Dr. Emily Allen

Director, Blue Sky Teaching & Learning Laboratory/Associate Professor of English

Education

B.A. UCLA, M.A. UC Santa Barbara, Ph.D. UC Santa Barbara

Awards and Accolades

College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher, 2018

Inductee, Purdue’s “Book of Great Teachers,” 2008

English Department Nominee for College of Liberal Arts Award, Purdue, 2003

Member, Purdue University Teaching Academy, 2002

Teaching for Tomorrow Award, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue, 2002

Charles B. Murphy Award in Undergrad Teaching, Purdue, 2002

English Department Nominee for College of Liberal Arts Award, Purdue, 2001

Excellence in Teaching Award (Graduate), English Department, Purdue, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2013, 2016

Excellence in Teaching Award (Undergrad), English Department, Purdue, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2007, 2008

Excellence in Teaching Award, English Department, Purdue, 1998

Biography

Emily Allen is the founding Director of the JMHC's Blue Sky Teaching and Learning Laboratory. The Blue Sky Lab (BSL) focuses on translating and scaling high-impact pedagogies incubated in the Honors College and in connecting the HC outward to other educational institutions and communities. This laboratory for teaching practice and research supports "visionary pedagogy for a better world."

From 2012-2021, Professor Allen served as the Honors College’s first Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, in which position she oversaw the development of the college’s interdisciplinary courses, curriculum, and faculty; contributed to imagining its co-curricular structures; and helped set the vision and goals of Purdue’s first academic-residential college. She is particularly proud of having created the innovative structure of the college’s first-year seminar “Evolution of Ideas” and its attached mentor course, which was designed through Purdue’s groundbreaking IMPACT and now stands as a model for new and other programs.

She is also Associate Professor in the English Department, where her primary scholarly area is nineteenth-century British literature and culture, particularly the novel. She is the author of Theater Figures: The Production of the Nineteenth-Century British Novel (The Ohio State University Press) and a founding member of NAVSA, the North American Victorian Studies Association. Professor Allen received her B. A. (honors) from UCLA, and her M. A. (honors) and Ph. D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She held an Isaac Walton Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University in Canada before arriving at Purdue University. She was the Director of the College of Liberal Arts Honors Program from 2008-2012, when she moved to Purdue’s new Honors College.

Professor Allen has received numerous awards for her teaching, including the Charles B. Murphy Award in Undergraduate Teaching, the College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Undergraduate Teacher Award, the Teaching for Tomorrow Award. She is a member of the Purdue University Teaching Academy, and her name appears in Purdue’s Book of Great Teachers.

Contact Info

HCRN 1151
765-494-9393
elallen@purdue.edu