English Professor Brings Diverse Background to New Position

English Professor Brings Diverse Background to New Position

By University Relations - Communications
Printer-friendly version PDF version
Ken McAllister (Photo: Beatriz Verdugo/UANews)
Ken McAllister (Photo: Beatriz Verdugo/UANews)
Ken McAllister (center) is a founding partner of the UA iSpace, a new maker lab that is open and accessible to all students and employees who are interested in exploring immersive VR, augmented reality, 3-D modeling and additive manufacturing, among other innovative tools. (Photo courtesy of UA Innovate and University Libraries)
Ken McAllister (center) is a founding partner of the UA iSpace, a new maker lab that is open and accessible to all students and employees who are interested in exploring immersive VR, augmented reality, 3-D modeling and additive manufacturing, among other innovative tools. (Photo courtesy of UA Innovate and University Libraries)

It seems unlikely that anyone at Ken S. McAllister's high school in Chicago could have pegged him as a future English professor.

Now a UA English professor, McAllister says he was the quintessential nerd – a regular in the computer and A/V clubs, a member of the marching band as an alto saxophone player, and a pole vaulter.

At home, McAllister created his own mini-electronics lab and was on a first-name basis with employees at both the local public library and RadioShack. He even played "Dungeons & Dragons" every weekend with a group that included a doctoral candidate in ancient biblical languages, the first landscape designer for the Dollywood theme park and a professional ballet and jazz dancer.

As a professional, McAllister has taught classes and led workshops on artificial intelligence, 3-D modeling, video game design, medieval magic, Marxist rhetoric and woodshop safety. While living in Chicago, he launched and ran his own computer consulting and IT security business. Later, he worked as a computer programmer for the state of Illinois, mainly developing database applications related to inventory control and event management.

Most recently, he was appointed to a new position: the associate dean of research and program innovation in the UA College of Humanities.

In his new role, McAllister will be putting his diverse background to work helping the college build its sponsored-project footprint on campus and helping to develop a new department focused on applied and public humanities.

Very early in his role, McAllister began meeting with the college's department heads and faculty, learning about their experiences and determining what they hope to see come out of his new role. Unsurprisingly, the list of expectations is long, but exciting and tremendously imaginative, he said.

"I never cease to be amazed by the creativity, insight and ambition of my colleagues," McAllister said. "Their ideas, their passion about the work in the humanities, is what wakes me up in the morning and keeps me planning and drafting until long after midnight."  

Asked how he developed such a strong investment in transdisciplinarity, McAllister drew on his early experiences of finding joy in learning how other people think. His curiosity is varied, and he is happy to talk with mathematicians, filmmakers, glass blowers, biomechanical engineers, cartographers, parents, sign painters, cigar rollers, veterinarians, retail cashiers, medical equipment suppliers – anyone willing to answer his questions about how and why they do what they do.

Perhaps a bit ironically, if you ask McAllister about his work, he responds with a light: "Oh, this and that. New media. Computer games. Rhetoric. Stuff like that."

His CV and non-academic resume tell a fuller story, though.

McAllister earned his bachelor's degree in American literature, with a focus on the American Industrial Revolution. He went on to earn a master's degree in creative writing, with a focus on poetry and additional coursework in computer science, engineering and industrial design. His doctorate is in language, literacy and rhetoric, specializing in the discourses of popular computing.

During his career, McAllister has published five books, with another due out later this year. He has edited three collections and authored or co-authored more than 50 articles, book chapters and white papers. He also has been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on nearly 20 grants, with more than half of them funded. The national average for successful academic grant writing is somewhere around 25 percent.

Among the tentative new initiatives McAllister has started to develop are:

  • A Research Advisory Council, which will help guide how the College of Humanities seeks out and uses its research-related resources.
  • A series of short grant writing 101 workshops.
  • A longer, more in-depth sponsored research institute that will work with a limited cohort of College of Humanities faculty each year to take them through the grant development process step-by-step, using their own research for the basis of their skill development.

And what does someone like McAllister do for fun? For one, he plays computer games in the Learning Games Initiative Research Archive – one of the world's largest publicly accessible research archives – which he co-founded and co-directs with his Arizona State University colleague Judd Ruggill. But that's not all.

"I play terrible banjo in a local bluegrass band, build furniture and various odd wooden bibelots in my shop, and do a bit of welding," he said. "My wife, Rachel, and I hike when we can, and I'm a longtime caver, too. These days I'm pretty busy at UA, so it's a good thing that I like my work so much."

UA@Work is produced by University Communications

Marshall Building, Suite 100. 845 N. Park Ave., Tucson, AZ 85719 (or) 
P.O. Box 210158B, Tucson, AZ 85721

T 520.621.1877  F 520.626.4121

Feedback University Privacy Statement 

2024 © The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona