Richard James Johnson

Richard James Johnson is Emeritus Professor of English and Education at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa City.

Professor Johnson retired from full-time teaching in 2017 after having long served as the English Department Chair and Director of the Writing Center at Kirkwood’s Iowa City campus, now known as the Kirkwood Regional Center at The University of Iowa.

For years, he served as a final reviewer for The College Board, approving new test items for the SAT Writing & Language and SAT Reading tests. He has been a frequent presenter at teaching conferences across the country and has served as an editorial consultant on dozens of college composition and literature textbooks. And he has long served as a trustee of Scattergood Friends School, a college-preparatory boarding school in Iowa emphasizing Quaker values, experiential learning, and democratic governance. He is the author of "A Deweyan Approach to Teaching Literary Inquiry," published by Routledge.

Prior to retirement, Professor Johnson taught an intensive, five-semester-hour course in first-year composition and rhetoric, sophomore literature courses in both fiction and nonfiction, and a writing workshop in creative nonfiction. He also regularly taught an introductory course in education for students considering careers as K-12 schoolteachers. As emeritus professor, he has continued to tutor students individually in the campus Writing Center.