Shelbie Witte

Biography

Dr. Shelbie Witte is excited to join the University of North Dakota and the College of Education and Human Development as Dean in July of 2024. 

Dr. Witte is the founding director of the Initiative for Literacy in a Digital Age, which recognizes the annual recipients of the Divergent Award for Literacy in a Digital Age Research, produces the annual Divergent Lecture Series, and provides theory to practice resources for classroom teachers and students interested in implementing digital literacies in the classroom.Formerly, Dr. Witte was the Kim and Chuck Watson Chair in Education and professor of adolescent literacy and English Education at Oklahoma State University, where she served as Senior Director of Outreach and Teacher Education and School Head of the School of Teaching, Learning & Educational Sciences.  She also served as site director emeritus of the Oklahoma State University Writing Project.
 
Dr. Witte began her teaching career in 1995 as an English Language Arts teacher in a small city in southwest Oklahoma. Since that time, she has taught every level of adolescents and adults, from middle school through doctoral students, in rural, urban, and suburban communities.  Dr. Witte was selected as a finalist for 2008 Kansas Teacher of the Year and earned National Board Certification in Early Adolescence/English Language Arts in 2006.  She has a decades-long membership to the National Council of Teachers of English, where she has served in many capacities including the nationally-elected middle-level representative to the NCTE Executive Committee, co-editor, along with Sara Kajder, of the premiere middle-level journal Voices from the Middle, and most recently elected to serve a term as member of the Executive Committee for ELATE, English Language Arts Teacher Educators. Dr. Witte also serves the AACTE as a member of the Research and Dissemination Committee.

Witte has published extensively in the area of digital literacies and 21st century literacies, including teacher and librarian partnerships, writing in digital spaces, young adult literature and popular culture curricular integrations.  Her most recent books include Writing Changes Everything: Middle-Level Kids Writing Themselves Into the World (NCTE), From Text to Epitext (ABC-CLIO) & Literacy Engagement through Peritextual Analysis (ALA and NCTE) both with Melissa Gross and Don Latham, Toward a More Visual Literacy: Shifting the Paradigm with Digital Tools and Young Adult Literature and Young Adult Literature in the Digital World (both with Jennifer Dail and Steven Bickmore) and two titles with Brill/Sense focusing on gaming literacies (with Antero Garcia and Jennifer Dail).