Our faculty are newspaper journalists. Book and magazine writers and editors. The founders of two literary publishing companies and a literary magazine.
Altogether, our faculty bring more than 80 years of publishing and editing experience to the Center. We use this experience to teach a wide variety of publishing and editing courses.
This experience led us to help our students launch two student-owned and operated publishing companies, a literary magazine, a campus magazine, and more. Students who work with our faculty gain practical experience not only in writing, editing, and the publishing process but also in all facets of running a publishing business.
Meet Our Faculty
Dr. Julie Bates
Assistant Professor
jcbates@millikin.edu
217.362.6413
Dr. Julie Bates teaches professional writing and editing, rhetoric, and composition coursework in the English department. She has a PhD in Rhetoric, Composition, and Technical Communication from Illinois State University, an M.A. in Liberal & Integrative Studies (with emphases in environmental studies and journalism) from the University of Illinois-Springfield, and a B.A. in Magazine Journalism and English Writing from Drake University.
Dr. Bates holds the Warren F. Hardy Distinguished Professorship in English for 2019–2021. Additionally, she the coordinator of Millikin University's first-year writing program, the faculty advisor for BURST magazine, the Book Review Editor for Rhetoric Review, and the Contributing Editor for Decatur magazine. In addition, Dr. Bates is a professional writer, editor, copy editor, and proofreader with 15+ years of professional experience.
Dr. Carmella Braniger
Professor of English
sfrech@millikin.edu
217.123.4567
Dr. Carmella Braniger is Associate Professor of English at Millikin University where she teaches first-year writing, creative writing, literature, and classical rhetoric. Her poems have appeared in Sycamore Review, Poems and Plays, The Dirty Napkin, MARGIE: The American Journal of Poetry, Modern English Tanka, Magnapoets, Atlas Poetica, and many others. Pudding House Publications published her chapbook, No One May Follow, in 2009. Dr. Braniger co-authored a book chapter entitled “Redefining the Undergraduate English Writing Major: An Integrated Approach at a Small Comprehensive University” in the collection What We Are Becoming: Developments in Undergraduate Writing Majors, published by Utah State University Press. She is the co-editor of three volumes of Critical Storytelling published by Brill | Sense, and was recently invited to become an acquisitions editor for the series. Her critical story “’Hey, Sister’: Utterances, Sexualities, and Dialectical Tensions in Sibling Relationships” appeared in the first volume she edited. She enjoys collaboratively writing and publishing poetry sequences and critical stories with fellow faculty and students.
Dr. Randy Brooks
Dean, Arts & Sciences
rbrooks@millikin.edu
217.123.3456
Dr. Randy Brooks is the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Professor of English at Millikin University. He has received international recognition for his writing, editing and publishing of haiku poetry. He has developed and taught a wide range of courses on writing, rhetoric, poetry, teaching writing and publishing and is a leader in curriculum design of professional writing programs, emphasizing the integration of performance learning, community service, technology and publishing.
Before becoming the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, he served as Acting Dean from 2008-2010 and as Chair of the English Department from 2003-2008. Drawing on his years of experience as an editor and publisher, Dr. Brooks collaborated with Edwin Walker, Associate Professor of Art, to establish a book-publishing performance learning curriculum—blending instruction in a co-taught course, the Art of Publishing, with the business of a student-run book publishing company, Bronze Man Books. Dr. Brooks has four decades of literary editing experience and has published over 70 books and four literary serial publications. He and his wife, Shirley Brooks, are co-editors and publishers of Brooks Books, (formerly High/Coo Press) and editors of Mayfly, a biannual magazine featuring haiku. Dr. Brooks is also web editor for Modern Haiku magazine and the Electronic Media Officer (web editor) for the Haiku Society of America. Hundreds of his poems have been published in journals and anthologies including a book of his selected haiku, School’s Out.
Dr. Stephen Frech
Professor of English
sfrech@millikin.edu
217.123.4567
Dr. Stephen Frech has earned degrees from Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Cincinnati. He has published four volumes of poetry: Toward Evening and the Day Far Spent (Kent State University Press 1995), If Not For These Wrinkles of Darkness (White Pine Press Poetry Prize 2001), The Dark Villages of Childhood (MWC Press 2009), and Into Night’s Tent (River Glass Books 2020). He has a fourth volume titled A Palace of Strangers Is No City, a sustained narrative of prose poetry/flash fiction, published by Cervena Barva Press in 2011. His translation from the Dutch of Menno Wigman’s book of poems Zwart als kaviaar/Black as Caviar was published in 2012.
He is founder and editor of Oneiros Press, publisher of limited edition, letterpress poetry broadsides. At Millikin University, he teaches letterpress printing and helps to operate two presses: Blue Satellite Press and Sting & Honey Press.
Dr. Scott Lambert
Associate Professor of English
slambert@millikin.edu
217.123.6543
Dr. Scott Lambert was an award-winning sports columnist and editor before entering academia. At Miilikin, Lambert teaches writing and journalism courses and is the faculty adviser to The Decaturian. Lambert's academic interests lie in media ethics and media history.