New Book! 🎉

Jason Tham 1 Comment

I am excited to announce the publication of my book, Design Thinking in Technical Communication, by Routledge (Taylor & Francis). I am honored to join the community of authors who have published in the ATTW Technical and Professional Communication Book Series.

You may pre-order on publisher’s website for paperback, hardback, or ebook version of the book. The release date is May 19, 2021. The book is also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google Play (ebook).

Like a dissertation, writing this book was no small feat; but thanks to ongoing support and care by friends and colleagues in the field, it was made doable and even enjoyable. I am forever grateful to all of you who have been listening, offering feedback, and giving me a confidence boost when I needed it most. I aspire to do the same for others on a similar writing journey.

Here comes the lengthy acknowledgement.

This book project has benefited from the support and feedback of many smart, kind, and generous individuals. I would like to use this space to recognize their contributions.

First, I thank Tharon Howard, editor of the Routledge ATTW Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication, for believing in this project and helping me shape it into its current form. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript proposal for offering excellent feedback that improved the focus of this work. A heartfelt thank you to Grant Schatzman, editorial assistant at Routledge / Taylor & Francis, and his team for guiding me through the publication process. 

To all the students and industry professionals who participated in the studies of this book, thank you for sharing your experiences and insights with me. I thank the makerspace managers at the University of Minnesota Anderson Labs, Georgia Tech Invention Studio, and Case Western Think[box] who hosted and showed me around when I was observing the sites. Thank you to Josh Halverson for introducing me to the key personnel. A special shout out to the ever-so-patient staff members at the University of Minnesota Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation Services (LATIS), particularly Samantha Porter, for assisting me with multiple deployments of maker technologies in my classes. 

I especially thank all my WRIT 3562 Technical and Professional Writing students in the Fall 2017 semester for embracing and engaging with the design challenge study. You inspire me with your creativity and dedication to learning. 

Next, I want to thank a number of colleagues and friends who have read and provided relevant feedback on this manuscript. Scott Weedon, Beau Pihlaja, Antonio Byrd, Rob Grace, and Joe Moses––your comments and suggestions helped make this a better book. To my peers with whom I have shared different parts of this book during my research process––bonus points if you were a part of the Emerging Technologies Research Collaboratory––thank you for your listening and vote of confidence when I needed them most. 

I am grateful to have been a part of the University of Minnesota’s Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication doctoral program, which challenged me intellectually and shaped my scholarly identity. To my amazing advisor Ann Hill Duin, thank you for sharing your expertise and energy with me even after I have graduated from the program. Many thanks to the Writing Studies faculty, including Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, Laura Gurak, Donald Ross, Tom Reynolds, John Logie, Pat Bruch, Richard Graff, and Christina Haas, for making technical communication such an exciting field of inquiry. 

The design thinking community in technical communication has continued to grow. I am thankful for the productive exchanges I got to have with so many smart humans at conferences, over Twitter, and on other occasions about design thinking. These scholars include Emma Rose, Rebecca Walton, Natasha Jones, Kristen Moore, Gustav Verhulsdonck, Isabel Pedersen, Debby Andrews, Liz Lane, Rebecca Pope-Ruark, Kirk St.Amant, Joyce Locke Carter, Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq, Adam Strantz, Nadya Shalamova, Tammy Rice-Bailey, Chen Chen, Jack Labriola, Luke Thominet, Halcyon Lawrence, Daniel Richards, Lauren Garskie, Beth Shirley, Lauren Cagle, Josephine Walwema, John Spartz, Maria Novotny, Les Hutchinson, Estee Beck, Andrew Kulak, Laura Gonzales, April O’Brien, Ashanka Kumari, Shannon Butts, Nupoor Ranade, Jason Luther, Jennifer Sano-Franchini, Matthew Vetter, Devon Cook, Jason Markins, Jialei Jiang, Derek Ross, Quan Zhou, and Xiaoli Li. 

I thank my mentors and colleagues in the Department of English and the Technical Communication and Rhetoric program at Texas Tech University for their constant encouragement and support for this project. 

Finally, I thank my family members, especially my mom for always listening to me talk about my work and life. To my partner and love, Kamm, thank you for cheering me on and giving me time and space to complete this project.

