Current and Former Student News

MATC student Amanda Grover’s presentation, “The Perils of Teaching Technical Writing for the Hypothetical Workplace: How Avoiding Pseudotransactionality Can Lead to Megacognitive Curriculum,” has been accepted by the Arkansas Philological Conference at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith in October.

Michael Trice has been appointed Assistant Editor for Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. He competed against faculty for this appointment.  Michael also had a book chapter accepted for an edited collection, was accepted to present at the Popular Culture Association conference this coming March, and began working with the University News Service at Texas State University as web designer.

Alumni Sarah McNeely published The Echo Effect in the The Meeting Professional, a trade publication for profesionals who plan events. Sarah's paper looks at children of the baby boomers and their use of virtual networks.

Alumni Jennifer Johnson will have her article, co-written by Octavio and Charise Pimentel, Writing New Mexico White, published in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication in the Spring of 2008.  This article is a longer version of the original paper, White Man Speak with Forked Tongue, which she presented at the CEA in New Orleans in 2007.

Faculty News

Miriam Williams' article, "Understanding Public Policy Development as a Technological Process," has been accepted by the Journal of Business and Technical Communication.

Dr. Libby Allison returned from her developmental leave this Fall.  While on leave, Dr. Allison co-wrote a textbook with Dr. Miriam Williams. Writing for the Government (pictured, left), published by Pearson Education, is now in print.  

Libby Allison, Miriam Williams, and Pinfan Zhu's panel, "Communicating to Help the Public: Technical Communication as a Catalyst for Change in National Weather Advisories, Environmental Regulation, and Health Care Information," has been accepted for the 2008 Conference on College Composition and Communication.  Libby's presentation is "The Perfect Words: How the Reality of Storm Disasters Changed the Language of National Weather Service Advisories."  Miriam's presentation is "Documentation and Civic Participation: How the Reality of Pollution Changed Environmental Inspections and Monitoring."  Pinfan Zhu's presentation is "Bad Design, Bad Treatment: How the Reality of Poor Document Design Hinders Health Care Communication."

Miriam Williams' article, "Embracing New Policies, Technologies, and Community Partnerships: Using Technical Communication to Improve Air and Water Quality," written with Daisy James, an environmental scientist, has been accepted for publication in the 2008 Science and Public Policy issue of Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ). Her book manuscript, From Black Code to Recodification: Removing the Veil from Regulatory Writing, has been accepted for publication by Baywood Press. The book will appear in Baywood's highly regarded Technical Communication Series.

Dr. Pinfan Zhu's presentation, “Using Active Practice Theory in Designing a Course of Technical Communication,” has been accepted into the 53rd Society of Technical Communication (STC) Conference proceedings book. Also, his chapter, “Translation of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Gains vs. Losses,” has been accepted for the book, Gained in Translation: World Literature and Cultural Imagination, by Karen R. Keck, for publication by Cambridge Scholars Press and due out in January. In addition, his conference paper, “Problems in Traditional Chinese Medicine Translation from Semantic and Syntactic Perspectives,” has been accepted for the American Translators Association’s 47th Conference in November in New Orleans. Pinfan has also received a library grant for approximately $800 for resources on using multimedia in online international technical communication courses.

Pinfan Zhu and Kirk St. Amant of Texas Tech's article, "Taking Traditional Chinese Medicine International and Online: An Examination of the Cultural Rhetorical Factors Affecting American Perceptions of Chinese-created Web Sites" was published in the May 2007 edition of Technical Communication, the Journal of the Society for Technical Communication. His article, "Language Problems to Be Coped with in Web Localization" has been accepted by the Journal of Scientific and Technical Writing and is scheduled for publication in the middle of the next year.

Dr. Deb Morton with Dr. Rebecca Jackson published "Becoming Landscape Architects: A Postmodern Approach to WAC Sustainability” in the WAC Journal. Dr. Morton also cowrote the article “If You *Build* It, Will They Come? Maybe. Maybe Not” featured in Computers & Writing. Dr. Morton published the article “Technology Program Development Workshop: Reviewing, Revamping and Creating Undergraduate Majors” as well and has been appointed the Communications Editor for the journal Kairos.

Octavio Pimentel, along with Dr. Ana Juarez (Texas State Department Of Anthropology) and eight students, went to Guatemala to study Guatemala's education system. Since returning from Guatemala he continues to mentor eight students who are continuing their ethnography research in Guatemala. This project is funded by a $300,000 National Science Foundation Grant. He is also the first author on the book that will arise from this research project.In addition, this summer Octavio worked with Melissa Moreno (a PhD candidate from the University of Utah) on her research project on Chicano Activism. This project was funded by the graduate school at Texas State. Two of Dr. Pimentel's essays will apprea in upcoming books. "Uncovering the White Man's Dominance in Writing Centers: Brown Cuentos (Critical Narratives) from the Margins" will be included in The Other Sides of Silence: Negotiating Race in Writing Center Discourse and Practice, edited by Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan; and “Haciendo Lugar Para Todos (Making Room for Everyone). . . Including Those Students who are Brown," will be published in Inventing Identities in Second Language Writing.