Unlike most Inquiry articles, Christy Clothier’s did not grow out of a research report or course assignment but out of her desire to follow up a possible connection between her life and the literature of a college course. She claims no one hometown since her military parents moved the family all over the country. After high school and a short stay in Belgium, she returned to the US and joined the Navy “to pay for college.” During her six years of service she was trained as an air traffic controller, eventually becoming tower supervisor at the busiest airport in the military. There she met her future husband and, after leaving the military, they moved to Pennsylvania. In 2005 her husband was hired at a New Hampshire airport, and she entered UNH at Manchester to continue her college career. Christy will graduate in May 2007 with a degree in English and plans to go on to graduate school so she can learn to “give vets a voice.” She credits her mentor, Dr. Paterson, with “teaching me the new and what I already knew,” and the long Inquiry revision process with improving her writing and thinking skills.
Dr. Susanne F. Paterson, a first-time mentor, enjoyed working with Christy partly because her essay “was not an assignment I gave her. It is a subject that she selected, and the essay came from her heart.” Dr. Paterson is an associate professor of English in the Humanities division at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. Her research and teaching interests are in renaissance and early drama; she has been at UNHM since 1999. Christy and Dr. Paterson worked together on focusing and revising Christy’s Inquiry essay for an audience wider than an academic one. During the process, Dr. Paterson taught Christy how to conduct academic research.
Read Christy Clothier's research article, Understanding Macbeth: A Returning Soldier>>
