Rate My Professor Shawn Casey

Shawn Casey is a Professor of English at Columbus State Community College, specializing in literature, rhetoric, and composition. He earned a B.A. in Literature from Antioch College, an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Chicago, an M.A. from The Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies from The Ohio State University in 2012. His doctoral dissertation, "Literacy and the Social Worlds of Writing in the Scottish Atlantic: 1750-1800," examines historical literacy practices in late 18th-century Scotland and Britain. Casey's research focus during his Ph.D. included late 18th-century British literature. His teaching interests encompass Literacy Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, English and American Literature, 20th Century Latino/a Literature, Sexuality Studies, and Modernist Literature.

Casey joined Columbus State Community College in 2010, advancing to full professor in the English Department. He has served on hiring committees across academic divisions, as Faculty Fellow for Dual Enrollment, Blackboard Ultra Ambassador, and member of the Academic Pathways shared governance committee. He advises the student literary journal Et al. and co-created the Composition Reading Bank, an open educational resource featuring curated links to freely available texts for first-year composition courses, organized thematically. This project helped Columbus State Community College earn a 2021 national Tech Impact Award as the only two-year college recipient. In scholarship, Casey published the chapter "Community College Work" in the 2025 edited volume Changing Paths of Academic Lives: Revising How We Understand Academic Labor (WAC Clearinghouse), where he reflects on his non-linear academic path from progressive liberal arts undergraduate studies to community college advocacy. He presented "The Community College Ethos" at the 2023 Modern Language Association convention and served on the MLA forum on higher education professions, promoting community college teaching as a fulfilling career amid diverse student populations at large urban institutions like Columbus State, which enrolls over 40,000 students annually. Casey's work highlights the benefits of faculty unions, meaningful teaching loads, and alternative academic narratives beyond traditional research university paths.