Tutor Positions

About Our Tutors

E-structor® Certification

SMARTHINKING's E-structor® Certified tutors are seasoned educators, most with advanced degrees in their fields. Drawn from among college faculty, graduate students, high school teachers and retired educators all e-structors must go through SMARTHINKING's online training program and are regularly evaluated for quality and consistency. Each academic area is led by one of SMARTHINKING's subject-area coordinators, all of whom are former college professors and experts in their disciplines.

Tutors will:

• Encourage students with constructive criticism;
• Help students identify areas for improvement;
• Involve students in discussion and problem-solving strategies;
• Treat students with respect.

Tutors will not:

• Do assignments for the learner, give answers or write any portion of papers;
• Review and correct errors without active participation of the learners;
• Comment on grades or predict a possible grade.

If you have any questions about our tutors' qualifications, training or abilities, please contact Christa Ehmann, Vice President, Education,

* Due to the proliferation of automated e-mail gathering programs, we have slightly altered the e-mail address listed above. Please replace "(AT)" with "@" and "(DOT)" with "." when sending an e-mail to this address.

Meet some of our tutors (online tutors).

Donna Spehar, Lead E-structor
Writing,  November  2001

I earned my bachelor?s degree in the Teaching of Writing at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in 1998, where I continued teaching. During my time at SIUE, I participated in a national collaborative writing project, the Virtual Classroom, which linked students in writing classes across the nation. In 2000, I immigrated to Texas Tech University where I began studying for my doctorate in Technical Communication and Rhetoric. Now, I am finishing up my dissertation. I have an article in the forthcoming book, Market Matters, which explores the relationship between learning to be a technical communicator at school and then applying that knowledge in the real workplace. I haven?t always been a teacher! For a number of years, I worked as the editor for a small publication, and also have written many short articles for different magazines. My work with SMARTHINKING is exciting. I enjoy the interactive quality of Smarthinking?s student sessions, both in the essay center and the live whiteboard sessions. Seeing students develop the skills to make their written communication practical and effective is great!

Stacia Neeley
Writing,  September  2003

Stacia holds a Ph.D. in English with specialization in rhetoric and composition from TCU in Fort Worth, Texas and the M.A. and B.A. degrees in English from Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. She specializes in the study of writing and enjoys coaching students as they create meaning, knowledge, beauty, and power with words. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of English and Internship Coordinator in the Department of Languages and Literature at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas. The second edition of her composition textbook, Academic Literacy, will be published this year (New York: Longman, 2004). Stacia supervises writing consultants in the Academic Resource Center at Texas Wesleyan University and also enjoys working as general editor of Aries, a national literary magazine that publishes poetry, short fiction, black-and-white photography, and essays (www.ariesjournal.com). Stacia joined Smarthinking in January of 2004 and currently helps students with their essays in the Online Writing Lab.

Melissa A. Sheppard
Writing,  August  2002

Melissa earned her Master of Arts degree from Radford University. She has been teaching composition for four years and online tutoring for seven. She has instructed writers at the 2001 World Scholar Athlete Games in Kingston, Rhode Island, and has presented at several conferences, including the Twentieth-Century Literature Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. She has written articles for newspapers and journals, including feature stories, scholarly articles, and book reviews, created brochures and handbooks, and compiled memoirs and family history. In addition to the teaching and writing activities, she has managed writing center summer submissions and tutoring. This is what she says about her tutoring philosophy: ?I enjoy tutoring because I read such a variety of writing styles and topics from all writing levels. I use what students do well to illustrate what needs improvement and model to demonstrate how common errors are easily remedied using the available technology.? Her main areas of interest are Native American and Ethnic literature, Environmental literature, and composition theory. She has been tutoring for Smarthinking?s OWL since August 2002.

Robert Sledd
Writing,  May  2002

Robert received his M.A. in English from the University of Chicago and was ABD from the University of Texas at Austin. He retired in 2002 from the University of Texas at Brownsville where for 22 years he taught developmental writing, composition, lower-division literature surveys, and upper-division American literature courses. During his sojourn at the University of Texas - Brownsville, Sledd received the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Two-Year College English Association's (Southwest) Teaching Excellence Award.

