Barbara Cobb, associate professor of English, has been named coordinator of academic advising at Murray State.
In her newest role, Cobb will lead efforts to provide training and resources for faculty academic advisers, and will work with retention, advising, student support services and other campus entities to strengthen academic advising at the University.
For the past two years, Cobb has served on the President’s Commission on Retention and has co-chaired the Commission’s Subcommittee on Advising. In 2010, she was awarded the first Omicron Delta Kappa Adviser of the Year award, and in 2012, she was awarded the Regents Teaching Award. Cobb serves as the coordinator for the liberal arts major, a program in which students combine three fields of study to achieve their academic and career goals.
Cobb teachers courses in Shakespeare, British literature and humanities and serves on the Honors Program and graduate English faculties as well. She is a member of Murray State’s chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, the school’s comprehensive honor society.
Cobb also directs the Shakespeare in the Schools Partnership Initiative, in which she works with teachers from throughout the region to incorporate Shakespeare into grade 3-8 curricula. Cobb’s Shakespeare in the Schools units are being used in more than 10 schools in western Kentucky. She presented her work in a national webinar hosted by the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and will participate in a special Folger session at this year’s National Council of Teachers of English convention in November. She also serves as associate chair and teacher education Coordinator for the Murray Shakespeare Festival.
She has published scholarly articles on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Donne, as well as an article on teaching poetry in the NCTE’s English Journal.
Staff report.