Retiring Faculty’s Favorite Lessons: Part Two

This year’s group of retiring faculty members have been department chairs, founded a nonprofit, been leaders in their fields, and won a Pulitzer Prize.

The following professors were honored at a faculty celebration on April 29: Pierre Archambault, Amelia Broome, Cathy Edelstein, Janet Kolodzy, Megan Marshall, Eileen McBride, Alisa Ruggiero, Lauren Shaw, Tulasi Srinivas, Steve Yarbrough.

No interview can quite capture the importance these educators have meant to their students and colleagues, but Emerson Today tried. We asked several retiring faculty members about their time at Emerson College, what they’re most proud of, their favorite assignments, and what they’ll be doing in retirement. Read Part I of this article.

Amelia Broome
Senior Artist-in-Residence II & Associate Chair
Performing Arts
2000-2025

What are you most proud of from your time at Emerson College?

Broome: I think of all of the students I have taught, who they are and where they are, and I see so many who are taking their place in the world, as creative artists, teachers, leaders, parents, and I know they are making a profound difference in the lives of everyone around them. I am so moved by these beautiful humans, and I am proud to have had a connection to them and to their lives.

Was there a moment when you knew you were right for the profession?

Broome: Maybe it was the time my teacher, Kristin Linklater, muttered under her breath to me, “Born to teach.” 

What do you hope students will remember most about you or your classes?

Broome: I am happy that students leave my classes with certain skills. But I think the subject matter of a class is secondary to the spirit of learning that is created, how we are in a room with each other, and what we create together as an ensemble. I hope people remember coming into my class with whatever energy they have at the moment, and leaving feeling changed in some way, refreshed, renewed, lifted, opened up, or even inspired. 

What’s a favorite assignment or lesson you loved teaching over the years?

Broome: I am so grateful to my teachers, especially Kristin Linklater, for the profound and brilliant work they left us. I stand on their shoulders every day of my teaching life. One of my greatest pleasures, that seemed to be shared by the students, is ending every class with singing together. It’s a satisfying, joyful way to release folks back into the world!

Is there one particular Emerson production that stands out in your mind? 

Broome: I am reluctant to name one, to the exclusion of so many remarkable productions. But if I must, it’s the musical Titanic in the Majestic Theatre. All of the elements came together to elevate that experience into something far more than the sum of its parts. It is one of my favorite Emerson Stage memories.

What’s one piece of advice you always tried to give your students?

Broome: Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I don’t know if I have one specific piece of advice. If a student felt seen and heard, and motivated or comforted, maybe they can return to that feeling and perhaps pass it on.

What are you looking forward to most in retirement?

Broome: REST. And spaciousness in my life and schedule!

Megan Marshall
Charles Wesley Emerson Professor
Writing, Literature & Publishing
2007-2025

What are you most proud of from your time at Emerson College?

Marshall: I came late to teaching, in my 50s, and I’ve always defined myself as a writer more than as a professor. Looking back, I’m grateful for the ways that teaching at Emerson, learning from my students and colleagues, led to new directions in writing. 

I’m a biographer, but I began to experiment with memoir and the essay form. All three of the books I wrote while teaching at Emerson—Margaret Fuller: A New American Life (which won the Pulitzer Prize), Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast (a biography of my poetry professor with memoir interlaced), and After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart (essays), show the positive influence of Emerson’s community of writers. I had worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up writing at a high level while teaching, but the opposite took place—Emerson expanded my sense of possibility.

Was there a moment when you knew you were right for the profession?

Marshall: I can’t say I ever felt “right” for the profession, but when I saw my students become inspired by the practical skills and historical knowledge I could expose them to in classes like Sources of Inspiration: Archival Research for Writers, Writing the Lives of Others, and The Literature of Transcendence (on the Boston area writers on Transcendentalism and abolition in the mid-19th century) I knew I was offering them something they couldn’t get anywhere else. The new literature course I’ve been teaching for the past two years, Life Studies: Forms of Biographical Writing, has turned MFA students on to ways of stepping outside the private, interior world that makes up so much of their subject matter when they arrive at Emerson. Looking outward is invigorating to them. 

What do you hope students will remember most about you or your classes?

Marshall: Anyone can do it, if you work hard enough! That goes for researching historical subjects in archives as well. So many students feel intimidated by libraries and the seemingly even more exclusive sanctum of an archive. But these repositories of our cultural heritage want their papers and artifacts to live on in work written in the present day. They are welcoming! And the writing world is welcoming too, if you show your commitment and learn your craft, which includes reading, reading, reading. Then you’ll always have something to talk about with other writers you meet, and especially with the older ones who can help you find your way. 

What’s a favorite assignment or lesson you loved teaching over the years?

Marshall: The first written assignment for my archival research class is to select a name from a Boston Directory (published and updated annually, like phone books, but before there were phone books: the directories list name, occupation, address). The student then must locate the person’s address on a map of the period, research their occupation, read around in a Boston newspaper from the year of the directory, and write a short piece in their genre of concentration—fiction, poetry, nonfiction—drawing on this research, and more if they’re inclined. 

Many of the students are new to Boston, so this assignment helps orient them to a place they would like to get to know. Over the years, students have chosen an elevator operator, a house mover, a hat maker, a portrait painter, a conductor of the [Boston Symphony Orchestra], and much more. The assignment draws them back into the past imaginatively, but also with specificity. They love it! And it gets them out of the Emerson bubble. Although the directories are available online now, they didn’t used to be. Students had to go to the [Boston Public Library] or the State House archive to find them—good places to get to know!  

How has the way you teach writing changed (if it has changed) since when you began teaching? 

Marshall: Over the years my instinct to treat my students as peers, as fellow writers in a writing group, has been increasingly affirmed as I sense the students’ appreciation of this approach. I don’t like to play the role of all-knowing accomplished professional. They are too easily intimidated as it is. We’re in this together!

What’s one piece of advice you always tried to give your students?

Marshall: I’m not the kind of teacher who has specific lessons to teach and keeps coming back to them. I hate to hear myself repeat myself! But in the moment things come up. I guess I’d like my students to remember that details, accuracy, curiosity, all really matter in whatever kind of writing they choose to do. 

And writing itself matters, along with relationships with writers and editors. Avoid envy and rivalry as much as you possibly can. There’s no one timeline or path to becoming a writer. Be patient with yourself, but don’t let yourself off the hook either!

What are you looking forward to most in retirement?

Marshall: More time for writing! I’ve started to write op-eds in response to our political moment. I’ll be looking for more opportunities to speak up in that way, even as I hope to maintain the spirit of inquiry that has always fed my writing—an essential human impulse that our current government seems bent on extinguishing.