Phone:  828-227-3327
Email:  mherzog@wcu.edu 
Office Address:  Killian 108B
Website:  http://paws.wcu.edu/mherzog/

Education

Ed.D., The University of Tennessee, 1988

M.S., The University of Tennessee, 1974

B.A., SUNY College at Brockport, 1973

Research Interests

Rural Education, Qualitative Research Methods, Teacher Education, Teaching Methods, and Democracy in Education.

Personal Statement

While in college, I developed a growing awareness of inequities in the United States. I majored in psychology, vaguely thinking it would lend itself to work in the helping professions. With my bachelor's degree in hand, I migrated from New York to the south and landed in Knoxville, Tennessee where I continued my undergraduate jobs: I was a waitress.

I knew I did not want to make a lifetime career in the restaurant business, and as I looked at the opportunities for graduate study at the University of Tennessee I discovered the reading specialist program. Thus began my study of educational practices, policies and issues.

I taught remedial reading in elementary, junior high, and high school for several years, and then decided to enter the world of college teaching. For the next decade plus, I taught education and psychology at Warren Wilson College in Asheville. In the mid-eighties, I went back to school to get a doctoral degree in education. I took my present position at Western in 1989.

My teaching and research interests over the last 15 years have remained focused on education as an instrument of social equity and change.