Humanities News, Features, and Other Updates

Category: RTC

Reid DeVoge Graduates from FBI Academy

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by Administration

The Department of Public Safety and Police Services announced that Detective Lieutenant Reid DeVoge recently graduated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Academy (FBINA) in Quantico, Virginia.

The graduating class consisted of men and women from 49 states and the District of Columbia. The class included members of law enforcement agencies from 32 countries, five military organizations and eight federal civilian organizations. Of the 250 graduates, seven are from institutions of higher education.

The FBI National Academy is a professional course of study for U.S. and International law enforcement leaders that serves to improve the administration of justice in police departments and agencies at home and abroad and to raise law enforcement standards, knowledge, and cooperation worldwide.

Internationally known for its academic excellence, the National Academy offers 10 weeks of undergraduate and/or graduate college courses in the following areas: law, behavioral science, forensic science, understanding terrorist mindsets, leadership development, communication and health/fitness.

DeVoge has served with the Department of Public Safety and Police Services since November 2009. He is also a student in the Rhetoric, Theory, and Culture

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RTC Student Officers in GSG

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The Graduate Student Government (GSG) has elected its Executive Board for the 2020-2021 session. The new Executive Board members include two RTC students: Aaron Hoover will serve as Secretary and Marina Choy will continue as Public Relations Chair. The roster of officers is below.

  • Nathan Ford (MEEM), President
  • Michael Maurer (ECE), Vice-President
  • Aaron Hoover (Humanities), Secretary
  • Laura Schaerer (Biological Sciences), Treasurer
  • Sarvada Chipkar (Chemical Engineering), Research Chair
  • Yasasya Batugedara (Mathematical Sciences), Professional Development Chair
  • Eric Pearson (Chemical Engineering), Social Chair
  • Marina Choy (Humanities), Public Relations Chair

The new Executive Board will assume office on May 1.

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PhD Candidates Celebrated at Advancement to Candidacy Ceremony

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RTC PhD candidates were celebrated at the first annual Advancement to Candidacy Ceremony conducted by the Graduate School for all ABD students. Attending the ceremony with their advisors were the following:

Gabriel Edzordzi Agbozo (advisor Dr. Vicky Bergvall)
Nada Mohammad A. Alfeir (advisor Dr. Patty Sotirin)
Joshua Chase (advisor Dr. Abraham Romney)
Marina Choy (advisor Dr. Patty Sotirin)
Geethu Madeckal Jose (advisor Dr. Patty Sotirin)
Sara T. Potter (advisor Dr. Patty Sotirin)
Hua Wang (advisor Dr. Marika Seigel)

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RTC Colloquium: Orchestrated Appeals for Vegetarianism

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Emma Lozon

The next RTC Colloquium takes place from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23 in the mezzanine in the Rozsa Center for the Performing Arts.

This colloquium employs Jonathan Safran Foer’s bestseller ‘Eating Animals’ as a case study to forward the rhetorical technique of “orchestrated appeals,” as a persuasive strategy for communicating vegetarianism to potentially resistant audiences.

By mapping the web of connections between food and varied life areas, rhetors can identify with values already held by audiences with diverse ideological commitments and explore alignments between existing beliefs and exigencies for change. The speakers are Oren Abeles (HU) and graduate student Emma Lozon.

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RTC Alumnus, Dr. Isidore Kafui Dorpenyo, Publishes Book

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Dr. Isidore Kafui DorpenyoDr. Isidore Kafui Dorpenyo, 2016 RTC graduate, has published his first book, User Localization Strategies in the Face of Technological Breakdown: Biometric in Ghana’s Elections published by Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2019. The book is an extension of his RTC PhD dissertation work. Dr. Karla Saari Kitalong of the Humanities Department at Michigan Tech wrote the foreword to the book.

“Dorpenyo argues that the success of a technology depends on how it meets the users’ needs and the creative efforts users put into use situations.” He “identifies and advances three user localization strategies: linguistic localization, subversive localization, and user-heuristic experience localization, and considers how biometric systems can become a tool of marginalization”. – Dr. Karla Saari Kitalong

Dorpenyo is currently Assistant Professor of Professional Writing and Rhetoric at George Mason University, USA. His research focuses on election technology, international technical communication, social justice, and localization. He co-edited a special issue of Technical Communication focused on technical communication and election technologies. Dorpenyo has also published in Technical Communication Quarterly, the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, and Community Literacy journal.

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Josh Chase Joins 2019 Bedford New Scholars Advisory Board

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Josh ChaseRTC Phd candidate Joshua Chase joins the 2019 Bedford New Scholars advisory board. According to Leah Rang, development editor at Bedford/St. Martin’s, the board advises the publishing company about

“teaching challenges they face and the research in the field that excites them. They also give us feedback on the direction of our new projects. In the process, Bedford New Scholars participants have the opportunity to connect with other graduate students from across the country and to learn a bit about how publishing works”.

She further stated in a blog post that the members of the board are nominated from among the leading programs from across the country. Josh was recommended to the board by Dr. Marika Seigel, the immediate past Director of the Composition program at Michigan Tech

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RTC PhD Candidate attends Europe Games Research Summer School

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Over the summer of 2019, RTC PhD Candidate, Lyz Renshaw, participated in the Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA) Europe Games Research Summer School held in The University of Skövde, Sweden from August 21 to 23. The school was attended by PhD students and graduate students who are working in areas connected to digital games — Renshaw’s dissertation falls within this research area.

Lyz shared her experience:

The experience was great, working alongside other graduate students from schools such as University of California Irvine, Wisconsin-Stout, IT Copenhagen and Uppsala University. We had speakers from all over Scandinavia attend, including scholars from University of Skovde, Uppsala, and Gothenburg. I was given the opportunity to present a chapter of my dissertation and receive feedback from senior researchers and peers, including a graduate student who works directly with many of the scholars I base my work on.

Outside of the intended goals of the program, it was also enlightening to see how higher education is different internationally, how curriculum is designed, courses run, expectations of graduate students.

I also left the program with a collaboration project in the works, taking a previous paper I had present at the e-sports conference at UCI last year (and at an RTC colloquium last year) and pairing up with a graduate student from that university who had seen my earlier work.

 

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Shelly Galliah publishes article, book review, and conference proceeding

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RTC PhD candidate Shelly Galliah has published an article in The Activist History Review in which she shares her experience teaching science fiction at Michigan Tech: “Science fiction, especially on a campus so dedicated to STEM and to research, is one of the few places [art and science] may and should meet.”
In September 2018, Galliah published a review of John H. Evans’ book Recasting the Contemporary U.S. Conflict between Religion and Science (University of California Press, 2018). The review was published by Metapsychology Online Reviews.
Galliah also published in the proceedings of the 6th Iowa State Summer Symposium on Science Communication, 2018. The theme of the symposium was “Understanding the Role of Trust and Credibility in Science Communication”. Galliah’s paper, “Perceptions of Problematic Credibility in John Oliver’s “Statistically Representative Climate Change Debate”” concludes that “by taking the time to ‘read the comments,’ researchers might be able to understand how not only comedians but also other climate change communicators might strengthen the appearance of their credibility and build successful strategies to persuade oppositional audiences.”
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