is now primed to publish its fourth anthology in 2025.