Alumni Spotlight

Breauna Stanek

Year Graduated: 2017

Position: Medical Writer

Employer:  Worldwide Clinical Trials - Early Phase

Brief Job Description: Worldwide is a contract research organization (CRO) that runs clinical trials for and with various sponsors to advance medical science that could improve patients' lives. As a medical writer, I am in charge of writing different deliverables such as protocols which outline the procedures to be used during the trial, informed consent documents detailing the study and risks for our volunteers, any protocol amendments, clarification letters, and note-to-files. After the completion of the study, I write the clinical study report (CSR) which includes the overall details of the study with any explanations of changes or deviations from the protocol as well as the final results of how the study drug, formulation, or medical device was tolerated. All the documents I work on are submitted to an institutional review board (IRB) and eventually to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Landon Poore

Year Graduated: 2017

Position: Technical Writer

Employer:   Microsemi Corporation, Camarillo, CA (greater Los Angeles area)

Brief Job Description:  Microsemi is a worldwide company with offices in almost every country. We operate primarily in aerospace and defense providing a wide portfolio of semiconductor chips and products, but we certainly exploit the communication, data center, and industrial markets as well. I am responsible for creating documentation across several business units (BUs) within Microsemi, ranging from product briefs and application notes to user guides and datasheets. As a technical writer for Microsemi, the onus is placed upon the writer to see a project through from its infancy to its completion, corresponding with various SMEs, product managers, and marketing reps throughout. Microsemi was recently acquired by a larger semiconductor company (Microchip), and thus I will be merging with the technical writing team there. This has been the ideal post-grad opportunity for me. Continue to eat 'em up and work fearlessly, Bobcats!

Graduation Year 2016

Graduation Year 2015

Eric Hall

Year Graduated: 2014

Current Position: Research Engineering/Scientist Associate I – Technical Content Developer

Employer: Applied Research Laboratories: The University of Texas at Austin

Brief Job Description: As a technical communicator for Applied Research Laboratories: The University of Texas at Austin, I am charged with creating and designing documentation for sonar hardware and software. I often work on different types of projects, which keeps the days varied and interesting.

During the course of these different projects, I work with a number of different software and tools to perform my job, but the main software that I work with is called MadCap Flare. Beyond written communication, I also develop video and graphics. It all depends on the project and the required methods of communication. Considering the nature and subject of the project, such as hardware operation and maintenance guides and software operating instructions, I have to spend time gaining some level of experience with the subject of the documentation.

For a hardware operation and maintenance guide, I would spend time with the engineers and technicians going through the processes that need to be documented. This primarily involves observation, but at times requires a hands on approach. If time and resources are limited, the engineers and technicians will provide me with a skeleton version of the procedure. I take that procedure and apply my knowledge and experience as a technical communicator to finesse the language and structure to the form and quality that communicates the subject and instructions clearly to the intended audience. The engineers and technicians will then review my work and provide their stamp of approval if they deem it technically accurate. After the approval of technical accuracy is given, usability testing is performed by a number of people involved in the certification process of the hardware/software and documentation.

As a technical communicator, I have the opportunity and responsibility to remain a vigilant learner. The tools may always remain the same, but the subject almost never does.

Brandon McCartney

Year Graduated: 2014

Current Position: Enterprise User Experience Team, User Experience Analyst

Employer: Visa

Brief Job Description: After working as an intern at Visa I accepted a full-time position with the Visa User Experience team in 2013. I have since been able to apply what I learned about usability, research methods, and visual rhetoric during the MATC program to my current role at Visa. Most of my responsibilities revolve around accessibility testing and consulting for Visa product teams. I have also been involved in developing Visa's internal accessibility standards and training Visa developers and QA engineers on accessible design and development. It is rewarding to see the positive affect the work we do has on ensuring equal access to Visa’s products.

