Maris Thompson, PhD

Professor Maris Thompson joined the CSU, Chico faculty in 2008. She received her Ph.D. in the Language & Literacy, Society & Culture program in the Graduate School of Education at UC, Berkeley. Before her graduate work, Dr. Thompson taught English as a Second Language at the middle and high school levels in Portland Oregon, Oakland California, and Puerto Villamil in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. In the School of Education, she teaches a variety of courses focused around educational equity, democracy, curriculum, and adolescent literacy. She chairs the Internationalization Faculty Staff Task Force, sits on the Academic Senate, and serves as a faculty mentor for the REACH program (Raising Educational Achievement in Collaborative Hubs) a first year experience program for first generation college students. She also serves as Co-Teaching Coordinator in the School of Education, assisting with the scale up of co-teaching as a model for effective clinical practice across all credential programs. Her research interests focus on language equity in current and historical contexts, the role of narrative in discourse practices at home and in school, the experiences of first generation and international students in higher education, and co-teaching as an apprenticeship model for reciprocal professional development. In 2015, Dr. Thompson was awarded a Maggie (Award) for her work on gender equity on campus from the AS Gender and Sexuality Equity Center.

Courses Frequently Taught

• EDTE 302: Access and Equity in Education
• EDTE 532: Literacy Development
• EDMA 600: Critical Perspectives in Education
• EDCI 601: Curriculum Development and Instructional Design
• EDMA 611: Research Seminar in Education

Recent Publications:

• Thompson, M. (in press) Stories of Trouble and Troubled Stories: Narratives of Anti-German Sentiment from the Midwestern United States. Narrative Works.
• Schademan, A., & Thompson, M. (2015). Are College Faculty and First Generation, Low-Income Students Ready for Each Other? Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory, & Practice. Published online before print May 13, 2015, doi: 10.1177/1521025115584748.
• Thompson, M. (2012) “It Always Kinda’ Frightened Them That They’d Be Sent Back”: German American Origin Stories from Southwestern Illinois. Canadian Oral History Forum/D’histoire Orale 32 (2012), Special Issue “Making Educational Oral Histories in the 21st Century” http://www.oralhistoryforum.ca/index.php/ohf/issue/view/40/showToc
• Thompson, M. (2011). Family Photographs as Traces of Americanization. In A. Thomson & A. Freund (Eds.), Image and Memory: Oral History and Photographs. New York: Palgrave McMillan.

Recent Presentations:

• Thompson, M. (2015) “It Always Kinda’ Frightened Them That They’d Be Sent Back”: Ideologies of Belonging and Citizenship from Southwestern Illinois.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL), Portland, OR, March 2015.
• Schademan, A. & Thompson, M. (2013) “Cultural Agents and First Generation College Student Persistence: A Case Study of the California Teacher Pathway” Paper presented at the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) annual meeting, St. Louis, MO, November 2013.
• Schademan, A. & Thompson, M. (2013) “The California Teacher Pathway: Fighting Poverty by Creating a Homegrown and Diverse Teaching Workforce” Poster presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Francisco, CA, April 2013. 
• Thompson, M. (2012) “Legitimating Origin in Southwestern Illinois: Testimonies of Belonging and Exclusion” Paper presented at the International Oral History Association, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 2012.
• Thompson, M. (2011). “Countertraces: Articulating visual and spoken discourses of Americanization from Southwestern Illinois” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), Montreal, Canada, November 2011.
• Thompson, M. (2010) “Using Reported Speech and Claims to Authority” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), New Orleans, LA, November 2010.
• Thompson, M. (2010) “Well you can’t speak English so we won’t hire you” Oral testimony and Family Photographs in Stories of Americanization” Paper presented at annual meeting of the International Oral History Association, Prague, Czech Republic, July 2010.
• Thompson, M. (2010) “Tracings of Americanization: Visual and Spoken Narratives from Southwestern Illinois” Roundtable presentation presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Denver, CO, April 2010.

Curriculum Vitae

• View Complete CV (PDF)