Meet Kelly

Kelly Metz-Matthews, Ph.D. (she/her) is faculty and Assistant Program Chair in the English as a Second Language (ESL) program at the San Diego College of Continuing Education (SDCCE) as well as Associate Editor of Applied Linguistics, an Oxford Academic journal. Prior to joining SDCCE, Kelly spent over a decade teaching across the disciplines of rhetoric and writing studies, ESOL, and teacher education at institutions including San Diego State University, the University of San Diego, San Diego City College, and Palomar College. During the 2023-2024 academic year, Kelly was a Stanford EPIC Community College Faculty Fellow. She also served as an English Language Specialist with the U.S. Department of State where she provided professional development to educational coaches across Pakistan and to pre-service and in-service teachers across Indonesia.

Kelly completed her Ph.D. at the University of San Diego where she examined the ways English functions as a form of gendered symbolic power for multilingual women in patriarchal contexts. She holds a master’s degree in ESL curriculum and instruction, a master’s degree in liberal studies (emph. narrative nonfiction writing), a bachelor’s degree in English, a TESL/TEFL certificate, and a certificate in Language Program Management.

Kelly approaches her research from a feminist standpoint epistemology and has been heavily influenced by critical feminist ethnography. She has done work in the area of culturally and linguistically responsive literacy pedagogies, feminist pedagogies in the language classroom, critical applied linguistics, and international English-medium educational models. She frequently presents on topics related to decolonizing the literacy classroom, participatory and feminist writing practices, and the intersections of gender, symbolic power, and English language acquisition.

In 2018, Kelly was awarded the David E. Eskey Award for Second-Language Literacy Instruction. She has also been awarded the Mary Woods Scherr Women in Leadership Award, the W. Scott McIntyre Award, and the Joseph Rost Endowed Scholarship. Kelly has recently published or has academic work forthcoming in the areas of participatory writing in the remote second-language classroom, collaborative writing and the creation of a third space amongst English-language educators and students, college readiness programming and school reform, and developing critical consciousness amongst teachers in U.S./Mexican borderlands contexts.

Kelly is a former San Diego Area Writing Project Fellow, a former English Language Fellow with the U.S. Department of State, and an active member of professional organizations including CATESOL, TESOL, NCTE/CEL, and AAL. Currently, she is Co-Chair of the TESOL LGBT PLN. Prior to transitioning to higher education, Kelly spent a number of years as a professional writer and editor. During that period, she published poetry, a book of narrative nonfiction essays, a number of personal essays, and a wealth of technical and communications-related copy.

Kelly can be reached at kmetz@sdccd.edu