I also get to do some interaction design and prototyping for new software and web applications and work with visual designers and web developers to bring them to life. The Visa User Experience team has a usability lab and I work with other analysts on the team to plan and conduct usability studies that support development projects across the company. The Texas State University MATC program prepared me for the work I do now with direct exposure to usability research and user analysis. The research report writing and presentation experience I gained from the MATC program have proven to be invaluable for the work I do now. I have found that solid writing and communication skills are in high demand in the technology industry and completing the MATC degree program at Texas State has offered me a competitive edge that I would not have otherwise. I am excited about upcoming opportunities to apply rhetorical theory to the usability research my team is working on and I continue to find new ways to connect technical communication to user experience.

Marcia Bilbo

Year Graduated: 2013

Current Position: Technical Web Writer and Editor

Employer: Polycom, Inc.

Brief Job Description: As a technical writer at Polycom, I write user, administrator, developer, deployment, and installation documentation for audio, video, and solution products. I usually write for at least ten releases of software or hardware products a year. While I've only been with Polycom for less than two years, I have had so many opportunities to work with engineers, developers, and managers across many time zones and different countries. I spend a large part of my time testing the products and software that I am writing about, gathering information on features for user documentation, and managing the documentation projects I’m working on.

Since I've started working here, I have learned how to update the software on our phones, created graphic documents that show users how to assemble our products, learned about safety regulations and legal requirements for products, and managed the documentation for numerous releases.

Susan Rauch

Year Graduated: 2012

Current Position: Graduate Teaching Instructor

Employer: Elevance Health

Brief Job Description: Currently, I am working full time with Elevance Health under the Carelon Behavioral Health division as a proposal development consultant. I currently also teach technical communication remotely at the Oregon Institute of Technology.

Previously, I was a graduate teaching instructor of an undergraduate introduction to technical writing course. During the fall and spring 2015 semesters, I piloted a semester long technical writing and editing project that focuses on teaching the importance of cultural awareness and accessibility in the workplace. The course-long project integrates disability studies with the analysis and writing of technical instructional materials for assistive technology devices that help individuals with speech impairments communicate via a communication tablet.

I earned my PhD in 2016 from Texas Tech University, after completing my dissertation on the Rhetoric and Economics of Electronic Health Records (EHR), which looks at out how EHR technology influences clinical decision-making including e-coding systems that rhetorically and metaphorically represent patients’ diagnoses and treatment narratives, and how those narratives represent marketable rhetorical units of value and exchange in an attention economy. With 30-years-experience in the medical and business industry, I continue to work as a contract documentation specialist (writer and editor) in clinical (medical) and general marketing research; grant writing; and historical research in technical communication. 

Most recently, I completed research at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, in D.C. on an American female sculptor who made facial prostheses for war victims in Paris during WWI. The research mapped and annotated collected artifacts in the Ladd archive, such as correspondence, news articles, photographs, and journal notes, to piece together Ladd’s collective during the war. I presented my findings at a 2014 War Memories conference in Rennes, France, which is under review for publication. I am also working as a contract researcher, documentation, and archive specialist for historical technical documents located aboard the historic U.S.C.G. cutter Ingham. The Ingham research is also part of a film documentary project where I am interviewing and collecting war narratives from surviving veterans who served on the Ingham during WWII.

Graduation Year 2011

Emmelyn Wang

Year Graduated: 2010

Current Position: Director of Web Product Marketing

Employer: Mouser Electronics

Brief Job Description:

Many of the companies I have worked for don't actually create a tangible product. In most cases, they are technology marketplaces or distributors that market and educate a highly competent and specific engineering audience on solutions. For this reason, my experience and MATC credentials have led me into an exciting technical communication career.

On a daily basis, I provide strategic direction to the technical marketing organization on how to successfully market electronic components to design engineers. I am responsible for content strategy, quality, processes, procedures, metrics, style guides and standards, usability, search engine optimization, content reuse, single sourcing, and managing a large team. We also work closely with 20 global offices who are translating the product and marketing messages for local use.

