Cultivating Curiosity and Community: Welcoming Professor Steven Watts to Mount Marty University

Steven Watts, Ph.D., Mount Marty's new assistant professor of English, is passionate about his curriculum and the Mount Marty core values. "The ability to teach specialized U.S. and World literature classes along with generalized writing and literature survey classes is something I was really looking for," said Watts. "I was really excited by the opportunity to do both at Mount Marty, and the school's strong emphasis on community and hospitality aligned with the philosophy I'd spent a lot of time in grad school researching and writing about."

This year marks a decade of Watts' teaching career. He received his bachelor's in English and master's in English with an emphasis on teaching writing from California State University, Fullerton. Watts then attained his Ph.D. in 20th and 21st century literature from the University of Missouri in 2020. Since then, Watts has taught writing at the Wisconsin School of Business, part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, as well as environmental literature at Emory University. "I love teaching, and I'm thrilled to be at a place here at Mount Marty where I can put these experiences to work!"

As a high school and early college student, Watts couldn't have imagined going on to teach. "It wasn't until working as a tutor at my university's writing center that I thought about teaching. I loved working with other students on their writing. I loved getting to know what students were working on and talking with them about their thoughts and interests while helping them voice those thoughts in their essays. After a couple of weeks of working as a tutor, I knew I wanted some kind of career that let me keep doing that." A particularly impactful moment for Watts deciding to be a college professor was when he took a class called The European Novel with a professor named David Kelman. "That class showed me how the space of a college literature classroom could be used to generate discussions about life's biggest questions. Anyone who has taken a literature class with me will know this class made its mark by how much I reference Kafka."

Since coming to Mount Marty, his students have already begun asking big questions. "I don't think there's anything that's more important in college than curiosity," said Watts. "I really hope the students I teach and interact with are genuinely curious about the world's big and small questions, that I can encourage that kind of genuine curiosity, and that their curiosity can point me in new directions where I can learn something new. I actually just had a class with my students in Contemporary Literature & the Environment that got momentarily derailed by talking about how Bluetooth works. We didn't really get to the bottom of it — my knowledge is vast but has limitations — but I love helping students generate interesting questions and look for answers. There's nothing that fosters this better than literature."

Watts hopes to establish a community at Mount Marty that is excited to explore curiosity. "As someone who has taught at a wide variety of institutions in several states, the core values and hallmarks of Mount Marty clearly set it apart from the rest. The university's core values establish a solid foundation for education and that curiosity I'm hoping students bring to the classroom." He hopes to exemplify the core value of hospitality to help cultivate this curious community. "If I want students to engage with a text like 'Moby-Dick' and for them to wrestle with questions about history and knowledge and belief (and cetology) that big, difficult novels can represent, then I need to do all of the above to establish the kind of communal trust that learning and interpreting curiously takes!"

Watts is the faculty advisor for the English Honors Society, Sigma Tau Delta, and is excited to make the club more active. "If that sounds interesting to you, you should email me!" His wife, Jordan, their terrier, Zissou — named after one their favorite Bill Murray characters — and Watts love to adventure for a weekend or even a day when they can. If you know any cool spots to visit, Watts invites you to come to his office and chat. Most Saturdays, you can find him watching Liverpool FC or playing a video game: currently, it is Astro Bot. "I'm excited to be here, and my office door is always open to anyone who wants to talk about literature, writing, or Arne Slot's more possession-based Liverpool team."

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About Mount Marty University

Founded in 1936 by the Sisters of Sacred Heart Monastery, Mount Marty University is South Dakota's only Catholic, Benedictine institution of higher education. Located along the bluffs of the Missouri River in Yankton, with additional locations in Watertown and Sioux Falls, Mount Marty offers undergraduate and graduate degrees focusing on student and alumni success in high-demand fields such as health sciences, education, criminal justice, business, accounting, recreation management, and more. A community of learners in the Benedictine tradition, Mount Marty emphasizes academic excellence and develops well-rounded students with intellectual competence, professional and personal skills and moral, spiritual and social values. To learn more, visit mountmarty.edu.