TEAM

Since 2004, Rebecca has been teaching in the Department of English at UVic, where she has the privilege of primarily teaching first-year classes in literature and academic writing. She regularly teaches ENGL 146 (The Literature of Our Era) and ENGL 147 (Literary Traditions). In 2014, she was honoured with the University of Victoria’s Gilian Sherwin Alumni Award for Excellence in Teaching. Since 2014, she has been working to develop UVic Bounce as part of a larger effort to support the mental health and wellness of students in our community and beyond. In 2015, Rebecca received a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant from UVic’s Learning and Teaching Support and Innovation (LTSI) to undertake a study in her first-year writing classes that sought to understand if and how the sharing of our collective stories of challenge and difficulty might support a student’s journey through challenging times. This study led to the creation of a Faculty of Humanities web and video initiative called “UVic Bounce.” Bounce is modeled on Stanford’s Resilience Project, and it seeks to de-stigmatize crisis (and even failure) as part of the undergraduate experience by sharing stories of difficulty and challenge from professors, alumni, students, and other members of the UVic community. UVic Bounce launched in 2019 with a pilot of eight Bounce videos. In 2021, she created and launched Waving, Not Drowning, a thirty-episode podcast featuring conversations with faculty and alumni about their experiences as students.

Rebecca shares her life with her husband, two boys, two cats, and Audrey—her beloved dog. When she’s not making podcasts or teaching, she loves to explore the beautiful West Coast and especially the North Island.