Teaching and Research

Bio

Rachel Van Hofwegen Willis teaches in the Westover Honors College at the University of Lynchburg and is a graduate student at Old Dominion University. She has been with the Westover Honors College since 2015. Before joining Westover, she taught for the English department at the University of Lynchburg and in the College of General Studies at Liberty University. Since 2008, Willis has taught a range of courses in writing, literature, and culture.

Rachel Willis graduated from Liberty University with a bachelor’s degree in English. From there, she earned an M.Ed., specializing in Teaching and Learning. While completing her M.Ed., Willis focused her research on gifted education and non-traditional educational formats. She later earned an MA in English from the University of Lynchburg, where she developed additional research interests in masculinities studies, transnational and postcolonial studies, and conflict literature. Currently, Willis is completing a PhD in English at Old Dominion University, with concentrations in Technology and New Media, Rhetoric, and Cultural Studies. She has published refereed articles on representations of fathers and sons and on masculinities and violence in literature.

Willis’s pedagogical research in gifted education and Digital Humanities informs her role in the Westover Honors College, where she uses innovative technology and active learning techniques to introduce students to a wide range of ideas that will broaden their understanding of the world. For example, her colloquium for the 2017-2018 academic year, “Stories of Conflict and Resistance from World War I to The Hunger Games,” analyzed the literature, music, and films of war from across the globe, including contemporary and unfamiliar stories of resistance like We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will be Killed with our Families and popular (and fictional) works like The Lord of the Rings and The Hunger Games. In addition to text-based learning, Willis offered opportunities for experiential learning. For example, students in the class visited The Holocaust Museum, contributed to the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project by interviewing a veteran of the Korean War, and met with Dr. Charles Knapp, the head of the Desmond Doss council, to learn about how the movie Hacksaw Ridge was made in honor of Lynchburg’s own Desmond Doss, a World War II hero.

Outside of her work at the University of Lynchburg, Rachel Van Hofwegen Willis plays beach volleyball and runs. She has placed first in numerous beach volleyball tournaments and never places anywhere near first in the races she runs. She and her husband Johnathan are foster parents and also have three children of their own—Aubriana, Asher, and Ace—to keep them busy. Willis has been trying to get her two older kids to read a Harry Potter book, but she has been unsuccessful thus far. She will keep trying.