Collaboration Bibliography

Jason Tham 2 Comments

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Year 1 by the numbers

Jason Tham 2 Comments

Effective 5pm on Monday the 10th, my first year as assistant professor is officially in the books. I have sent out final feedback on projects and turned in grades for students in my summer internship and graduate seminar. I have cleared my inbox and put away books that were used in courses this year.

Fall classes begin on the 24th and faculty duty resumes on the 19th. That gives me a little over a week to regroup and prepare for the new semester. As I sit back and finally take my time with that delicious cup of cold brew coffee, I reckon this is a good time to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learned on the job this past year. As I shared in a recent podcast interview about life on the tenure track, I have been figuring things out as I go. I am extremely fortunate to have colleagues who accept my inexperience, my flaws, and my uncertainty about many things in the world of academia. I am thankful for their patience and collegiality, and above all their willingness to share resources.

Even without the pandemic, the professorial job and its expectations are quite vague to many, including graduate students who aspire to become a faculty member. I have learned in my first semester on the job that many universities and colleges consider research, teaching and service to be the holy trinity of academe, that the workload of a faculty is typically divided among these three areas of performance. Pre- and post-tenure faculty members are held to certain distribution and ordering of these three areas, plus any additional role––like administration (labs, centers, departmental offices)––they maintain, for the purposes of tenure evaluation and rank promotion (from assistant to associate to full professor).

I admit that while my PhD program had prepared me to succeed in research and teaching, I held little understanding about service. In retrospect, I get why that was the case––my advisor and professors were trying to protect me from un/under-compensated labor. Doing research (designing and carrying out a study, writing a dissertation) and teaching while completing the degree requirements for a graduate student is hard enough. I think my program was doing its best to keep me from distracted by departmental and field service.

Anyhow, I still volunteered my time as a graduate student in various disciplinary organizations. I participated in conference organizing teams, helped review presentation proposals and proceedings, led social media activities for different groups, etc. However, the effort I put into these roles were incomparable to the kind of work that counts as service for a faculty. To show what I mean, below I quantify the service activities I had done in my first year on the job.

Following the advice by Manya Whitaker in the Chronicle, I kept an active log of my teaching, research, and service activities during this past year. Documenting my teaching and research progress was rather straightforward. For teaching, I included the information, learning outcomes and activities, and summaries of student evaluations for each course. For research, I recorded scholarly activities (grant applications, publications, presentations, etc.) in a vitae format. Keeping track of service work had proven to be more complicated; it required more attention to the nature of the service (e.g., is the work pertinent to internal or external stakeholders?). So, I came up with some broad categories that house similar service activities. With that I present my first-year service, by the numbers:

Internal – Departmental committees

  • Graduate admissions committee (MA & PhD)
  • Recruitment committee (BA, MA, PhD)
  • Asian Studies (minor) committee
  • Co-director, User Experience Research Lab

Internal – Departmental contributions (non-committee)

  • Managed program’s online social presence (FB & Twitter)
  • Participated in MA portfolio redesign efforts (conducted 2 focus groups and 1 peer program interview; contributed to new course syllabus)
  • Designed program advertisements for conference use and high school recruitment (x4)
  • Attended college and departmental student events (e.g., tabling at majors & minors fair, judge at campus film festival) (x2)

Internal – Student advising and mentoring

  • Served (as member) on doctoral dissertation committees (x6)*
  • Conducted mock job interview with PhD student (x1)
  • Reviewed PhD student job application materials (x1)
  • Wrote recommendation letters for scholarship, internship, and graduate school applications (x3)
  • Advised graduate students on projects (non-class related) (x8)
  • Advised undergraduate students on projects (non-class related) (x2)
  • Supervised undergraduate researchers (RAs) (x2)
  • Met with prospective graduate applicant (x1)

* My university considers student committee work (doctoral dissertation committees) to be teaching, not service work. I am adding them here because they count as service at some other institutions.

