Alumna Update: Wendy Burns-Ardolino

Ten years ago, Wendy Burns-Ardolino received her PhD in Cultural Studies (2004). Her dissertation, Jiggle, was published in 2007, and Burns-Ardolino served as Director of the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies at Clayton State University prior to her hire at Grand Valley State University in 2011. She is now Associate Professor and Chair of the Liberal Studies Department at GVSU.

From her vantage as scholar, teacher, and administrator, she advocates for the vitality of interdisciplinary cultural studies. She explains: "I engage my cultural studies praxis everyday in the work of institutional planning, curricular development, program growth, and student engagement as they intersect with the social, political, and cultural concerns of the new millennium. Never has the work of the cultural studies practitioner been more needed, more relevant, more critical to understanding our world or to moving us towards new ways of crossing the mainstream."

She recently coauthored a piece reflecting on the the use of capstone courses at her university: http://www.aacu.org/peerreview/pr-fa13/Griffin.cfm