Trish Serviss
Fun Fact: Trish has “a giant dog who people think is a horse when they see him,” and she has stickers of him that she gives out to people!
Trish Serviss is an Associate Professor in the University Writing Program, and was also the Director of Entry-Level Writing for eight years, where she worked to improve student outcomes, equity, and success. She graduated with her PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric from Syracuse University, and she is best known for her scholarship on writing program administration: how to build programs, pedagogy, and teacher training that are sustainable and equitable. Trish’s personal mission statement is that “writing and communication should empower people to have clarity about themselves, the world, and to represent themselves in ways they find positive.” Now that she’s no longer running the entry-level writing program, she is excited to return to her roots of advocacy writing research!
How has professional or disciplinary writing made a difference in your life? How do you think it could benefit others’s lives?
I want to focus on the ideas of empowerment and agency. I think that being aware and immersed in the practices of different kinds of writers and different genres of writing shows you the actual possibility of human activity, especially when it's organized and there's a clarity of message. Writing has led me to feel like action is possible, wherever you are. There are strategies for analyzing the everyday problems around you out of the disciplinary context of a lab. It's been very empowering for me, and it shows me that I can facilitate the empowerment of other people.
I think we also bring a sense of ethics to conversations: is it ethical to be offering certain modes of communication, to be using them in certain ways? I mean, Rebekka [Professor Andersen] likes to say that the technical communicator is the ethical gauge in the room. Like, is it ethical to put out that kind of mass communication? What will happen? For example, I was working at Auburn University during the BP oil spill in the Gulf, and I had a lot of colleagues who do technical communication and who studied and consulted about all of the communications for BP and the government, both local and state. I collaborated with those folks to do public writing for the community that was in plain language; how to take action. I feel like their work, that I was just a small part of, literally saved people. Being part of a discipline that is inclusive and encompassing, I feel like there's always something to do to improve the plight of the world.
If you were a student, why would you pursue the Professional Writing Minor?
Oh, I’d want to do everything I could to prepare myself for a flexible, unpredictable, emerging job market. Emerging meaning I don't even know what the jobs are going to be, right? So I would want to focus on the skills and aptitudes that employers say they need regardless of the job position, and I’ve never seen an era of time when that hasn’t been clear communication, the ability to collaboratively communicate, digital project management, and being able to remediate content across different modalities. Those are the nuts and bolts of the job market no matter what the job is, even if it’s not called professional or technical writing. I don’t know if I would have thought that as an undergraduate, but looking back on it now, I would say, I’d definitely be looking to include some part of my majoring, minoring, and certifying, as something I know I can spin as an asset for any job.
I would also want to pursue the minor so I could positively contribute to the world. I’d want to understand how information is communicated, how it can be manipulated, and most importantly, how it can be ethically conveyed. I’d want to understand the emerging tools important to advocacy work, to public service sectors, and be posed to bring perspectives of ethical digital ecologies into corporate sectors as well. I’d want to be marketable as well as prepared to be a communication disruptor in those same markets. I think the Professional Writing Minor prepares students to be capable and agentive in those ways.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give to undergraduates looking to complete the minor?
My advice would be to take the courses we offer beyond what already aligns with what you know. So, if you're majoring in sociology, I wouldn’t go right to writing for Sociology. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but I'm guessing, based on the nature of being in the Professional Writing Minor, these students have already been studying the models of sociology in their sociology courses, inherently. I would recommend that they’d intentionally take something outside of their knowledge base.
I would put my money on the courses that are premised upon transferable concepts, theories, and practices. I would be looking for courses that help me be agile, that would help me be able to adapt. For me, that means I’m looking for metacontent: genre theory, rhetorical theory, how to use digital tools and emerging digital tools, how to work with information and content, how to design and present information, and how to synthesize information across different sources for different purposes. I’d be looking for the big concepts that apply to every situation, and I’d be less focused on trying to master all the different specific content areas that I might work in.