I have experience building courses and programs that center linguistic and cultural diversity in technical communication, user-experience, and first-year composition. At the University of Florida, I teach courses in technical and professional communication, digital writing and cultural rhetorics, as well as community engagement. Most recently, along with Co-PIs Ann Shivers-McNair and Kendall Leon, I'm collaborating on a cross-institutional study on the development of sustainable technical and professional writing programs at Hispanic Serving Institutions. We were awarded a 2018 Research Grant for this project from the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC). In the Spring of 2019, I was also awarded a grant from the Kapor Center and the Coalition of Women of Color in Computing to co-develop (with Joy Robinson, Ann Shivers-McNair, and Clarissa San Diego) a mentorship model for women of color in user-experience and technology design, which you can read about here.

Technical Communication and Professional Writing

In my technical communication courses, students are given the opportunity to practice the activities of ethical technical communication by partnering with a wide range of clients and community members. For example, my technical communication students have partnered with The Language Services Department at the Hispanic Center of Western Michigan, learning how technical communication is practiced in community settings for multilingual audiences. Through these partnerships, students learn how technical and scientific communication impacts the interactions and well being of marginalized communities. My goal as a teacher of technical communication is to help students understand the cultural and ideological implications embedded in all technologies.

A classroom of students smiles at the camera

ENC 3250: Professional Communication at the University of Florida, Fall 2019

First-Year Composition

After graduating with my MA in Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida, I spent 3 years teaching and developing courses in the same department. During this time, I taught a total of 16 composition courses, focusing on teaching transferrable, rhetorically-situated conceptions of writing. As part of the the new department of Writing and Rhetoric at UCF, I participated in the initial development of a Writing and Rhetoric Major, developing courses in Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing with Technology. My composition teaching materials were selected to be included in a Program Profile of our department published in Composition Forum.

Multilingual Digital Writing Workshops

Based on responses from Sites of Translation, I have been invited to facilitate workshops for writing teachers specifically focused on multilingual digital writing. I’ve created a preliminary set of assignments, activities, and tips for teaching multilingual digital writing, which you can access here. This work is also based on a collaboration with Cristina Sánchez-Martín, Lavinia Hirsu, and Sara P. Alvarez, which we published in the June 2019 issue of Computers and Composition.

In the Spring of 2019, I was selected to be listed on the Fulbright specialist roster to facilitate international workshops on digital humanities, participatory research, and technical communication. Through this honor, in the Summer of 2019, I facilitated (with UTEP Ph.D. candidate Bibhushana Poudyal) a 3-week workshop on Critical Digital Humanities and Participatory Design in Kathmandu, Nepal. Click through the slideshow below to see pictures from participatory design activities at this workshop.

A woman arranges sticky notes on a white board

Two people arrange sticky notes on a white board during an activity.

A group of students arranges pictures around a long table in a classroom.

A student stands in front of the class reading from a sticky note.

A student reads from a sticky note in front of her class.

Two workshop facilitators sit in front of a classroom looking down at their computers.

Three students laugh as they work together on a computer.

Participants from the Participatory Design workshop series in Kathmandu hang out outside Malpi college.

Please contact me at gonzlaur@gmail.com to discuss possibilities of co-designing workshops and lectures on multilingual digital writing, community engagement, and technical communication.