“We do not possess our ideas, they possess us and force  us into the arena to fight for them.” Jane Addams

University of Central Arkansas BA / MA / ABD (Ph.D)

Lanette Grate, a full time instructor at the University of Central Arkansas, teaches Introduction to College Writing and Academic Writing and Research and serves on the Curriculum Committee in the department of Writing.

She graduated magna cum laude from Harding University in 1978 with a BA in English.

After teaching high school English in Indianapolis, Lanette moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan where she taught English in the Sparta Migrant Worker’s Program and also worked for the Grand Rapids Public Schools in assessment (Writing and Life Skills) before returning to school to pursue a graduate degree.  While a graduate student she worked as a Field Research Assistant at The Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University contributing to the publication of  “The Impact of Charter Schools on Public and Parochial Schools” (2000) (download PDF here).

Currently,  Lanette is a doctoral candidate at Western Michigan University where she also earned her Master's Degree in English in 2000. As of this writing she is ABD on her dissertation, "Jane Addams: Coming to Voice at Rockford Female Seminary." 

Her research on student activism in relation to the West Memphis Three case, “Citizen Writers and a Wider Justice,” will be published in 2008 by Teacher’s College Press  in Jane Addams, Hull-House and the Call to Education edited by David Schaafsma of UIC.

Lanette sponsors the UCA Demand Justice Student Panel, an organization that raises awareness about the issue of wrongful conviction by conducting open forum public discussions about the West Memphis Three case with college audiences. Demand Justice received a UCA Foundation Grant in 2006. 

In 2007 Lanette was a finalist for the Rachel Corrie Award for Courage in the Teaching of Writing.