Support staff for graduate student academics in the department—assisting MA/MFA/PhD students from application through graduation and the job search; assistant to the Director of Graduate Studies, Director of Creative Writing, and Director of Rhetoric in advising all branches of our graduate program.
Staff Feature: Bev Hankins
I’ve been with the English Department since January of 2000. Before applying for the CW position, I was a pharmacy tech at the Kmart pharmacy on the west side where the At Home store is now. My mother-in-law worked in Medical Sciences at the time and saw the job posting—otherwise I probably would have stayed in my pharmacy tech niche.
Most fulfilling? Working with grad students! Absolutely.
I came to Bloomington for my undergraduate degree (double major: English & Religious Studies). I was pretty certain that IU would be my college of choice all through high school (though I did apply to several other schools in Indiana as “backups” as well as a couple out-of-state schools). A visit to Bloomington sealed it. The size of the town was great (bigger than my hometown of Wabash, IN, but not too much bigger at the time) and the campus is beautiful. And the number of good used bookstores was incredible. When I first came to Bloomington, there were at least six. I’m a little sad that we’re down to just one—the Caveat Emptor. I’ll take a good used bookstore over a favorite pub or restaurant any day.
Which leads me to…books. Most of what I do outside of work has to do with books—reading them and reviewing them on my book blog (really, just Bev’s reading journal). More specifically, I collect vintage mysteries with a focus on pre-1960s and have a special love for the pulp-era, digest-size books. They have such amazing covers. (See? Dell Mapbacks, like the one below, are especially fun because of the scene of the crime maps on each one.)
My favorite series at the moment is by C. S. Harris. The Sebastian St. Cyr series is set in the early 1800s and latest entry, Who Will Remember, is one of my best reads of this year.
The College of Arts