Background
I am a first-generation college graduate and not one of those people who always wanted to be a journalist. In fact, I did not know anything about Journalism (or that I wanted to be a journalist) until I took a basic news-writing class my sophomore year in college (as a general-university requirement) and found that my curiosity and love for writing extended into reporting, publishing, photography, videography, chart-making, the newsroom culture, etc., basically everything about the thrilling life of a journalist and working as a journalist, the greatest job – by far – that there is. In my career, I have earned about 20 professional writing awards, including from chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists in both Hawaii and in the Pacific Northwest.
Education
- PhD, Technical Communication and Rhetoric, Texas Tech University, 2011
- MA, Communication, University of Portland, 1999
- BA, Communication, Washington State University, 1993
Specializations
New and mobile media; media accessibility; audio description; locative media; and journalism.
Research
I research media-production processes and products at intersections of Technical Communication, Rhetoric, Disability Studies, Digital Inequalities, and Journalism. I primarily study those interests within mobile contexts, including creating novel research tools through interactive mobile media, mobile apps, and mobile technologies. I am the principal investigator of the award-winning UniDescription project. My research has been supported by the U.S. National Park Service, the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, and Google, among others. I have contributed about 30 peer-reviewed publications to academic journals.