I am an associate professor of technical communication and rhetoric at Texas Tech University (TTU) on the indigenous land of Comanche and Mescalero Apache Peoples. I work as assistant chair in the Department of English and teach courses in user experience (UX) research, information design, instructional design, web publishing, and digital rhetoric. I direct the UX Research Lab and have served as faculty sponsor to the TTU Society for Technical Communication student chapter.

At TTU, I have also served as a faculty mentor in the McNair’s Scholars Program and a faculty fellow in community-engaged scholarship, sponsored by the Provost’s outreach and engagement initiative. Currently, I am a mentor in the Mentor Tech program, directed by TTU Student Engagement, and a peer mentor to pre-tenure and non-tenured faculty members via the Faculty Mentoring Academy, an initiative of the Teaching, Learning, and Professional Development Center of the university.

I hold a PhD in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication from the University of Minnesota. My dissertation involved a study of makerspaces and the cultivation of a maker pedagogy for technical communication studies. Between 2015-2019, I was a researcher affiliated with the Wearables Research Collaboratory at Minnesota. I investigated the sociocultural aspects of wearable technologies and embodied devices to examine their applications in various learning contexts. For this work, I was inducted in 2019 as a research partner to the Digital Life Institute, an international research collective hosted at Ontario Tech University, Canada. I now co-lead the Building Digital Literacy research cluster at the institute.

My books, listed below, focus on the application of design thinking mindsets and collaborative learning in professional practice and writing pedagogy.

• The Rhetoric of Design Thinking (Routledge, with Mason Pellegrini)
• Designing for Social Justice (Routledge, with Jialei Jiang)
• Keywords in Making (Parlor Press)
• Writing to Learn in Teams (Parlor Press, with Joe Moses)
• UX Writing (Routledge, with Tharon Howard and Gustav Verhulsdonck)
• Keywords in Design Thinking (WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado)
• Designing Technical and Professional Communication (Routledge, with Deborah Andrews)
• Collaborative Writing Playbook (Parlor Press, with Joe Moses)
• Design Thinking in Technical Communication (Routledge)

See my projects page for book descriptions.

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Full publication details can be found in my CV and on this page (sorted by year).

I am continually intrigued by the impact of technologies on our personal, professional, and social lives, and I strive to better understand how we might facilitate better living and learning through these technologies. I serve the field as a chief editor of Computers and Composition, a premier journal in writing studies.

Outside of work, I enjoy working out, cooking, running, and parenting two affectionate cats and two attention-seeking doggos with my partner.

Education Background

PhD in Rhetoric & Scientific & Technical Communication, Minor in Human Factors and Ergonomics, University of Minnesota, 2019.
MA in English: Rhetoric & Writing, St. Cloud State University, 2014.
MS in Mass Communication: Advertising & Public Relations, St. Cloud State University, 2014.
BS in Mass Communication: Advertising, Minors in Communication Studies and Psychology, St. Cloud State University, 2011.