English professor motivated by her love of storytelling
Lt. Col. Jessica Lopez is a Class of 2004 graduate and a U.S. Air Force Academy Department of English and Fine Arts assistant professor and deputy head of the Department of English and Fine Arts. (U.S. Air Force photo by Trevor Cokley)
By Randy Roughton
U.S. Air Force Academy Strategic Communications
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo.– U.S. Air Force Academy assistant professor Lt. Col. Jessica Lopez flew in multiple military operations all over the world, but one passion led her on a different career path. She loves stories.
‘Stories matter’
“Stories matter,” said Lopez, a Department of English and Fine Arts assistant professor and deputy head. “The thing that will likely guide you and give meaning to your life are the stories. We can’t forget the power that those have in our lives and how meaningful they are, especially for those who continue to serve in the military. In tough situations when they guide Airmen, stories matter.”
Lopez earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematical sciences when she graduated from the Academy in 2004. However, she soon discovered she wanted to pursue her love of stories in her Joint College of Charleston and The Citadel English master program in 2008. She returned to the Academy as an English instructor in 2015. Subsequently, she was sponsored by the Academy for a doctorate in English at Michigan State University. Lopez became an assistant professor in 2020 after she earned her doctorate and department deputy head in 2022.
“[Lopez] is a perfect example of what happens when you take a pilot with a love of literature and send them off for a PhD,” said Col. David Buchanan, department head and associate professor. “She’s the ideal [Academy] instructor and a wonderful deputy. Cadets should climb over each other to take her classes.”
Authoring her own stories as a pilot
After pilot training following graduation, officials selected Lopez to fly the C-17 Globemaster III. She flew in Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, Inherent Resolve, New Dawn, and others. She is a command pilot with more than 3,300 flight hours in the C-17A, E-11A Battlefield Airborne Communications Node, and T-53A Kadet II, along with over 1,300 combat flight hours.
Lt. Col. Jessica Lopez, a U.S. Air Force Academy Department of English and Fine Arts assistant professor and deputy head of the Department of English and Fine Arts, has been a faculty member for five years. (U.S. Air Force photo by Trevor Cokley)
Good communicators make effective leaders
Lopez considers a connection to stories influencing any career in the Air Force. Academy English majors make their way into all career fields, she said. This is because of the connection between effective communication and good leadership.
“At the Academy, you’re going to get more exposure to leadership,” Lopez said. “Strong communicators typically make good leaders because they understand how to take information, interpret it, and communicate effectively with multiple people. I would encourage anyone interested in English and Fine Arts to consider the Academy because there are so many things you can gain from the degree and experiences you can gain in the Air Force.”
Bridging STEM and Humanities
Lopez created English 212, a digital humanities intermediate composition and introduction to literature course, as a core substitute for English 211. The course combines quantitative analysis methods with the qualitative exploration of literature.
She also explored autistic characters and created a method to visualize and analyze novels through graphs and patterns in her English doctorate dissertation, Autistic Characters: (De) coding Embedded Sentiment.
“Since my research area is within English literature, I work at the intersection of a couple of different fields,” Lopez said. “Those fields are literary cognition, disability studies and digital humanities. I blended those three together as I created my dissertation to understand how characters identified as autistic are represented in literature. How are these characters being represented?”