Faculty & Staff

My primary focus is technical and professional writing. However, I also teach general writing courses that are less technical in nature. Having spent over 20 years in industry as a professional writer, I tend to think about how I can help students become stronger writers in the workplace. I also believe that, in becoming stronger writers, students should enjoy the process. So I try to structure my classes in a way that allows students to improve their writing skills while writing about topics that interest them. Having spent a long career as a technical writing practitioner, I believe in ...

Kara Parks Fontenot is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Writing and Rhetoric. She has eighteen years of experience teaching a wide variety of undergraduate courses in writing, rhetoric, literature, and the humanities more broadly, including first-year composition, technical writing, African American and Ethnic American literature, folklore, world culture, and ethics. Kara's undergraduate coursework at the United States Air Force Academy gave her a general knowledge base in engineering disciplines and prepared her well for teaching at a STEM-focused ...

  When new acquaintances find out I teach writing, it’s not unusual for them to lament a broad decline in the nation’s writing skills. How does it make me feel, they ask, that students, say, don’t know the difference between adjectives and adverbs? Or, can I believe it that people hardly even know what apostrophes do, let alone where to put them? As someone who treasures good, careful prose, I’m sympathetic to these worries. But as an educator, I think it’s important to steer the conversation in a different direction. What makes us think that students’ knowledge of the parts of speech ...

I am an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Rhetoric. Before joining WPI, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. My work is animated by an intellectual curiosity with how ideas travel across time and space, and generate diverse practices of acting, seeing, and being in the world. I am especially intrigued by situations in which people come to ask new questions about themselves and others, in ways that require reconsideration of past experiences and imagining of future possibilities. Such situations, I believe, capture an important aspect of the human ...

Dr. Boucher-Yip has taught in many parts of the world including Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, China, Laos, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She has taught communication skills and writing courses at university level for over a decade. Her teaching approach is informed by her own experience in language learning and with theories of second language acquisition and their pedagogical applications. Both her studies and her experience have taught her that there is no one method or idea that guarantees successful language learning. While the mastery of standard English is necessary, she ...

Althea started teaching English as a second language in 2000, when she moved to West Africa. Over the next seven years she lived and taught in Senegal, Niger and Benin. In 2007 she moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she taught ESL to immigrants and refugees at the Hubbs Center and developmental reading at St. Paul College. Her teaching passions include integrating culture and social justice issues in the classroom, building critical thinking skills in her students, and teaching with technology. Althea also serves as an Insight Advisor for new freshman and particularly enjoys welcoming ...

In my lab we study medical writing and the human factors that influence medical diagnosis, treatment, and patient care. I am a practicing paramedic who volunteers with a rural ambulance squad and at a free urban clinic. My current research is focused on three areas: 1) Improving healthcare for uninsured and underinsured at-risk patients; 2) Alternative systems for healthcare delivery; and 3) Clinical reports in pre-hospital care. An ongoing topic of interest that links my research, teaching, and clinical practice is the concept of "allostasis" and "allostatic load." The terms have ...

I am a graduate of the Professional Writing program at WPI, and have over 20 years experience in the technical communications industry. I am currently employed full-time as a Principal Technical Writer at MathWorks in Natick. I have been teaching technical and professional writing at WPI since 2000. I love technical writing because it combines two of my passions, writing and technology, and when done well, enables you to communicate complex technical information to the world. The interdisciplinary nature of technical writing is a perfect match to the WPI philosophy relating technology and ...