Since Amazon reportedly sells over 200 million products in the US, I am amazed that our company sells 17 million products. This sheer number means work with big data. That's why I'm always discovering ways to programmatically find and fix errors and produce reports by utilizing a variety of analytics sources such as data visualization by combining multiple application programming interfaces (APIs). I guide the company to make scalable decisions about the content management system and the internal and external customers' digital eCommerce experience. I instruct information developers on how to create uniquely valuable content, scale the content for translation and multiple devices, and optimize the content both for human and machine consumption. I proactively lead the web content marketing team to work smarter. We create technical content that supports a trusted brand and lofty distribution goals.

Graduation Year 2009

Alumni Profiles - 2008

Melissa Boettcher

Year Graduated: 2008

Current Position: Executive Assistant

Employer: End Op, LP

Brief Job Description: I handle all documentation between engineers, lawyers, investors, consultants, etc.  I review all outgoing correspondence.

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Michael Trice

Year Graduated: 2008

Position: Lecturer in Writing, Rhetoric, and Professional Communication at MIT.

Employer: MIT

Brief Job Description: My work primarily involves teaching writing and communication in science and engineering classes. I spend most of my time working with computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering students. I provide a background in theory and practice to students with the goal of preparing them for their professional discourses upon graduation, whether that discourse community happens to be academic research, industry, government, non-profit, or military. We work with a wide range of partners at MIT, so the service learning and applied project classes are numerous. These classes also happen to be the communication intensive courses, and students need to know how to write and present for the outside observers that frequent such classes from Apple to Hasbro to the Air Force.

It's a team endeavor at MIT. My time is mixed between teaching solo in some sections, working as part of a group in others, and coordinating teams for yet other sections. We do an interesting job shaking up leadership and support roles across the program. It reminds me a bit of working at a large tech company (I spent a few years at Apple back in the day), where side projects often give you an opportunity to explore new skills and leadership opportunities.

I also spend time developing online coursework for MITx, our online open courseware initiative. This means developing interactive and video content as well as textual instruction. We are experimenting in how best to use online instruction to help provide the conceptual framework to students prior to activities in class where we can explore those concepts in detail.

While teaching and course design are primary responsibilities, I also do a fair amount of research in pedagogical practice. I also look at online civic usability and learnability, which means I spend a lot of time seeing what people learn when using comment fields, wikis, and Twitter.

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Stephanie Richardson

Year Graduated: 2008

Current Position: High School World Geography Teacher

Employer: Pflugerville High School

Brief Job Description: I teach 9th grade World Geography which includes physical and human geography. My job is to prepare students to interpret and use maps, understand the physical world, and how enironment has affected and continues to affect the development of cultures. We deal with landforms, climate/weather, population growth, society, economics, and global issues. Resources range from maps to videos to novels.

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Alyson Wagner

Year Graduated: 2008

Current Position: Legal Administrative Assistant

Employer: Nickens Keeton Lawless Farrell & Flack LLP

Brooke Turner

Current Position: Integrated Marketing Communication Specialist

Employer: National Instruments

Brief Job Description: As an Integrated Marcom Specialist, my work spans between Product Marketing and Marketing Communication. I work within these two organizations at National Instruments, a global, hi-tech test and automation company, to create and execute integrated marketing campaigns designed to increase awareness, loyalty, and profitability of the product solutions in my specific industry—science and engineering education. I coordinate the development of materials and activities on the marketing plan by collaborating effectively with product management, media groups, in-house design agency, and regional marketing counterparts. Our campaigns must align with the needs of our customers, our core messaging, and our technology platform. And, because this is a global company, campaigns must also account for customers’ needs worldwide.

My daily tasks, meetings, conference calls, computer work, and any travel all revolve around building and delivering integrated plans that deliver effective targeting and positioning, vehicle and media mix recommendations, and timing and forecast of results. Effective project management, in-depth understanding of my audience and product offering, and the ability to lead by influence are imperative in this position.
 
