Stephen McDonald has been teaching English since 1975. For seven years, 1977-1984, he worked as an adjunct instructor in San Diego County, teaching at three community colleges (San Diego Mesa College, Grossmont College, and Southwestern College). In 1984 he was hired as a full-time instructor at Palomar Community College in San Marcos, California. While at Palomar, he helped to design and subsequently chaired and administered the college's Writing-across-the-Curriculum program, also giving workshops to assist instructors from a variety of disciplines as they developed writing assignments and techniques that would work in their classrooms. He has served as Chair of the English Department at Palomar, as a member of the Faculty Senate, and as a participant on a variety of committees. He has also attended three Great Teachers Seminars hosted by Palomar College. In 1991 he was awarded the Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, and in 2007 received the Palomar College Research Award for publications ranging from college textbooks to poetry. For the past two years he has served as Dean of Languages and Literature. In addition to THE WRITER'S RESPONSE, he is co-author with William Salomone of INSIDE WRITING: A WRITER'S WORKBOOK and IN BRIEF: A HANDBOOK FOR WRITERS. He has also published a chapbook of poetry titled WHERE THERE WAS NO PATTERN (Finishing Line Press, 2007) and many individual poems in a variety of literary journals.