John C. Bean

John C. Bean is an emeritus professor of English at Seattle University. He has an undergraduate degree in English from Stanford University (1965) and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington (1972). He has been active in the Writing Across the Curriculum movement since 1976—first at the College of Great Falls (Montana), then at Montana State University (Bozeman), and, since 1986, at Seattle University. Besides Engaging Ideas, the first edition of which has been translated into both Dutch and Chinese, he is the coauthor of four composition textbooks with varying focuses on writing, argumentation, critical thinking, and rhetorical reading. He has also published numerous articles on writing, writing across the curriculum, and discipline-specific pedagogies to promote students’ growth from novice to expert. He has done extensive consulting across the United States and Canada on writing, critical thinking, and university outcomes assessment. In 2001, he presented a keynote address at the first annual conference of the European Association of Teachers of Academic Writing (EATAW) at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands. More recently, he and his wife Kit (who is also now a retired college teacher of writing) have facilitated workshops on writing and critical thinking for BRAC University in Bangladesh, Ashesi University in Ghana, and Charles Lwanga College of Education in Zambia. In 2010 his article “Messy Problems and Lay Audiences: Teaching Critical Thinking within the Finance Curriculum” (coauthored with colleagues from finance and economics) won the 2008 McGraw-Hill–Magna Publications Award for the year’s best scholarly work on teaching and learning