Trish Serviss

Trish Serviss's picture

Position Title
Director of Writing Placement System
Associate Professor

she/her/they
358 Voorhies
Office Hours
Fall 2024: Wednesdays 1-3 (Zoom) and in person by appointment
Bio

Research Areas:

developmental writing, academic source use, writing placement & assessment, feminist rhetorical practices, writing program design and administration, teacher preparation, writing education policy, hybrid research methods.

Teaching Areas:

composition pedagogy and theories, writing placement & assessment, feminist rhetorical history and practices, academic source use, developmental writing, writing program administration

Biography:

Trish Serviss discovered her passion for writing education as an undergraduate writing tutor herself, an experience that propelled her entire career trajectory as first a high school English teacher and then university writing teacher and researcher. She is one of the founders of the Citation Project, a national study of student source use in required undergraduate writing courses. Trish is working on several research projects including 1) a ten-year longitudinal study of the literacies of 22 first-generation college students majoring in STEM fields and 2) the Writing Inclusivity & Equity Project, a study of diversity learning as a paradigm for writing instruction in required undergraduate writing courses. Trish currently serves as the director of entry level writing at UCD, teaching first-year writing courses, graduate courses, and studying writing program administration issues (assessment, faculty development, curriculum, etc.) with UWP colleagues.

Recent graduate student mentees: Jenn Burke Reifman and Stacy Wittstock

Education:

PhD, Syracuse University, Composition and Cultural Rhetoric 

MA, Loyola Marymount University, English with an emphasis in Rhetoric and Composition

BA, University of San Diego, English and Anthropology

Some Publications: 

Burke Reifman, Jennifer, Melzer, Dan, Pearsall, Beth, Serviss, Tricia, and Wittstock, Stacy. “A Constructivist Paradigm for Writing Placement: Moving Beyond DSP.” College Composition and Communication. February 2025 issue.

Serviss, Tricia, Burke Reifman, Jennifer, and Meghan Sweeney. Time as a Wicked Problem: A Study of Community College Faculty Experiences with State-Mandated Acceleration. Journal of Basic Writing. 43.1 2024: 24-57.

Voss, Julia, Tricia Serviss, and Meghan Sweeney. “A Heuristic to Promote Inclusive and Equitable Teaching in Writing Programs” WPA: Writing Program Administration. 44.2. 2021: 13-39.

Serviss, Tricia and Julia Voss. "Researching Writing Program Administration Expertise in Action: A Case Study of Collaborative Problem-Solving as Transdisciplinary Practice.” College Composition and Communication. February 2019.

Serviss, Tricia and Sandra Jamieson, Editors. Points of Departure: Rethinking Student Source Use and Writing Studies Research Methods. Utah State University Press. 2017. 266 pages.

Serviss, Tricia. “Creating Faculty Development Programming to Prevent Plagiarism: Three Approaches.” Handbook of Academic Integrity. Edited by Tracey Bretag. Springer Publications. 2016

Serviss, Tricia. “Using citation analysis heuristics to prepare TAs across the disciplines as teachers and writers.” [Special issue on TAs and the teaching of writing across the curriculum]. Across the Disciplines, 13(3). September 2016.

Serviss, Tricia. “Learning to Write Against the Law: Community-based Learning and Notions of Justice.” Peace and Social Justice Education on Campus: Faculty and Student Perspectives. Edited by Kelly Concannon Mannise and Laura L. Finley. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2015, 113-132.

Serviss, Tricia. “American Rhetorics of Disappearance: Translocal Study of Feminist Activist Rhetorics in Latin America.” Crossing Borders/Drawing Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Lines Across America. Edited by Patricia Wojahn and Barbara Couture. Utah State University Press, Rhetoric and Composition Series. 2015

Serviss, Tricia. “Femicide and Rhetorics of Coadyuvante in Ciudad Juarez: Valuing Rhetorical Traditions in the Americas.” College English 75.6 (2013).

Serviss, Tricia. “The Emergent Life and Times of the Community Writing Center of Auburn: Developing Scholarship in Action at Auburn University.” Scholarship in Action: Communities, Leaders and Citizens. Edited by Giovanna Summerfield, Kathleen Hale, and Barbara Baker. Common Ground Publishing, 2013.

Serviss, Tricia. “A History of the New York Literacy Tests: Historicizing calls to localism in writing assessment.” Assessing Writing 17 (2012) 208–227.

Howard, Rebecca Moore, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya Rodrigue. “Writing from Sources, Writing from Sentences.” Writing and Pedagogy 2.2 (2010): 177-192.

Research Interests & Expertise
  • Developmental writing, academic source use, writing placement & assessment, feminist rhetorical practices, writing program design and administration,
  • teacher preparation, longitudinal literacy development (1st Gen STEM majors), hybrid research methods.

Tags