I have a Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University and more than 10 years experience teaching full-time at the college level. This experience includes developing and teaching online classes. Currently, I am an English instructor at Morehead State University in Kentucky and Site Director of the Morehead Writing Project. My experience includes working as a professional writer and editor as well as digital publisher.
My research interests are: agency and efficacy, collaboration and community, and digital rhetoric. I have presented my research at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the Thomas R. Watson Conference. I have published my research in Computers and Composition as well as Academic Exchange Quarterly. In addition, I contributed a chapter to Virtual Environments for Corporate Education: Employee Learning and Solutions.
Currently my primary focus is on community. I have approached this topic as a technical communicator and as a teacher. I began my study in July as I sought to understand what constitutes a community and blogged about this search in “What Is Community” and then in August I wrote about “Community and Social Capital” as I tried to understand why some communities thrive and succeed and others fizzle and fail. However, that led to still more questions, such as how one joins a community which led to my September post “Community: Jumping to become a full-patch member.” In October, I finally decided to abandon audience in favor of community.
This work, and my collaboration with Lora Arduser and Kim Elmore, has led to proposals for the Computers and Writing and ATTW conferences as well as Technical Communication Quarterly’s special issue on Social Media.
Learn more about me through my blog posts and Twitter feed (see sidebars).