Maria Judnick started teaching in SCU’s Department of English in 2013. With colleague Matt Driscoll, she created the award-winning ENVS 95 course, which she teaches yearly. From June 2022 to July 2024, Maria worked for SCU’s Center for Sustainability, helping to write the university’s sustainability strategic action plan inspired by the papal encyclical Laudato Si’.
Maria has also been the recipient of several Teaching with Technology grants focused on SCU's multimodal projects. She enjoys lectoring at 10 AM Mass, helping at Letterpress events across campus, and presenting on films during the annual tUrn weeks held in October and April. She is currently a member of the community read selection committee and the new spiritual labyrinth working group.
Since 2008, she has served as the Project Coordinator for seven National Endowment for the Humanities summer institutes for teachers (three on John Steinbeck and four on the California Immigrant Experience).
She also served for five and a half years at SJSU’s Writing Center where she edited a popular grammar blog, conducted video craft interviews with local and nationally-known writers, and ran social media and writing workshops for faculty and staff.
Maria previously volunteered as the Social Media Editor for the EcoTheo Review and on the board of the Young Rhetoricians' Conference.
Maria enjoys sharing her flash fiction and poetry with several local reading series and has published in many different genres. Highlights include interviews with the writers Rebecca Solnit and Linda Spalding; essays in The Critical Flame and Gemini Magazines; 30+ blog posts for local PBS affiliate KQED; book reviews in The HeavyFeather Review; a multimodal article in Kairos: A Journal of Technology, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric; and a book chapter on John Steinbeck's work on the film Lifeboat for Hitchcock and Adaptation: On the Page and Screen.
Her first paid essay (on the importance of public education) was featured as part of an essay contest in Time Magazine for Kids when she was in second grade.