Internal – Guest speaking

  • Spoke at graduate student professional development colloquium (x3)
  • Spoke at student organization meeting (x1)
  • Spoke to colleagues’ grad seminars (x3)

External – Guest speaking

  • Spoke to colleague’s grad seminar (x1)
  • Spoke at graduate student professional development event (x1)
  • Spoke to podcast series (x1)

External – Mentoring

  • Reviewed PhD student job application materials (x4)
  • Conducted mock job interview with PhD student (x1)

External – Field organizations

  • SIGDOC, social media manager
  • CPTSC, administrators committee
  • STC, award selection committee
  • Xchanges (journal), review board

External – Review of scholarships

  • Journal manuscripts (x8)
  • Conference proposals (x13)
  • Book reviews (x3)**
  • Co-authored book review (x1)**

** My department considers book reviews as service to the field, not research.

Upcoming

  • Joining another journal review board
  • Becoming book review editor for a journal
  • Chairing a doctoral dissertation committee

To put things into perspectives, my service requirement is 20% of my assigned workload, per my job offer letter (the other 80% are split evenly between research and teaching). I am aware I need to be more intentional in using my time this coming year. Nonetheless, I see some service as investments into the future. I especially enjoy working with students as they establish their own scholarly identities and trajectories, and I hope through my service I am helping to shape the future of our field by guiding these rising talents.

If you are reading this as a graduate student wanting to get a sense of the service load in a faculty position, please accept the caveat that every institution and program is different, and what I offer here are mere insights from my own position and perspectives. I encourage you to speak with your advisors and professors, and ask them what they do so you can get a more diverse view of the job.

To say the least, Year 1 has been meaningful to my professional growth and I hope to do better in Year 2. Now, time for another cup of coffee!

First semester on the tenure track: Of research, teaching, and service

Jason Tham 2 Comments

As many of you know, my partner and I moved to Lubbock, Texas this fall (July 2019) to start my first full-time faculty position at Texas Tech University (TTU). This week last year, I was just on my third campus visit and was worried sick if a delayed flight would have jeopardized my interview. To my relief, I was granted a job talk and 2-day interaction nonetheless, and I received an offer a bit less than two weeks later. This offer was from TTU.

Transitioning into this new role at a recently classified R1 institution (research focused per Carnegie standard), I was very anxious about the expectations for tenure and promotion. With new courses under my assignment, I was also nervous about teaching undergrads at a different university and teaching graduate students as someone who has only finished grad school a few months ago. I shared my sentiment on Facebook during the first week of class in August.

Cliche as it may sound, I have experienced so much change and growth this semester. I’d like to document here a few things I learned as as a way to memorialize this new chapter in life, and hopefully to serve as advice to others.

If there’s only one thing I could emphasize, time is an asset. Being on the tenure track means I work within a given time frame to meet the institution’s expectations for tenure and promotion (T&P). At TTU, my clock is 6 years. I am supposed to use my time based on the workload distribution established in my hiring contract, which is 40% research, 40% teaching, and 20% service. Translating this into a 40-hour work week, I get 16 hours for research activities, 16 hours for teaching-related work, 8 hours for service each week in a regular semester.

Research includes funded and unfunded scholarly activities that contribute to the growth of one’s field. Traditionally, the output for research involves peer-reviewed publications (articles, book chapters, webtexts, etc.), grant activities, and other significant projects. Based on my departmental expectations for research productivity, I have learned to really maximize the 40% time I have in all research related activities. Most of it is spent on writing, really. Still, meetings with research collaborators, setting up IRB (institutional review board for projects) proposal, and searching/applying for grants do take up a significant amount of time as well. One thing that worked for me is multitasking. Whenever I hit any kind of writer’s block or boredom in one project, I jump straight into another project quickly instead of sitting on the current one. It keeps me motivated and also moving projects forward. I know this doesn’t work for everyone. For me, though, the downside of this is I tend to lose my train of thoughts because I am jumping hoops… but I can deal with that.

