Welcome back, Liam Corley

Liam Corley joined the department in 2005, but many students might not recognize him. That's because, for the past three years, Dr. Corley has been on military leave at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) in Annapolis, MD. As both an associate professor and Lieutenant Commander at USNA, Dr. Corley spent those years teaching classes like first-year writing, poetry, American literature, and the Bible as literature; performing duties on the Chesapeake Bay as an Officer In Charge/Craftmaster of the Academy’s 105-foot diesel Yard Patrol Crafts (used to train midshipmen in basic navigation and seamanship); and providing funeral honors for many servicepeople.

Dr. Corley is diving back into campus life at CPP this fall, teaching creative writing and literature classes and serving on the Veterans Success Committee in support of CPP’s Veteran’s Resource Center. Students will benefit from his experience at USNA: while there, Dr. Corley refined his approach to student character development through literary study by working with the Academy's mission statements and assessment criteria that work toward fostering positive outcomes for ethics, judgment, and empathetic cross-cultural understanding. Dr. Corley is looking forward to helping students make better connections between class activities, assignments, and his courses' humanistic outcomes. Additionally, Dr. Corley is the site co-chair for the Pacific Ancient & Modern Language Association annual conference in Pasadena, CA, from November 11-13, 2016. He will be contacting faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students to help with registration tables at the conference in return for free admission to the conference (watch your email!). We are very glad to see his return and look forward to benefiting from what he has learned on a very productive leave.