Todd Sammons is at the beginning of his fourth decade at UH-Mānoa. Shortly after earning tenure, he served as the department’s Director of Composition. Thus began a series of administrative appointments, including Associate Chair, Director of Composition and Rhetoric, and most recently Director of the Undergraduate Program. He is currently Faculty Administrator for the UH-Mānoa General Education Office. His dissertation was a rhetorical analysis of the speeches in Paradise Lost; he has taught graduate courses in Milton, rhetoric, and literary criticism; and he has run the undergraduate peer tutoring program many times. In his free time, he is President of Children’s Literature Hawaiʻi and also of the Alpha of Hawaiʻi chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Cornelius Rubsamen is a second year Ph.D. student who specializes in composition theory and early modern literature. During his time as an M.A. student at UHM, Cornelius wrote about the intersection of colonialism and social change in Shakespeare’s late romances, synchronous interactive online instruction in post-secondary education, and building self-efficacy in first-year composition students. Cornelius also served as a mentor for 4 semesters, an experience that kindled his current interest in composition theory. In his free time, Cornelius coaches aspiring young chess players in Hawaiʻi, including the accomplished Kamehameha Chess Team.