Nancy Nelson Author, Educator, and Writing Coach
Professor Emeritus, Louisiana State University
Professor Emeritus, University of North Texas
About Nancy Nelson
Nancy Nelson Educator
After a long and fulfilling career in higher education, Nancy Nelson, PhD, is Professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University and also at University of North Texas. From 1994 to 2005 she was at LSU as Professor of Education and Elena and Albert LeBlanc Endowed Professor. Since leaving LSU, she served as Professor and Department Chair at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi from 2005 to 2009 and then Department Chair and Meadows Endowed Chair for Excellence in Education at UNT from 2009 to May 2019. After retiring from full-time positions, she continues to write, to present conference papers, and to review articles for journals. She also continues to coach former students on their writing and to mentor them in their careers and has begun to coach other doctoral students and early-career university faculty on their scholarly writing.
Nancy Nelson Author
Nelson’s research has focused on literacy processes and practices, and she is probably best known for her research in academic writing, especially source-based writing (which she termed discourse synthesis), as well as her work on constructivist theory and reading-writing connections. Some work, including the book The Constructivist Metaphor, was published under the name Nancy Nelson Spivey. At the universities mentioned above and also at Carnegie Mellon and the College of William and Mary, she taught courses in Theoretical Foundations, Traditions of Inquiry, Global Educational Issues, Issues in English Language Arts, Academic Writing, and Learning Theory.
Nancy Nelson International Education
Her career has benefitted tremendously from involvement in international initiatives. Activities have included keynote addresses at conferences in Italy, Norway, and Mexico and seminars that she led in Costa Rica, New Zealand, Norway, and Spain. She considered it a privilege to sponsor scholars from Mexico, Türkiye, and India; to host lecturers from Australia, China, Kazakhstan, and Mexico; to direct research of students from South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia; and to be liaison for a partnership with the Secretariat of Education of Jalisco, Mexico. When concluding her years at UNT, Nelson was honored with the Citation for Distinguished Service to International Education, and she continues to engage in international collaborations as she moves to other academic “homes.”