Sample projects and interests:
A student athlete named Tim Erwin spent weeks developing the heartbreaking story “Wrestling for my Brother” in Taylor’s sports writing workshop. One student began bringing tissues to every class. The finished story appeared in The Post Game at Yahoo Sports, on the national NCAA website, and in other regional and local publications.
Initial Microbial Survey of a Potentially Ecologically Unique Tennessee Cave System. Working with Dr. James Engman, professor of biology, Taylor initiated a research project in which undergraduate biology students identified novel microorganisms from a Tennessee cave. Early results were presented as student posters at national conferences.
Co-created Innovative Media program, which brought together interdisciplinary student teams to create products and solutions for real-world problems. Although the communication department (along with nearly all libearl arts) closed in 2022, this was its sole surviving major, its graduates sought by media and tech companies.
Forged from the Embers. Students in the spring 2019 digital publishing class at Henderson edited and published a Kindle book collecting the best stories from 20 years of FORGE, the magazine of the Matt Locke Ellis College of Arts and Sciences, originally created by David Stoddard and Michael Ray Taylor.
Creator and co-host of the annual Cave Writers Workshop, a full day of writing events and workshops at the annual National Speleological Society convention. In 2020, this long-running literary project became part of the larger NSS Arts and Letters Salon.
Recognized with a 2018 Distinguished Adviser Award from the College Media Association in the category of Four-Year-Newspaper Adviser, for past work as adviser of the Henderson Oracle.