Dr. Jack Healy
I am a Garden Stater by birth from Illinois-born parents of Irish [Co.
Kerry, Co. Roscommon, Co. Waterford], Lithuanian, and Prussian stock. I
grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, the third of seven. I attended Creighton
Preparatory School and Creighton University. I stopped out of college
after my sophomore year and moved for a short time to San Francisco
where I worked as a sales service assistant at Tully-Wihr Corp., a
business forms company. I returned to Omaha and worked as a printer and
supply clerk at the Nebraska Affiliate of the American Heart
Association. I married Kathy in 1982 and returned to Creighton, but this
time I majored in English.
After I graduated with my Bachelor of Arts in English, we moved to
Lawrence, Kansas, where I earned my Master of Arts in English and Ph.D.
in English at the University of Kansas. During my time there, I taught
numerous literature and writing courses, and I directed the
Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) program in the Department of English
for nine years. I taught in the KU Summer Institute in Great Britain in
1995, one of three faculty members leading a tour of Great Britain for
KU students, with stops in London, Edinburgh, York, Oxford, and Exeter
and numerous day trips during our five weeks abroad. I earned teaching
awards and the Graduate Service Award for my work in the CAI lab. I also
worked as layout editor for Cottonwood Magazine and served as president
of the Student Association of Graduates in English. After graduation, I
taught English briefly at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas,
filling in one year full-time for a faculty member who was on
sabbatical. While there, I was advisor to the Baker chapter of Sigma Tau
Delta, the International English Honors Society, accompanying five
seniors to the 1998 national conference in St. Louis, Missouri.
I have been at Central Methodist since 2000. I teach from freshmen all
the way through seniors in various literature and writing courses. My
area of specialization is twentieth-century British and Irish
literature. I became chair of the Division of English, Foreign
Languages, Religion, and Philosophy in 2007. I also advise the student
editors of Inscape, CMU's Magazine of the Arts.
I enjoy traveling: My own travels abroad have taken me England,
Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Ireland. I currently serve as Moderator
for the Missouri London Consortium of small, private, northeast Missouri
colleges and universities sending students to the Missouri London
Program at Imperial College, London. I taught at Imperial during Spring
2006 and lived that semester in the London borough of Kensington and
Chelsea. I highly encourage students to make plans to spend a semester
or summer abroad. Doing so will change their lives in wonderful and
long-term ways.