Teaching is valued as much as research at TTU. Quality of instruction is reflected in student evaluation, course design, student achievements, and mentorship. My contract lets me teach 2 courses every semester (minus summer sessions). Each course is equivalent to 3 hours per week (so 6 hours for two), that means I have 10 hours each week to do course prep, grade assignments, meet/communicate with students, etc. Additionally, being in a PhD-granting program means I am expected to serve on graduate student committees and direct dissertations. The TTU T&P requires faculty to chair and direct at least one student through their entire dissertation project during the tenure-track period. For the sake of context, the technical communication & rhetoric PhD here is currently a 5-year program. Thus, some strategic planning is needed to meet this specific requirement. My current strategy is same as the one I used when completing my dissertation while teaching, that is front-loading all important lessons and assignment requirements at the beginning of each course. This helps me to focus on providing 1-on-1 feedback and less time on preparing lectures later in the semester. This also allows me to move some in-person class meetings online when I need to attend conferences elsewhere.

Service, while deemed least important for T&P purpose, is required of every faculty to show collegiality and support the function of the department/university. Associate and full professors (tenured) usually assume more responsibilities with the intention to free assistant professors like myself from time-consuming tasks that don’t weigh as much as research and teaching in my own tenure case. Although I was promised protected time early on, committee and many one-off service work still found their way into my calendar slots. I am now managing the social media pages for my program, serving on the graduate admission committee, and co-directing the UX Lab. I have created recruitment materials, represented the program at college major fairs, and volunteered to appear as guest presenter at various student development sessions and classes. I was told to say “no” to things that don’t benefit my T&P progress, but that’s really hard to do. One thing I have learned is to align my service to research and teaching interests. A wise person once said, don’t do anything you can’t write (and I add: teach) about. I take that advice to heart and strive to generate scholarship out of the service I perform. Well, for instance, I am asked to design a new program advert for our program; I am now writing a research article on programmatic strategies in advertising to graduate students. And since I am teaching UX and design courses, I also work to create synergy between my classes and the UX Lab I now oversee.

All that said, every institutional context is different and each position requires different time and energy investment. What I’ve shared here are merely my own experience. My hope is to demystify the faculty role and provide some clarity to what may be expected of a new faculty. I still don’t have the answers to many things but I am learning along the way. Thank you for indulging with me on this journey.

Featured image by TourTexas.com.

Dissertation acknowledgements: Thank you, a million times.

Jason Tham Leave a comment

This acknowledgement was submitted as part of my dissertation in February. I can’t possibly thank everyone involved in my project, but I do my best. You all are stellar, and please know the difference you have made in me!

There are so many people to thank for the successful completion of this project. I begin with my adviser, Dr. Ann Hill Duin, who has provided me with acute supervision and timely connections to networks of learning since I joined the program. Ann, thank you for the wisdom you have imparted onto me in this last five years. I am amazed by your energy and spirit of excellence. I look forward to further collaborations with you.

I thank Dr. Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, who chaired my dissertation defense and provided just-in-time mentorship when I was on the job market. To my dissertation and exam committee members, Dr. Donald Ross, Dr. Laura Gurak, and Dr. Tom Reynolds, thank you for your valuable insights and knowledge on the topics I am most interested in.

The heart of this project was about the students, volunteers, faculty, and staff members in the makerspaces at the Invention Studio (Georgia Tech), Think[box] (Case Western Reserve University), and Anderson Labs (University of Minnesota). Thank you for letting me observe your spaces and sharing with me your experiences. You all have increased my confidence in the future of making. I must also thank my WRIT 3562W students for being patient and engaged during the course deployment. You all rock.

My PhD journey was enriched by collaborative projects with Dr. Joe Moses, senior lecturer in Writing Studies, who has gone beyond his duties to provide mentorship to me. Joe, thank you for always believing in my work and letting me contribute as an equal partner in many of the projects you led.

The RSTC faculty––especially Dr. Pat Bruch, Dr. John Logie, Dr. Richard Graff, and Dr. Christina Haas (Professor Emerita)––has equipped me with knowledge and confidence to join the field as a junior scholar. Thank you for your guidance and directions on my projects. I remember Dr. Carol Berkenkotter, who passed away during my second year in the program. I thank her for introducing me to rhetorical genre studies. I give a shout-out to Dr. Molly Kessler and Dr. Daniel Card, who joined the department during my final year. Thank you for giving me fresh insights on approaching the job search process. Thank you also to Dr. Ronald Greene and Dr. Aaron Doering for giving me the experiences in learning about communication from another discipline.

