Source: Donna Potts, 785-532-2180, dlpotts@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Beth Bohn, 785-532-6415, bbohn@k-state.edu
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
K-STATE'S DONNA POTTS TO SERVE ANOTHER TERM ON NATIONAL COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS
MANHATTAN -- A Kansas State University faculty member has been re-elected to the National Council of the American Association of University Professors.
Donna Potts, K-State associate professor of English, will serve another three-year term on the 40-member council. The group meets at least twice a year to determine association policy.
The American Association of University Professors is a nonprofit charitable and educational organization that promotes academic freedom by supporting tenure, academic due process, shared governance and standards of quality in higher education. The association has more than 48,000 members at colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Potts represents the association's District II, which includes Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Potts joined K-State in 1991 and has served as president of K-State's chapter of the American Association of University Professors. She also is a member of K-State's Faculty Senate.
Her research interests include Irish, African, Canadian and American literatures. She has published articles on writers such as Katharine Tynan, Margaret Atwood, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Patrick McCabe, J.M. Coetzee, and Frank McCourt, as well as a book on the American poet Howard Nemerov, "Howard Nemerov and Objective Idealism: The Influence of Owen Barfield." She won a Fulbright Senior Lecturing Award in 1997 to the National University of Ireland in Galway, returning in 2004-2005 on sabbatical. Her teaching interests at K-State include Irish literature and film, African literature, Old English, history of the English language, and poetry. Potts also has completed a book manuscript on the pastoral tradition in contemporary Irish poetry and has submitted it to Cork University Press.
Potts earned a bachelor's, a master's and a doctorate in English, all from the University of Missouri at Columbia.
