Bio

Marlon Dempster teaches students with student-led educational techniques to empower students to own their learning. He started teaching university-level students in 1993, coming out of reading fluency instruction for all student ages and tutoring students with learning challenges. Dempster served as an adjunct instructor at Azusa Pacific University and Vanguard University for three years before pursuing his Ph.D. at King's College, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.

Professor Dempster’s areas of specialized research began under Professor G.J.B. Watson's supervision in Irish Modern and Postmodern Literature with a focus on James Joyce, metafiction and post-structural literary theory. In 1999, still working on his thesis, Dempster joined the full-time Faculty at Vanguard University in California where he expanded his research and teaching portfolio to include American Postmodernism's and Metafiction's relation to diversity literature's techniques and cultural concerns.

Professor Dempster and his wife Shanon decided to move from California to Florida for financial reasons and found Southeastern University in Lakeland, a place they could grow in their careers and slow the pace of life for their family. At Southeastern University, Dempster has taught English Composition I & II, Journal Editing, Introduction to Literature, Literary and Cultural Studies, American Literature, British Literature II, Diversity Literature (African American Literature & Native American Literature) Metafiction, and Capstone in English Seminar.

Dempster’s past work in learning challenges and analytical writing assessment was put to use as he grew in his role as the Assessment Liaison for what later became the Humanities Department. Through student-written exams, career-focused projects, creative writing projects for critical thinking and games in the classroom, Dempster motivates his students to experience gains in writing, intellectual curiosity and textual analysis. He has demonstrated that most students want to discover popular cultural and literary influences in their lives.

In addition to his courses, Professor Dempster has served as a copy editor for Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and co-launched Vanguard University’s undergraduate journal Synecdoche (2005-2008). Since 2014, he has served as faculty supervisor, publisher and board chair for Oracle: The Undergraduate Journal of Southeastern University. He's overseen the shift of the journal’s transition from a print magazine to a campus-wide journal and in the last two years an online platform. He currently trains editors and officers for their student-led positions in the course Journal Editing.