I am interested in working with stakeholders to uncover and improve systems' infrastructures to better serve communities and constituents. Below, I detail a few of the main projects and roles that I have undertaken across several institutions and roles. For a more comprehensive list, consult my Curriculum Vitae.
In this role, I set the agenda to maintain and revise the Professional Writing (PW) track within the English major at the University of St. Thomas, which included developing and proposing new course offerings, collaborating with colleagues outside of English and College of Arts & Sciences to develop service courses through PW, and establishing learning outcomes for the track. As part of this role, I have also been responsible for
educating the other PW committee members on the national trends, practices, and recommended learning goals in TPC;
keeping myself and committee members updated on other institutions’ Professional Writing curricula;
developing syllabi and proposals for the new major, minor, and courses in the PW track;
charting potential curriculum-to-career path for the PW track.
As interim chair of English and Communication Studies at th University of St. Thomas, I supported a department of 28 full time and 12 part time faculty members. Responsibilities included managing course schedules, staffing, making decisions on transfer courses, advocating for full time and adjunct faculty needs, writing letters of support and annual evaluations for full-time faculty members, maintaining outreach to undergraduate student majors, meeting with prospective English majors, evaluating and approving transfer courses, and managing the budget for the English Department.
The Academic Development Program serves developing writers at the University of St. Thomas. Throughout most of my time in this role, our basic writing sections were paired with classes in the core curricula. I was responsible for creating buy-in from administrators and instructors across campus to teach these paired sections. I updated our placement tool and assessment criteria based on best practices for placement in first year english and basic writing as well as my own qualitative assessment with students and faculty. I facilitated pedagogical conversations with ADP instructors, some of whom were adjunct faculty teaching in ADP for the first time. Part of the role also involved coordinatig with campus-wide units responsible for academic curricula, counseling, and registration to promote ADP within the university.
As an active member in searches for TT hires in Choral Music and Film, respectively, I assisted committees in developing equitable hiring practices; led committees in developing objective rubrics and unbiased language in their hiring materials, as well as promoting jobs to reach diverse applicants; assessed candidates’ strengths in their teaching demonstrations and discussion of the mission at the University of St. Thomas.
I had the privilege of being entrusted with copyediting the assurance argument that the University of St. Thomas assembled to maintain our accreditation with the Higher Learning Comission. As each section of the argument was drafted by different faculty members, a large portion of my work consisted of developing and continually revising a style guide to help maintain a consistent voice throughout the document. As part of this work, I also collaborated with the Associate Vice President for Accreditation and Assessment of the university to clarify wording for meaning and to ensure that the written arguments and evidence included for each section addressed the requested information. Other typical duties included eliminating unnecessary sentences, paragraphs, or phrases; correcting grammatical errors, and ensuring that evidence is appropriate and accessible.
I see the collaborative bridge-building that I undertook with various departments and units across the University of St. Thomas as an extension of my interest in administrative work which began at Purdue University as a PhD student–particularly in regards to my assessment work with the Animal Sciences department on campus. For a decade, the Animal Sciences department had embedded a WAC component into its Genetic Breeding course in which students apply course material into the production of workplace and academic genres such as memos, letters, and reports. Over the various years of this collaboration, WAC coordinators (mostly students in the rhetoric and composition program) had changed the WAC curricula while maintaining the same rigor and objectives of this partnership. Given these changes, I undertook an IRB-approved assessment project to answer research questions such as
do the genres that we teach to Animal Sciences students match up with the genres that they will be asked to compose in their future positions and
what writing skills are most helpful for Animal Sciences students to learn before they graduate? In this way, we would be better able move beyond guesswork in modifying the curriculum.
I asked recent Animal Sciences graduates and employers of Animal Sciences graduates to fill out an anonymous survey on workplace genres and writing proficiency. These results were presented to the Genetic Breeding instructor and current WAC coordinators to help guide their curricular changes to the partnership. My initial report to the Animal Sciences department can be found here.
In this position, I was responsible for various aspects of the Online Writing Lab (OWL) at Purdue– a digital resource that receives 248 million hits per year from over 125 countries. Primarily, I assisted in the development of educational technology goals, pedagogy, and resources; worked with various departments to maintain, backup, and upgrade our OWL servers, site, and web software; and collaborated with the OWL Coordinator, Writing Lab administration, and other programs on ongoing projects, such as research and engagement. This position involved learning and applying programming languages such as HMTL, CSS, and Javascript.
As the steward for the Writing Center’s website at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, I worked with various departments and decision-makers in order to retool our digital space. This involved meeting with the IT department on campus to discuss issues of propriety (whether to become part of the larger Saint Mary’s CMS or function as a standalone site) and implementation. I was also responsible for explaining issues of design and teaching writing center stakeholders about how programming languages functioned. Additionally, with the director of the writing center, I conducted user-testing protocols and interviews with students to test iterative versions of the site. Although features have been added to the site since my departure, the original basic design continues to be utilized by the writing center.
Click here to see the site before and here to see it after my stewardship, highlighting the design changes made. Note that both links will direct you to Archive.org and will open in new tabs.
In this role, I am responsible for managing both editorial and operational domains. On the editorial side, I evaluate submissions for peer review, provide and synthesize feedback to authors, and offer developmental resources when needed. On the operational side, I manage workflows, guide accepted pieces through the proofing and publication process, and coordinate with key partners and stakeholders such as our copyeditors and our contacts at the press to ensure a smooth production process.
I am affiliated with the nonprofit RareRising (RR) that helps support researchers studying rare disease and practitioners to incubate solutions that will impact individuals living with rare diseases. In my role as a board member and researcher, I have had the opportunity to collaborate on several projects that have aims in disentangling barriers to care for individuals in marginalized communities. For example, I have worked on a research team to code and present interview data from individuals with hemophilia B who identify as GLBTQ, BIPOC, and Latine. The work put out by RR helps organizations build capacity for better serving the needs of their constituents.