Brent Kendrick
Professor of English
Lord Fairfax Community College
Dr. Brent Kendrick is professor of English at Lord Fairfax Community College, where he started as an adjunct instructor in 1998. He joined LFCC after working for a quarter of a century at the Library of Congress and after receiving that institution’s highest award for Distinguished Service. In 2001, LFCC appointed him to associate professor of English, and, in 2005, to full professor. At last, Dr. Kendrick—the sixth child of a West Virginia coal miner and the first in his family to attend college—had fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a college educator.
Applauded for his enthusiastic, passionate, and energetic teaching style, Dr. Kendrick bases his philosophy on Gilbert Highet’s advice: “Know your subject; love your subject. Know your students; love your students” (The Art of Teaching). His students sing his praises. “Dr. Kendrick could excite a stone to write.” “He is emotionally attached to his subject, and it shows all over his face. This makes me want to learn more and achieve the same happiness I see in him.”
Dr. Kendrick has taught more than 2,300 students in over 100 traditional and online classes at LFCC, ranging from College Composition to American Literature to Creative Writing to Technical Writing. His specialized classes include Major American Writers, Southern Literature, Appalachian Literature, and Leadership Development. He also designed and launched a 32-credit-hour Technical Writing Certificate Program incorporating technical/editing, desktop publishing, and web-page design.
Dr. Kendrick is an active scholar and researcher. An authority on New England writer Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, he authored The Infant Sphinx: Collected Letters of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. The Journal of Modern Literature praised the book as “the most complete record to date of Freeman’s life as writer and woman.” He served as an editor of the 754-volume National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints, hailed as the “bibliographic wonder of the world.” Currently, Dr. Kendrick is working on two scholarly projects: an edition of “The Humourist” essays published in the South Carolina Gazette during the 1750s; and “Celebrating 400 Years of Virginia Writers: John Smith to Lee Smith.”
Dr. Kendrick is the recipient of numerous awards and honors. In 2007, Phi Theta Kappa, the International Honor Society of the Two-Year College, named him a Mosal Scholar, the highest honor bestowed upon Phi Theta Kappa advisors. He twice received the NISOD Teaching Excellence Award (2007 and 2005). The LFCC Student Government Association designated him Outstanding Faculty of the Year (2006), and his LFCC colleagues selected him for the B. J. Sager Distinguished Faculty Award (2004). Dr. Kendrick earned his Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina (Columbia) and his B.A. (cum laude) at Alderson-Broaddus College (Philippi, WV).
