November 20, 2022
Department of English
Towson University
Liberal Arts Building, Room 4210 F
8000 York Road
Towson, MD 21252
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To Professor Chris Cain and members of the search committee:
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I am writing to apply for the open assistant professor of English position, which is listed on the Towson careers page (# CLA-3618). I received my Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue in 2020, with three secondary areas in Professional and Technical Writing, Digital Rhetorics and Empirical Research Methods. My research, teaching and now professional experiences are all driven by a commitment to bridging diverse knowledges and expertise in order to generate critical action and leverage it for public good, which I believe is a core tenant of user advocacy and technical writing.
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I currently serve as a program lead in the National Security Research Center at Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), which is the second largest archive of classified documents in the country, surpassed only by the National Archives. My program and research, however, is the first at the Lab to focus on capturing and preserving technical knowledge of current staff scientists, rather than looking at history alone. I am one of only two researchers at the Lab to focus on people and the social aspects of knowledge making, rather than technical specs. At the same time, the movement is growing--In my 18 months here, I have tripled the size of my knowledge capture team and quadrupled the number of tools designed to capture classified, scientific expertise of our users, who are among the country's leading physicists and engineers.
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My recent professional experiences have given me new insights on the topics and particular expertise that students need when entering technical writing, UX, and business industries. For example, my work in UXD, HCI, and ontology development at the Lab has centered my professional experience around cultivating interdisciplinary collaboration and advocating for a social and systems approach to technical knowledge and innovation with Lab leadership and staff scientists. I recently assessed the usability and workflow design of a classified application whose functionality and interface have evolved gradually over the last 25 years. The complexity of the system, combined with high staff turnover, left the division with only 3 power users and no time to get new staff trained to proficiency. By first convincing the directors, then users, of the value of user testing, I was able to design focus groups, screen capture think aloud protocols, and a stage-gate workflow activity to directly test 30% of the total users. This was the first classified screen capture every performed at the Lab, but by collaborating heavily with the system designers, we were able to advocate for the validity of the research. After a year of collaboration and user research, the final pieces of our evidence-based UI assets will be implemented into the system by the end of this year. Such a project would lend itself well to coursework in your professional master's degree and the undergraduate curriculum, since it encompasses both the technical UX methods needed and the social maneuvering and value arguments sometimes required to advocate for our users. By first identifying the values of key stakeholders, then setting the technical and organizational problems, students could design methods and argue for design and institutional changes within the contexts of a case study, or more powerfully, within their existing professional practice or internships.
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As a researcher at LANL, I have worked on several UXD projects with scientists, data visualization experts and artists, including one that explored how artistic theories of color and saturation benefit scientific data visualization and can be implemented into already-existing interfaces to aid big data analysis. Another collaboration resulted in an IEEE paper on the ways in which visualization interfaces must be designed to accommodate different insight-driven tasks. I used these insights to offer both formal and informal outreach with scientists and engineers at LANL, other research centers, and data science faculty at Purdue University. My passion lies in building and fostering such multidisciplinary collaborations, which bring together technical and human-centered fields. I believe that the power of courses in technical communication and business writing hinges on teaching students that coalition building among a range of experts, along with rhetorical skill and shared purpose, can have deep and lasting impact in their professions and communities.
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My dissertation, The Rhetorics of Data: Insight and Knowledge-making at a National Science Laboratory, explores how scientists, computational experts and data novices produce insight from large scale data, arguing that both datasets--and the evidence derived from them--are forms of inscription. Therefore, data work is a critical and fecund area for writing & rhetoric scholars to explore. At its core, my project argues that data are not static bits of information, but ecologically-oriented components of a larger infrastructure of expertise, techne and sensemaking, leveraging the affordances of technological interfaces, situated goals, and domain-specific
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epistemologies. Through an empirical research study, I demonstrated that ultimately, scientific insights gleaned from large datasets are rhetorical constructions, and professional and technical communicators need to play a more important role in big data processes, analyses and arguments. Supported in part by LANL, my dissertation is a qualitative study (I.D.# LANL18-09x) that centers around a data science and visualization group with which I was embedded for five months to study how scientists approach data analysis. Grounded in three linked case studies, my thesis argues that data analysis is contextual, goal-driven, and more rhetorical than we might realize. Through 35 hours of semi-structured interviews, I found that scientists derive their insights from kairotic moments, lived experience, and disciplinary expertise, rather than a formal set of scientific procedures or explicit training in data analysis. My dissertation concludes with an investigation of how non-experts navigate data-driven research, based on observations and interviews during the ACM Super Computing Conference’s Computing for Change (CC) program. Here, I compare the ways in which novice undergraduate students in non-STEM fields navigate large data sets differently than experts, in an effort to better understand the data practices that might be considered in curricula development for non-STEM students. As part of the CC committee, I mentored students in crafting narratives and arguments from their data work on social problems, and then coached them as they design presentations for the 1,000+ computer science and industry professionals in attendance. I continuously strive to make my scholarly research either directly improve teaching methods or directly apply to concrete professional, social and community problems.
