Kathryn Valentine chairs the department and teaches courses on college composition, qualitative approaches to research in composition, and literacy studies. She is the former director of the SDSU Writing Center. Her scholarship focuses on issues of identity and literacy within the teaching of writing, often in the context of writing centers, and she has published in a variety of journals, including College Composition and Communication, Writing Center Journal, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and Journal of Diversity in Higher Education.