Stacy Creed, Lead E-structor
Writing,  November  2001

I know first-hand that education opens doors to places you never dreamed you'd go. With a BA and MA in English and a PhD in Community and Human Resources (adult education emphasis) I've written field artillery technical manuals, edited magazines and technical reports, written and conducted training on everything from using email to building strong teams using the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, worked with nontraditional college student programs, taught English, and now I?m working with Smarthinking as an e-structor. This job has brought me back to the thing I love the most?helping students discover the power in writing.

Natascha Gast
Writing,  May  2002

I have an MA degree in English from the University of Connecticut and received my BA in English and philosophy from Louisiana State University. I teach and develop composition, business communication, critical thinking, and literature courses for distance learning programs at several universities and community colleges. My specialties are technology and composition, writing lab theory and practice, and business and technical communication. I've presented in these areas at international conferences, and I served as webmaster and organizing committee member for the first annual conference on Communicating Across the Curriculum in the Middle East. I live in Egypt where I am the Writing Center Coordinator and instructor in the Rhetoric and Composition Program at the American University in Cairo. Since I grew up in Louisiana, living in Egypt wasn't that much of an adjustment; they're both hot, hot, hot! In my spare time, although I don't have much of it, I love to travel!

Vaun Day
Accounting,  June  2000

My name is Vaun and I live in Oklahoma with my wife and nine-year-old daughter. We recently moved to Oklahoma from Cheyenne, Wyoming where we lived for 12 years. My wife and I are originally from Oklahoma and relocated to be closer to family. I've been an accounting e-structor for SMARTHINKING since July 2000. I've enjoyed working for SMARTHINKING because the services they provide to students utilizes state-of-the-art technology. Tutoring online is a new and exciting experience. I've been an accounting professor for the past 15 years and helping others and watching them succeed motivates me very much. I received my bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Oklahoma and worked as an accountant for Kerr-McGee Corporation in Oklahoma City after graduation. I later worked for a holding company named ANTA Corporation, which was also based in Oklahoma City. ANTA Corporation liquidated and I worked as Assistant Manager at the Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma City. I began teaching accounting in 1986 at Oklahoma Junior College of Business and Technology and started and completed my master's degree at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. In 1988, I moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where I headed the Accounting Department and taught at Laramie County Community College. I completed my Ph.D. in Adult Education from the University of Wyoming in 1998. Courses that I've taught during my tenure as an accounting professor include Principles of Accounting I & II, Principles of Financial/Managerial Accounting, Intermediate Accounting I & II, Cost Accounting, Advanced Accounting, Income Tax I & II, Microcomputer Accounting I & II, and Accounting Information Systems. At Southwestern Oklahoma State University (SWOSU), where I presently teach, my areas of responsibility are Cost Accounting and Accounting Information Systems.

Hong Yao
Economics,  June  2000

Hong holds BA, MA and Ph.D. degrees and has been teaching at various universities in Oregon, Maryland and Singapore for seven years. The courses taught include principles level microeconomics and macroeconomics, Money and Banking, Public Finance, Labor Economics, Economic Growth and Development, Business Statistics, and Business Data Processing. Her research interests are in Human Capital Formation, Economics of Education, and Economic Development. She has published on topics including Educational impact on the labor market, international comparison of educational system and economic development, comparison of professional human capital and entreprenurial human capital. Hong has been a member of SMARTHINKING's economics team since June 2000.

John Ruebrusch
Mathematics,  April  2002

I am a classroom teacher of high school mathematics in suburban Cincinnati, Ohio, and have been teaching on the high school level for almost 20 years. My focus over the years has been on Algebra, Geometry and Trigonometry, but I have taught all courses in the US high school curriculum from Pre-Algebra through first-year college Calculus and Linear Algebra. I have always loved teaching, and particularly enjoy one-on-one interaction; consequently, the tutoring I have been able to perform through SMARTHINKING is right up my alley. The primary goal of my teaching and tutoring is the facilitating of a student's grasp of the underlying reasons behind the "here-and-now" of a particular problem. I always try to give my students and tutees a sense of the big picture, and try to guide them in making the material their own. I have earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and a Master's degree in Secondary Education, both from Xavier University in Cincinnati. I hold teaching certificates in both Mathematics and English. During "down time," I enjoy reading (science fiction, history, astronomy, biology), listening to and writing music, spending way too much time surfing the web, and honing my appreciation for puns. In addition, I took an 18-month break from teaching recently and worked as a copywriter and book reviewer for an Internet bookstore. I look forward to working with you.