Garrett J. Cummins, Ph.D.
Hello! My name is Garrett. Welcome to my site.
I’m a writing professor, a researcher, a writer, a writing tutor, and a professional editor. My passion for learning more about writing means I help others with their writing and their research.
As you click through my site, please note that my writing contextualizes the origins and inspirations for my scholarly and pedagogical ideas. Along with being a storyteller in my professional and personal life, I also enjoy including the narratives showing from whence my ideas sprang. I think stories humanize the work I do. In humanizing the work, I hope you, dear reader, can connect to what I do and how I think about my work.
By daring to fail at one dream, I discovered a far greater passion: teaching writing to adults.
Services
Teaching Adults Writing Since 2011
When I teach writing to adults, I have one main goal: connect my students’ professional and personal passion to writing clear and deep analyses and evidence-driven arguments. To engage in best writing pedagogy practices, I write alongside my projects, giving students access to my thinking and writing processes while I teach them the material.
In all of my blogs, you can see how each of them deals with how using evidence credibly forms the cornerstone of ethical academic and professional writing. In my piece about Kuypers’ definition of rhetorical criticism, I demonstrate how using a visual grid can help students differentiate their claims from the evidence, and their evidence from the reasoning they use to connect their evidence and their reasoning.
Do you need advice about how to start, how to continue, or how to end a piece of writing? If so, I’m here to help. I have a total of 13 years of teaching and four years of tutoring adults in academic and professional writing. With all my years of teaching and tutoring experience, I know how to get out of the way and help you find your best ideas that you didn’t even know you had! As such, through email correspondence and Zoom meetings, I can customize my help to your particular writing needs and goals.
The Rhetoric of Science, Information Literacy, and Writing in the Disciplines
Sometimes it’s hard for people to see how STEM connects to their non-STEM fields. But science, technology, engineering, and math touch everyone’s lives. From the ascendancy of AI to social media posters denying COVID, climate change, and credible medicine, we all need STEM literacy to navigate the rocky waters of the vast information ocean in which we find ourselves.
Along with teaching and tutoring experience, I have worked on three major editing projects those far. From editing dissertations to footnoting book chapters to helping adults revise their scholarship essays, I have experience in professional editing.
“Dream big and dare to fail” – Norman Vaughn
When I think about my own academic journey, I think of Norman Vaughn’s words in the epigraph that apply to the big dreams that started my academic journey. Vaugh, who was an explorer, went to the South Pole in 1928 (Inspire My Kids, 2020). Though I didn’t go to the South Pole, I did start exploring the possibilities of going back to school. After a disastrous music teaching career, I wanted to go into a different line of work though I already had a bachelor’s degree. When I went back to UC, I registered as a math major. What I didn’t know was that I was going to rediscover my love for English in the very first quarter at UC. Going back to college at 35 taught me that failing in one place means possible success in another place.
