Hi there. I’m a senior reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where I cover all sorts of things.

Right now, I’m interested in political ideas, groups, actors, and agendas — and the way they appear on college campuses. That has meant interrogating how a progressive liberal-arts college is faring two years into a conservative takeover, exploring Florida lawmakers’ attempt to curtail identity politics in general education courses, and dissecting whether allegations of racism and harm were used to quell legitimate disagreement among members of a very dysfunctional English department. (Departmental meltdowns are a theme of my work.)

I also write about other topics — sometimes serious, sometimes silly, and sometimes somewhere in between. I profiled a lecturer who survived a classroom shooting and reported a series on a state committee that, in the 1950s and 1960s, purged gay professors and students from the classroom. That series I completed as an Education Writers Association fellow. Two of my favorite stories are about a struggling but scrappy puppetry program and a Johns Hopkins University professor who moonlights as a Real Housewife. (A sentence from the latter article was deemed one of the best of 2023 by a New York Times opinion contributor.)

As you can tell, I love a good yarn. If there's a tale that you want me to tell or a tip that you think could lead to interesting places, please get in touch! 

Before joining The Chronicle in 2018, I worked for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, where I reported on breaking news, state politics, and county government. I won several feature-writing awards and was named the 2017 Outstanding New Journalist by the Arkansas Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. I graduated from Villanova University with majors in English and political science. While there, I played Division I volleyball. 

As I’ve written elsewhere, I became a journalist because “I’m good with deadlines and bad with monotony. My dad also had something to do with it. Growing up, he’d ask me to come up with metaphors for the moon on our early-morning drives.”