Profile

Following graduation from the University of Colorado in 1992, Bethany pursued a variety of interests: high school teacher, hotel manager, performer & media manager for Disney on Ice, and Major League Baseball mascot. In 2002, Bethany returned to school at the University of Missouri, where she served as an adjunct professor as well as a newspaper editor while pursuing her master’s degree. She also won several awards for narrative and feature writing.

Following graduation, Bethany went into small-town journalism where she worked as a reporter and then humor columnist in Lincoln County, Oregon. She later switched her journalism pursuits from writing to teaching when she became a middle and high school journalism, English, and social studies teacher. She maintained this role until enrolling in the doctoral program at the University of Oregon in 2015.

Currently, Bethany freelances for local publications as well as blogs on LGBTQ issues for the Huffington Post. Her work can be found at www.HuffingtonPost.com/Raina-Bowe/

In addition to her primary doctoral focus on journalism pedagogy, she is active in working for transgender equality. Presenting at schools as well as at professional and academic conferences, she helps people understand a very misunderstood part of the population. She also serves as a member of the Diversity Committee within the School of Journalism and Communication, and the the University Committee on Sexual Orientation, Attraction, Gender Identity, and Expression. She is also the founding member and president of the UO chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association.