By Emily Costantino, News Editor
When you visit a professor’s office hours, you’re usually met with an array of clutter-a museum of mementos dating back to their early days in academia. But for Dr. Jessica Jelsma Masterton’s students, they are met with pristine, white walls. This lack of disorder is a direct result of how busy she is. Between teaching both business and publishing and editing courses, to reviving the SU Press and advising FUSE, Forum for Undergraduate Student Editors,. Masterton has yet to find the time to decorate or build up clutter.
Dr. Masterton, or “Jess” to her students, began teaching at Susquehanna in August 2022 and has since made her mark as an assistant professor dedicated to media and entrepreneurship. She has taught a wide range of classes from marketing to the publishing and editing capstone. Although she hasn’t been here long, Masterton already feels a connection to SU and its students.
“So, what’s different and unique about here is that most of you seem like you’re here to learn. You’re invested in what you’re learning. You’re invested in thinking about your future careers. And you’re also just, I think, because it’s such a small school, just really tight knit and kind and supportive of one another in a way that I’m not used to seeing. So that’s been great to work with, with students who are all kind of like in this together versus either competing against one another or just kind of being completely disengaged,” she said.
Masterton says that many of her students don’t realize she has an extensive background in writing, so she understands a lot of their struggles and successes.
“I’ve also been where they are now with submitting work, having work accepted, being excited to be in publications,” she said.
Her works of fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in places like “Catapult,” “Gettysburg Review” and “Quarterly West.” Prior to coming to Susquehanna, Masterton worked as the managing director of “Ruminate Magazine,” a nonprofit literary magazine based in Nevada.
Masterton went to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where she got an undergraduate degree in cultural anthropology and biological psychology. Following graduation, she took two years off school to focus on working. She eventually went back to school for her MFA in creative writing prose from the University of Alabama. Then, she got her PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Cincinnati. While getting both her master’s and PhD, Masterton did editorial work for various on-campus publications.
Once obtaining her PhD, she hoped to enter the world of academia and work as a professor, but she found the job market to be difficult to maneuver.
“It used to be a long time ago, that if you got a PhD, you had a good chance of getting a job in academia. But the job market now is really terrible. And you can see that a lot of colleges are downsizing or laying off professors or they’re hiring adjunct professors which are, you know, paid part-time. So, there’s not a lot of like full-time tenure track lines that open up,” she said.
After a grueling job search, Masterton was eventually hired as a visiting assistant professor at Albion College in Michigan where she taught courses on creative writing, literature and first-year writing. Once her visiting professorship ended, she chose to focus entirely on editorial work, and that’s how she ended up at “Ruminate.” She swore she would not apply for any more jobs in academia, but then she saw the job listing at Susquehanna and felt that it combined both her interests in publishing and academics perfectly.
“I said, well it fits with what I’m interested in. It fits with my skill set in like a weird way. So, I applied to only this one job,” she said.
Now she not only teaches at Susquehanna, but she also is heavily involved in student activities like SU Press and FUSE. She has been integral in the reviving of the SU Press, which gives students the opportunity to work closely in publication of literature while also getting class credit. This school year, the class will be publishing a short story collection written by SU alumni Patrick Thomas Henry titled “Practice for Becoming a Ghost.”
It’s obvious that Masterton is dedicated to the success of her students, but this is most prevalent in her lessons on career preparation, which she makes a point to include in many of her courses. The biggest piece of advice she offers her students is to start early. She suggests each student research jobs they want early on in their college career and start building up the skills and qualifications that these jobs require.
“I would say have a one-year plan, a five-year plan and a 10-year plan of how you’re going to get where you want to be and go out and seek experiences or jobs or internships that are going to grant you those skill sets,” she said.
If you’re interested in learning more about Dr. Masterton, visit her website at jessejelsma.com.
If you’re interested in what SU Press is up to, check out their website at susqupress.com.
