COMM 2962: Social Media and Society

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Undergraduate. Summer 2024

Social media impacts our everyday lives; it affects how we develop our sense of identity, how we communicate with others and develop relationships, and how we find information about topics, products, pop culture, and politics. Simultaneously, social media reciprocally reflects existing social dynamics. This course explores those dynamics and that reciprocal relationship. Specifically, rather than a “how-to” course, this course explores theoretical approaches to social media, including identity formation, community formation, surveillance, and digital labor.

IHSS 6960: Digital Rhetoric

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Graduate. Spring 2024

Although digital content only exists “on the computer,” digital content has real-world consequences that are both positive and negative. It can persuade people to change their behaviors, purchase products, vote for politicians, and participate in protests. Yet, digital content can also deceive people and persuade them to participate in toxic groups and activities. Why is this content so powerful, and how does it persuade people to do both helpful and harmful things in the world? Broadly, digital rhetoric analyzes and assesses these persuasive techniques and processes to understand how they make meaning.

While rhetoric has historically been defined as “the available means of persuasion,” scholars today understand rhetoric as “epistemic,” by which they mean that rhetoric participates in the creation of knowledge. Thus, we will explore how rhetoric, as a meaning-making practice, shapes knowledge through digital technologies. This class is not a “how-to” course; we will not learn to create websites or other internet content. Instead, we will think about digital media and rhetoric in a cultural and theoretical sense.

COMM 4410/6410: Research Writing

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Graduate and undergraduate. All disciplines. Spring 2024

In this class, students will write on topics from their major discipline and investigate the kinds of research texts that professionals in their field produce. The course will emphasize research writing as an ongoing conversation with other researchers. Students will (1) use discipline-specific library databases, (2) identify genre conventions from their major disciplines, (3) develop literature reviews to identify “gaps” for research questions, and (4) write research proposals. In addition, they will develop effective note-taking and research skills and learn strategies for effective prose style.

COMM 4962/6940: Writing for Technical Communication

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Graduate and undergraduate. Communication Intensive. Fall 2023

According to Caroline Rude, technical communication asks: “How do texts (print, digital, multimedia, visual, verbal) and related communication practices mediate knowledge, values, and action in a variety of social and professional contexts?” (p. 176). These questions can be focused on practice, design, development and information management systems, and social change. Thus, this course is meant to (1) introduce students to major approaches to technical communication and (2) help students in technical professions or professional fields prepare for the types of research, writing, and information presentation that they may do in their careers after graduation. Specifically, “expert” writers and speakers must convey complex technical information to non-specialist audiences with different knowledges, skills, assumptions, and goals. Writers must learn to articulate, explain, and interpret information for these different audiences, and they must adapt their technical communications for specific local purposes and contexts. Therefore, students will learn about major genres or categories of technical communication, how the needs of audiences can help guide writing and communication, and techniques to craft writing and communication to suit the specific purposes and interests of local audiences. Moreover, students will learn about the basic social implications of technical communication.

COMM 408: Big Data Tools and Communication

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Many people assume “big data” sets are neutral purveyors of truth, and students in humanities and social sciences communication fields increasingly use freely available tools to scrape “public” information from social media sites. However, is this data really an accurate representation of the social media landscape, and what are the ethical implications of it? Students in this course learn to use some simple and freely available tools to collect and analyze “public” data alongside critical analytic frameworks to communicate about this data accurately and ethically. In the first half of the class, students compose two smaller papers about their analyses. In the second half of the class, students pose further qualitative questions about their data to compose a longer paper. In-person, upper division.

COMM 405: Interface Analysis and Design

University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

Scholars argue that interfaces are not neutral and that designers must make explicit their choices about who their designs privilege. In this course, students critically analyze and create computer interfaces, paying particular attention to how technological designs participate in power dynamics. In the first assignment, students apply critical frameworks to new media interfaces to analyze what argument the interface makes and what audiences the interface privileges. In the second assignment, student teams define and describe an interface that they will create. In the final assignment, student teams create and design their own interfaces. The final project is accompanied by individual memos that explain students’ rhetorical choices. In-person, upper division.

ENC 4415: Digital Rhetorics and the Modern Dialectic

University of Central Florida

This course introduced upper-division undergraduate students to key areas of digital rhetoric, including using classical and contemporary approaches to rhetoric to analyze and create digital texts, identifying characteristics and affordances of new media, the formation of digital identities and communities, rhetorics of technology, interrogating cultural ideologies of digital works, and the idea of rhetorical code. Students learned to both analyze new media and digital texts as cultural objects, and to rhetorically create and perform arguments using digital rhetorical principles.

ENC 3241: Writing for the Technical Professional

University of Central Florida

This course was designed to prepare upper-division students in technical professions or professional fields to write and design documents for the types of research, writing, and information presentation that they will be doing in their careers after graduation. Students wrote résumés, cover letters, abstracts, instruction critiques, handouts with effective charts and graphs, and project proposals. Asynchronous, online.

Adjunct Writing Specialist

Barry University Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law

I held four to six grammar workshops for law students on the Core Grammar for Lawyers curriculum, and held office hours for consultation,  In-person and online, synchronous

ENC 1102: Composition II

University of Central Florida

This course engaged students in writing and research. Students use primary and secondary sources to engage with semester-long inquiry projects to identify, analyze, and contribute effectively to the complex, real-world rhetorical situations that animate their academic, professional, civic, and personal lives. Students engaged in both sustained revision and learned about basic research methods in rhetoric and composition. In-person and online, asynchronous.

ENC 1101: Composition I

University of Central Florida

This course encouraged students to understand their writing as situated within academic, professional, civic, and personal contexts and to develop their identities and abilities as writers across these settings. Students engaged in reading and writing tasks such as analyses of writing processes and practices, patterns of literacy sponsorship, and conceptions of writing to help students reflect and to explore the writing they do throughout their lives, how it is accomplished, and the various roles and functions it serves. In-person

ENC 101: Composition I

University of Missouri-St. Louis

This course was an introductory writing course for conditionally admitted students to prepare them for writing in college. In-person

Writing Center Experience

University of Central Florida

In addition to teaching courses, I have worked individually with students in writing centers at two universities. I completed coursework on writing center pedagogy and practice at both institutions, and engaged in continued professionalization and reflection. In-person and online asynchronous.