Rate My Professor Nancy Rushforth

Nancy Rushforth served as an associate professor of humanities and integrated studies at Utah Valley University from 2001 until her recent retirement. She holds a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature from Brigham Young University, completing her master's degree in 1993 with the thesis "With Her Own Hand: The Correspondence of Mary Hallock Foote." Prior to UVU, she was an adjunct faculty member at BYU from 1993 to 2000, teaching writing about the humanities and introduction to literature courses. In 2006, she obtained a certification in thanatology. At UVU, she taught humanities, integrated studies, research writing, and death education courses, and briefly served as Acting Director of Integrated Studies in spring 2004.

Rushforth's scholarly interests centered on the 19th-century author and illustrator Mary Hallock Foote, a focus spanning more than two decades. Her contributions include the play "With Her Own Hand," written in 2010 and performed at events such as the Women of the Mountains Conference, as well as articles "What's Art for a Woman" (2006) and "The Teller Tells the Tale" (2006). As of 2010, she was working on a scholarly book about Foote’s adventures in the American West. In 2013, she received the Dean’s Award of Excellence for Creative Work from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. She also co-presented "Death Penalty and Perceptions of Death" at the Dallas Death Studies Meeting in 2009. Rushforth engaged in extensive service, including chairing the Faculty Excellence Committee and the Faculty Senate Executive Council, and community roles such as chair of the Utah Valley Group, Sierra Club, and board member of the Utah Valley Clean Air Coalition. In 2019, she donated her research collection on Foote to Boise State University Special Collections and Archives.