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In both my research and teaching, I seek to develop approaches that further value situated, lived experience as a form of expertise, and promote critical action and reflection as a core component of a professional and technical writer’s professional practice. For example, my courses always incorporated service-learning approaches to teach students how to recognize both institutional knowledges and the techne implemented by nonprofit staff and their marginalized clients, with the purposes of starting their work from user needs and contexts. I developed and cultivated a long-term partnership with Lafayette Transitional Housing Center (LTHC), in which my students designed a study using participatory photovoice methods, working directly with clients to break the debilitating myths about people experiencing homelessness. Because of this partnership, I developed and funded a professional writing internship, where I mentored the student as he designed a new outreach event for LTHC. This work resulted in a downtown gallery of LTHC client photography, narratives, and other artwork, augmented by my students’ multimedia and print work that was based on their study. The local YWCA then approached me to have students conduct similar research with their domestic violence program, which culminated in another gallery show in February, 2020. After graduation, my passion for service-learning continued, even though I am no longer teaching, which led to an article with Erin Brock Carlson (West Virginia University) that will be published in The Journal of Business and Technical Writing in 2023 on the value of rhetorical constructions of place in community engagement.
I have taught a wide variety of courses in both composition and professional and technical writing, which include professional and technical service courses, both online and in-person; research methods for the professional writing major; and a senior level multimedia writing and design course. In each of these courses, I have always brought my research interests into the classroom by incorporating user advocacy and UX methods into service-learning work. I also had success designing a unit on data analysis and visualization, which seeks to introduce students to the ethics and pitfalls of working with quantitative data, constructing data narratives, and working with basic industry-standard technical platforms used for data analysis and large-scale user research.
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In addition to my teaching and current research, I have held several administrative and technical positions that have influenced my approach to scholarship in technical writing and user experience design. I served as lead grant writer at the Center for Science Information at Purdue, an NSF-funded research center that spanned 11 universities. This work helped me become versed in NSF grants and reporting practices and gave me experience working with STEM experts to refine highly technical work for public-facing publication. Grant writing is a difficult and complex task, and my professional work here would lend itself well to teaching grant writing practices in your program. My position as human factors researcher at LANL during my doctoral research has similarly given me insight into how user experience researchers must leverage and argue our understanding of human-computer interaction and its methodologies to position ourselves as domain experts when working in highly technical fields. In addition to my industry experience, I have also served as the Assistant Director of the Rhetoric and Composition graduate program at Purdue and as the Content Coordinator for the Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab). As a whole, these professional appointments have given me an understanding of the programmatic and institutional concerns that faculty must navigate beyond our shared dedication to student learning and effective pedagogical practices.
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In my professional and scholarly work, I have built collaborations among a wide range of communities—from homeless people to policy makers to astrophysicists—a skill that only comes from concerted effort to value and grow symbiotic partnerships. I have brought my rhetorical knowledge to serve the work of my community partners, as well as the science and technology problems of the Department of Energy. My goal as a scholar, teacher and community member is to create opportunities for people to share expertise and resources, that we might all collaborate for the public good.
My C.V. is attached, along with my DEI Philosophy. Please visit my website, TrinityOvermyer.com for more on my work. I am happy to discuss my credentials further and can be reached by phone or email. Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to speaking with you.
Sincerely,
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Dr. Trinity Overmyer
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