My experience in Writing Studies has also been largely influenced by the amazing staff members in the department who are always responsive and helpful. I thank Nan Nelson, who retired in my third year, for being a lighthearted, genuine spirit while making sure all my paperwork are in place. To Emily Kort, who stepped into the role soon after Nan’s departure, thank you also for helping me with the pre- and post-final exams (defense) logistics and protocols. To Michelle Lubbers, thank you for helping with all my course evaluations. And Bill Fricke, thank you for helping with my reimbursements! Of course, I must express gratitude to Shannon Klug, who has been there whenever I needed technical (and non-technical) support–– whether it’s setting up a room for web conferencing, copying a course shell from the learning management system, or getting back into my office after locking myself out (more than once).

I thank Nicole Montana and Barb Horvath, associate directors in the first-year writing and advanced writing programs respectively, for supporting my teaching throughout my time in the department. My teaching experience has been enhanced by the opportunities to work with international and multicultural students. I thank Dr. Sheryl Holt and Dr. Anne Fretheim for training me in supporting these students.

My dissertation project would not have been a reality without the inspirations from Dr. Jonathan Koffel, librarian turned emerging technology specialist at the UMN Biomedical Library. Thank you, Jonathan, for connecting me with so many valuable resources that made my project possible.

I want to call out my fellow graduate colleagues––Juliette Lapeyrouse-Cherry, Ryan Eichberger, Jeremy Rosselot-Merritt, Eddie Nevarez, Katlynne Davis, Ryan Wold, Danielle Stambler, Nathan Bollig, Kari Campeau, Evelyn Meisenbacher, Niki Ciulla, Chakrika Veeramoothoo, Mckinley Green, Alexander Champoux, Megan McGrath,  Brandi Fulsby, and Ellen Dupler––for being a community of care and support.

I thank RSTC graduates––Dr. Brigitte Mussack, Dr. Sarah Puett, Dr. Chris Lindgren, Dr. Kira Dreher, Dr. Jarron Slater, Dr. Rachel Tofteland-Trampe, Dr. Ashley Clayson, Dr. Ed Hahn, Dr. Jacqueline Schiappa, Dr. Timothy Oleksiak, Dr. Joe Bartolotta, Dr. Dawn Armfield, Dr. Kenny Fountain, Dr. David Beard, and Dr, Kirk St.Amant––for being sources of inspiration to me. You are my role models, and I am proud to become an alum of the same program as yours.

This dissertation was partially supported by the UMN Liberal Arts Technologies and Innovation Services (thank you especially to the amazing Sam Porter, as well as Rebecca Moss and Ann Fandrey), the Center for Writing (thank you, Dr. Katie Levin, Dr. Kirsten Jamsen, Dr. Matt Luskey, and Dr. Dan Emery), and the Center for Educational Innovation (thanks, Dr. J.D. Walker and Dr. Paul Baepler). These services have provided the generous resources I needed to complete my project.

Outside the program, I was morally supported by the Council for International Students (CIGS), and I especially thank its adviser, Dr. Noro Andriamanalina, and my friend Keven Joyal-Desmarais, for the opportunities to create something bigger than just completing a degree at the university. I have truly enjoyed and learned from the events we co-organized for the international students community here at Minnesota.

As I was finishing up in the PhD program, I was introduced to many important organizations in the field that help translate my research into larger scholarly output. I thank Dr. Isabel Pedersen and Sharon Caldwell from the Fabric of Digital Life (University of Ontario Institute of Technology) for collaborating with me to design pedagogical activities using digital archives and emerging technologies. I want to acknowledge the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on Design of Communication (SIGDOC) for letting me contribute to the growth of our field. I thank Dr. Claire Lauer for introducing me to SIGDOC. Thank you especially to Dr. Emma Rose, Dr. Kristen Moore, Dr. Rebecca Walton, and Dr. Derek Ross for your leadership in this organization. To the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative (DRC), I thank Dr. Anne Gere, Dr. Naomi Silver, and all past and present DRC Graduate Fellows for mentoring and collaborating with me on projects that push the boundaries of our field’s scholarship. To everyone in the Computers and Writing community, thank you for your expertise and the often-critical feedback on my projects.

Finally, thank you, Kamm, for everything.

Featured photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash