Elected Positions
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Amy Cicchino
(At-large 2019-2022) Vitae Candidate Statement: Amy Cicchino is completing her PhD at Florida State University this semester and moving onto Auburn University where she will serve as the Assistant Director of the University Writing Program. Her interests are in multimodal digital pedagogy (with a particular interest in ePortfolios), writing teacher professionalization, and writing program administration. She first learned about GSOLE when she attended the special interest group meeting at the 2018 Conference on College Composition and Communication. Since that initial meeting, she has published a tech review in ROLE, assisted with the promotion of this year’s digital conference, and served as a copyeditor forROLE. At Florida State University, Amy has participated in online tutoring with the reading/writing center, taught online with the composition program, and co-developed an online and hybrid teaching methods course for the graduate program. In getting more involved with GSOLE, she hopes to contribute to a growing community of knowledge makers who critically take up online literacy education. However, she would also be incredibly excited to get the chance to work more with this friendly, eager, and whip-smart community. Theresa Evans
(At-large 2019-2022) Vitae Candidate Statement: As a founding lifetime member of GSOLE, who has attended the GSOLE Sig meetings since its inception and presented at its recent online conference, I am interested in becoming more directly involved with the organization to help promote effective practices in online literacy. Since 2012, I have been teaching online and hybrid courses, including first-year composition, technical writing, and professional communication for business. My experience includes professional development training in online instruction on the Canvas platform. Prior to starting my doctoral studies, I took an online writing course because I knew at some point my work would include teaching online, and I wanted to get the experience from the student side. The course included no student interaction, which was incredibly isolating, so I eventually sought out a couple students who were acquaintances. We had impromptu discussions to help clarify assignment prompts and give each other feedback, which made me realize how important student relationships are to having a robust learning experience. As an online instructor, I also found that student interactions alleviate the substantial workload of online instruction and reduce student intimidation within the online space. Although synchronous online interactions are becoming more common, finding ways to make the asynchronous online experience more engaging is usually better than trying to force synchronous interactions. Often the purpose of taking a course online is to accommodate unpredictable or varying schedules, so I expand the definition of accessibility to include providing a robust asynchronous experience with opportunities for optional synchronous interactions. Jessica Ulmer
(At-large 2019-2022) Vitae Candidate Statement: Jessi Ulmer teaches hybrid and online composition, professional communication, and children's literature courses at Midlands Technical College in Columbia, SC and is almost ABD in the Technical Communication and Rhetoric PhD program at Texas Tech University. Recently, she has presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication annual convention and the Council of Writing Program Administrators annual conference. Her dissertation research is in disability/deaf studies and other interests include two-year college pedagogy and digital humanities. Though she didn’t start teaching hybrid until Fall 2017 or online until Summer 2018, but she began researching online pedagogy back in Fall 2013. She had lost most of her hearing the prior spring, so classroom teaching wasn’t going to be her forever anymore. Sadly, she has encountered pushback because too many college instructors jump into OWI simply because they don’t want to teach onsite anymore and don’t understand the work that actually goes in to quality online classes. Further, Jessi has found that too many college faculty think accessibility is limited to documents and captions in videos and don’t care about the complexities of universal design for instruction. Jessi wants to serve on the GSOLE EC to assist in making the organization more accessible to all who currently work in OWI or who would like to work in OWI. She would also like to work with other board members to provide more professional development and support to members to ensure that their online writing courses are, in fact, accessible to all. |
Miranda Egger
(At-large 2019-2022) Vitae Candidate Statement: Long before I’d ever begun teaching online, I presented at a business meeting on the merits of extending workplace conversations into digital spaces to capture the thinking of the more introverted colleagues in collaborative settings. I saw a problem with the ways we excluded certain voices by not thinking of modalities more expansively and I saw opportunity for online spaces to help invite more voices. Now, online education makes up the bulk of my professional life. At this point, I’ve taught online courses for nearly 10 years (out of my nearly 20 years total teaching) and am currently piloting a new Online Teaching Assistantship Program at the University of Colorado Denver, trying to make the case that training all new teachers in online pedagogies better prepares them for any learning environment. I am highly engaged in online education in multiple capacities: as a Senior Instructor who teaches online courses to undergraduates, as an Assistant Director of Composition who works with emerging teachers, and as a PhD student experiencing synchronous online education first-hand. In all those capacities, I’ve found GSOLE to be a supportive professional space for my research interests and would like to be considered for the chance to play a more official role in contributing to the mission of increasing inclusivity, access and diversity among this rich community of literacy educators. Catrina Mitchum
(At-large 2019-2022) Vitae Candidate Statement: Catrina Mitchum is a full-time online lecturer at the University of Arizona. She has taught online for over 10 years, with experience at public, community college, and for-profit institutions of higher education. Catrina's scholarly work studies student perceptions and how they impact learning and success. In her professional work, Catrina is engaging with the design, support, revision, and assessment of pre-designed courses. Specifically, she currently focuses on helping distinguish and support online teaching behaviors as distinct from online course design. As someone who completed her doctoral degree in a distance program, Catrina has a variety of online teaching and learning experiences that allow her to critically engage in discussions about online learning from a variety of perspectives. |