Melinda J. McBee Orzulak
Interim Associate Dean of LAS for Curriculum, Scholarship, and Assessment
Education
Ph.D., English and Education, University of Michigan
Biography
Dr. Melinda McBee Orzulak is the Interim Associate Dean of Curriculum, Scholarship, and Assessment in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2026-2027. As Associate Dean, she serves by providing administrative support on issues related to course offerings, curriculum development, assessment, and faculty scholarship. This support includes collaboration with departments during academic program review, specialized accreditation efforts, and programmatic needs assessment. Additionally, she serves as an LAS liaison to the Center for Teaching and Learning as well as the Office of Sponsored Programs to support faculty development and excellence in scholarship. To this role, she brings experience from her work with national accreditation, curriculum development, and faculty professional development.
A member of the ¿Û¿Û´«Ã½ community since 2011, Dr. McBee Orzulak is Professor of English and served as English Education Coordinator for over ten years. In addition to teaching and administration, Dr. McBee Orzulak’s most recent scholarship focuses on the role of professional resilience and adaptive mindsets. She is also honored to serve on the planning committee for Peoria Reads, a citywide literary event celebrating its 25-year anniversary this year.
Teaching
Dr. McBee Orzulak’s fields of interest include professional resilience, young adult literature, writing teacher education, and classroom discourse, which she applies to her teaching of core English composition courses, methods for teaching courses, and Young Adult Literature. She also has experience mentoring faculty and supervising student teaching and field-based seminars. Prior to working at the college level in Illinois and Michigan, she served as a humanities department chair and taught high school English, writing, and humanities—and retains a professional educator’s license for teaching English.
Service
As an active member of the National Council of Teachers of English, Dr. McBee Orzulak has been elected to NCTE’s College Section, conducted webinars for instructional leaders focused on writing initiatives, and contributed to multiple ELATE (English Language Arts Teacher Education) Commissions. She also has served on the Board of Program Reviewers for the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Educator Preparation (CAEP/NCTE). At ¿Û¿Û´«Ã½, she has served on the University-Wide Assessment Team, worked on multiple accreditation and program review teams, and contributed to ¿Û¿Û´«Ã½â€™s Center for Teaching Excellence and Learning as a Teaching Fellow, forum contributor and book group moderator.
Scholarship
Dr. McBee Orzulak’s scholarship explores how understandings of language enable mindful teaching through attention to classroom discourse and lenses for counteracting linguicism—whether in classroom interactions, text selections, or teaching writing. Additionally, her current work focuses on professional discourses that enable resilience. Active in the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) for the last two decades, from 2023-2026, she edited the English Journal’s Future Is Now column with a focus on the inquiries of early-career teachers.
To share her scholarship, Dr. McBee Orzulak values writing for both scholarly and practitioner audiences. Her books include Understanding Language: Supporting ELL Students[MMO1]  in Responsive ELA Classrooms ²¹²Ô»åÌýTaking Initiative on Writing: A Guide for Instructional Leaders. She also has published in The ALAN Review, Research in the Teaching of English, English Journal, English Education, Reading Research Quarterly, Teaching/Writing, Literacy and NCTE, Writers Who Care, ²¹²Ô»åÌýThe Cambridge Guide for Second Language Teacher Education. As a writer for the James R. Squire Office of Policy Research of the National Council of Teachers of English, she contributed to eight policy briefs published in the Council Chronicle, including Adolescent Literacy, English Language Learners, and 21st-Century Literacies.
Dr. McBee Orzulak shares her scholarship at regional, national and international meetings and conferences, including the English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Illinois Association of Teachers of English (IATE), and American Educational Research Association (AERA). She especially enjoys working with English Education majors as they share their research at conferences and colloquia.