Deidra Jackson is the Director of the Tupelo Writing Center and an Instructor.  Her research focuses on scholarly productivity, writing groups, and the perceptions and impacts of “publish or perish.” She also is interested in autoethnography and other forms of qualitative research. Since 2018, she has taught first-year writing composition courses in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric.

Jackson is a 2019-2021 Isom Fellowship recipient through the UM Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies and is a member of the affiliated faculty in the UM Department of Higher Education.

In May 2019 she was chosen as a 2019-20 participant of the Op-Ed Project, a national initiative aimed at increasing the public impact of the nation’s top underrepresented thinkers, broadening gender equity, and shifting the dynamic of public discourse.

Since 2017, she has been a contributing writer for Inside Higher Ed. 

Jackson also has presented research at the annual meetings of the Association of Rhetoric and Writing Studies, the American Educational Research Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and at the UM Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.

Education

Ph.D., The University of Mississippi, Higher Education
Graduate Certification in Program Evaluation, University of Mississippi
M.A., The University of Mississippi, Journalism
B.S., Mississippi University for Women, Journalism and Broadcasting

Publications

Jackson, D. F.  & Myatt, A. J. (2021). Reflection: ESL writers: A guide for writing center tutors. In H. Denny, R. Garcia, & A. Sicari (Eds.), The writing center journal. (39, pp. 423-425).  Purdue University.

Suddeath, E., Martin, L., Jackson, D. F., & George, P. (2018). Adolescent civic involvement and the great recession of 2008: Testing the certainty of employment. Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship, 11(1), 20-26.

Jackson, D. F. (2017). [Review of the book College teaching: Practical insights from the science of teaching and learning, by D. R. Forsyth], Journal of Contemporary Research in Education, 5(1) 11.

Research Interests

• Scholarly productivity
• Faculty writing groups
• Perceptions and impacts of “publish or perish”
• Faculty development
• Qualitative research