Special Alumna Spotlight: UMBC English Teaching Professor Sally Shivnan!
Beloved Teaching Professor Sally Shivnan ('95) has the distinction of being a teacher and leader in the department where she was an undergraduate student. Shivnan plans to retire at the end of the Fall 2025 semester after more than twenty years of service. Read on for some praise from her students. To add your own comment, scroll to the bottom of the page.
When she arrived at UMBC, Sally Shivnan ('95), English and Secondary Education, was a critical care RN looking to change careers. She went on for her MFA in Fiction at George Mason University and then returned to English to teach creative writing and WARD courses, and she is now a Teaching Professor about to retire. Her 25 years here kept her busy: the grant from the USM Carnegie Course Redesign Initiative that brought big changes to ENGL 100 when she was WARD Director; work on the curriculum, including the new creative writing minor; a mentoring role with DoIT during the shift to online teaching in the pandemic; a research project on recorded audio feedback on student writing; her study-abroad creative writing program in Wales, going strong since 2016; and mentoring nineteen different volumes of Bartleby.
She is also a writer. Her short story collection Piranhas & Quicksand & Love was published in 2016, and her fiction and essays have appeared in journals including The Georgia Review, Antioch Review, Glimmer Train, and Rosebud. Her travel writing has been featured in The Best American Travel Writing anthology series and Travelers’ Tales Best Travel Writing, and in The Washington Post, Miami Herald, Nature Conservancy Magazine, baltimore.org, rails-to-trails.org, and many other publications and websites. Her awards include a Travel Classics International Travel Writing Prize and a Silver Rose Award for Fiction, and most recently a Dresher Center fellowship to research settings for her current novel and the next one she’s planning. In her spare time, she tends the large garden at the small house she shares with her husband and their several bicycles.
A few of Sally's students shared their comments on her excellence as a Teaching Professor:
- Professor Shivan encourages students in their creative writing and gives them wonderful advice in order to push them towards greater writing. It is always a pleasure to have Professor Shivnan as a teacher, and I will always value the learning space she has provided for creative writing students!
- I am most grateful to Professor Shivnan for encouraging us to experiment with our writing and cultivating a friendly atmosphere in our workshops. I broadened my writing horizons a lot and made many great friends in Professor Shivnan’s class.
- Professor Shivnan demonstrated utmost care for the general well being of her classes and the writing of her students. That care reflects not only her respect for the English discipline and the standards of UMBC, but also her empathy, understanding, and love for the students she interacted with every day.
- Professor Shivnan’s classes are always thought-provoking and engaging, and she always builds a cheerful and positive environment with her students. I have learned a lot in her classes over the last four years, and I’m immensely grateful that I was able to have her as a professor.
Posted: May 5, 2025, 6:58 PM
