Louise Krug is an English professor here at Washburn University. She is in her fourth year at Washburn, but she has been teaching for about 12 years total. She originally taught at the University of Kansas, KU, from which she obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After graduating with bachelor’s degree, she worked for a while in southern California as a freelance writer. 

However, she then got extremely sick and needed to have brain surgery in 2005. After her surgery, she had to start fresh, and she moved back to Kansas. She didn’t know what she wanted to do when she went back to KU to pursue another degree. She figured that, since she loved to read and write, she might as well go into a degree in English, or a degree that involved reading and writing. She applied for the Master of Fine Arts program and specialized in studying English. The program required a series of creative writing papers and projects like novels and poems.

While applying to their master’s program, Krug was given the opportunity to be a part of a teaching assistant program in exchange for piad tuition and a small stipend. She was greatful for the offer, and she  soon became a part of the program.

“Most big schools do that.” Krug said. “So, if you ever apply for graduate school, you should apply to big schools like KU so that you can do an apprentice program so they pay for your schooling.” 

As a teaching apprentice, students can only teach composition classes because they are well-balanced with the workload of graduate school. It was during her time as a TA that Krug realized that it was what she wanted to do with her degree. 

“If you had told me in my early 20s that I would end up being a college professor, I would have laughed,” Krug said.

As time went by, she graduated and got married. After having her first child, she decided to get her PhD to improve her chances of landing a job as a professor. However, she was originally unsure of going through the program, as it meant five more years of school. After having a second child, she graduated and started to look for a job. 

Her current job at Washburn had just opened up when she graduated. She was a bit taken unsure at first because she had never heard of Washburn before and hadn’t been in Topeka too often. Even so, she took a chance with the university.

At Washburn, every English teacher has to teach two sections of composition, which is a rule at Washburn so that all students have a chance to get into their required classes. Besides these, Krug teaches different kinds of creative writing classes. She teaches Composition, Beginning Fiction Writing and Reading as Writers, which all English majors have to take. She also advises a Publishing Lab, an English program capstone meant to mimic work in a publishing agency. Students in the program edit and put together Washburn’s annual literary magazine, “Inscape.”

Krug has also taught a special topics course that involved injecting humor into fiction and non-fiction works. She would love to co-teach a course with a psychology or history professor and create a course over the history of writing. She is also open to course suggestions that stuends would like to take. Krug likes to create couses that combine more than one subject; she may combine a language course with a writing class so that students could learn how to translate works that are written in a different laguage in a way that maintains the original work’s style. 

Another course idea was based on transforming different types of writing into other forms of writing. For example, a student may change a fiction piece into a non-fiction piece, perhaps by taking a fantasy story about a dragon into a non-fiction story about an exotic pet. She says that students are welcome to email her course ideas or even slide paper ideas under her door when she’s not in office. 

Krug is very passionate about teaching writing and wants to challenge students to become better writers. She teaches students of all levels, and she enjoys interacting with other majors other than English as well. She loves working with and being around college students, and she is always there if any of her students have questions or need help with assignments.