Jeanette Roberts Shumaker
Jeanette Roberts Shumaker has been teaching English classes at San Diego State University- Imperial Valley since 1992. Using a student-centered approach that stresses class discussions rather than lecturing, Dr. Shumaker loves the small classes she teaches that range from British literature, to children’s literature, women’s studies, and composition. She feels that her students are lucky to get the kind of personalized attention from professors and staff at SDSU-IV that they would normally find only at a costly, private college, but at state-university prices. Dr. Shumaker comments, “I also feel lucky to be working at such a friendly campus as SDSU-IV where faculty, staff, and students know each other well and support each other fully.”
Originally from Salinas, Dr. Shumaker feels at home in the rural, multicultural environment of the Imperial Valley and is committed to SDSU-IV’s mission to provide the best possible education to its students to develop them into excellent professionals and citizens.
To this end, she has taught summer courses for SDSU-IV’s Liberal Studies major for future elementary school teachers in Spain, England, and Mexico, helping students gain a richer sense of themselves as Americans within the larger international world.
Stemming from her own experiences as a young woman studying in Ireland and England, Dr. Shumaker publishes scholarly articles on Irish women writers, Victorian writers, and Anglo-Jewish writers. She co-authored the first scholarly book ever on the octogenarian playwright, poet, and London-Jewish novelist Bernard Kops in 2014 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press). Currently, Dr. Shumaker is having a SDSU-IV student, Elizabeth Ruiz, assist her with a research project on a contemporary novel by John Harwood.
Ruiz’s work is supported by a new SDSU-IV program created by Dean Ponce called Senior Stars that pairs professors with graduating seniors.
Dr. Shumaker also helps undergraduates at SDSU-IV and graduate students at San Diego Campus with senior honors theses, MA portfolios, master’s theses, and Student Research Symposium projects.
In addition to teaching at SDSU-IV and serving on various committees there, Dr. Shumaker teaches a graduate course on the San Diego campus each year.