At the University of Maryland from 1977 to 2000, he served as Director of the Writing Program from 1978-84 and Chair of the English Department from 1990-93. He has written articles about Erasmus, Thomas More, and Jonathan Swift, books entitled Teaching Writing, Travels Through the English Sentence, and Thoughtful Writing (Third Edition, 2009), and has a two-volume biography, Jonathan Swift: Irish Blow-In, currently under consideration at the University of Delaware Press.