Dr. Laura Ellis-Lai directs the English Internship Program, serves as the Academic Program Director for a summer study abroad program to London & Cambridge, and teaches as a program faculty member in the Office of Distance and Extended Learning and as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Texas State University. Dr. Ellis-Lai teaches courses in technical writing, professional editing, qualitative research, digital rhetorics, world literature, and travel writing. She has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio, an Ed.M. in Education from Harvard University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Texas State University, and B.A.s in Literature and Psychology from the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Dr. Ellis-Lai has received the Presidential Distinction Award for Excellence in Teaching (2022), the Liberal Arts Golden Apple Award in Teaching (2022), and the Excellence in Online Teaching Award, Runner Up (2021). She has twice been named an Alpha Chi Favorite Professor and served as an Honorary Coach at a Texas State University Football game and a Women’s Volleyball game. Dr. Ellis-Lai has joined and directed graduate and undergraduate thesis committees, developed study abroad programs, advised the English Honor Society, supervised and evaluated graduate teaching assistants, coordinated service learning activities for English students in the San Marcos community, and taught face-to-face, hybrid, and asynchronous-online courses for the Department of English, the Honors College, University Seminar, and the Texas State Intensive English (TSIE) Program since 2006. Dr. Ellis-Lai is currently developing a study-in-America program for Texas State students to travel to the Central Coast of California to study regional literature and travel writing.
Dr. Ellis-Lai’s office is located in Flowers Hall on the Texas State University campus in San Marcos, and she may be reached via email at EllisLai@txstate.edu or over the phone at 512-245-7678.