Now, does that sound like some marketing discourse, or what? Here is how I really feel about my awesome job. Besides my deep passion for education (former teacher here) and the intrigue of hi-tech applications (nerd at heart), I truly enjoy the mix of creativity and logic required in this position. It takes incredible creativity and precision to reach your target audience effectively and consistently year after year, and to successfully engage the next generation of scientists and engineers it takes a team of Dr. Seusses, Mark Twains, Nikola Teslas, and Einsteins, all of whom you can find in some form or another at NI.

Jennifer C. Ramirez Johnson - Technical Writer II 

Jennifer C. Ramirez Johnson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art from Southwest Texas State University in 1999. She enrolled in the MATC program after working for various organizations including the Center for Multicultural Gender Studies at Texas State University. She enrolled in the program to advance her career and to build upon her skills with HTML, Dreamweaver, and other web production programs.

With a BFA in Studio Art, Jennifer was fluent in many design programs and how to do different tasks, but she credits the MATC program with teaching her why things were done, the value of understanding an audience, and the importance of research. She also learned how to write accurate and precise documents that are geared toward different audiences.

Jennifer is the head technical writer for DNP Photo Imaging America, Corporation and manages the written and digital documentation that the company produces.  

A typical day consists of working on multiple projects such as writing all the printed and digital documentation that accompanies the installation, use, and repair of software and hardware related to the processing of dye-sublimated photo printing. This includes writing the instructions, taking photos of the processes, and working closely with the other departments to ensure an accurate document at the time of publication. Additionally, she maintains the documentation archives and works with the marketing department to develop cohesive branding for their products.

When asked about her MATC program highlights, she said she enjoyed the classes and attending conferences.

When not at working, Jennifer spends time with her children playing video games.  She also enjoys painting, writing in her blogs, and doing web design for friends.

John Roesler - Technical Writer

John Roesler graduated with a degree in English from Texas State University and immediately enrolled in the MATC program. The interaction between English and technology attracted him to the program as well as the accessibility to faculty members and the personalized education plan that the MATC program offered.

John entered MATC with a strong foundation in grammar and literary criticism, which made rhetoric, visual and textual theories his favorite areas to study. Learning about human factors and how to incorporate research and knowledge of rhetoric into practical applications of technical writing were additional interests.

John currently works for 21st Century Technologies as a technical writer, a defense-contractor research firm in Austin. John works with a team of writers and staff engineers on grant proposals for Small Business Innovation Research. Historically, grants are the largest source of funding for the company.

In addition to writing grant proposals, John and his coworkers publish the company newsletter and write content for the company website.

A typical day for John consists of managing multiple short and long-term projects and attending meetings with staff members in regard to the specific projects. One of the projects that John is working on is an internal company blog about using collaboration technology effectively.

Outside of work, John spends time training for the Austin marathon. 

"I hope to run three marathons a year until I have built my fitness level to handle an ultra-marathon.  We’ll see how that goes; I’ve only run one marathon so far; but I figure that life goals, by their nature should be pretty lofty," Said John.

When asked about any advice he would give to those considering the MATC program, John suggests to seek out the advice of faculty when in need of any guidance and then follow it.

Bryce Dishongh

Year Graduated: 2007

Current Position: Technical Writer

Employer: Prologic Technology Systems, Inc.

Brief Job Description: Primarily, I write, edit, and update software documentation for print and online distribution. I also write responses to RFPs, press releases, scripts for computer-based trainings, and marketing materials.

Since I kind of have a background in art, I am kind of a graphic designer. So I design marketing folders, brochures, and websites to house our documents. I’m currently redesigning our main website because the other one was scary bad. I’ve also done some freelance writing and design work, but that’s hard to do with a full time job and a debilitating addiction to cycling.

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Jennifer Thomas

Year Graduated: 2007

Current Position: Freelance Copyeditor

Employer: Self-Employed

Brief Job Description: Copyediting and proofreading for textbooks, ancillaries, and online teaching and testing materials.

 

Alumni Profiles - 2006

Lauren Allen (Oakes)

Year Graduated: 2005

Current Position: Project Manager

Employer: National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center

Brief Job Description: As part of a management team for catastrophic preparedness planning and emergency management projects, I work closely with emergency management and senior elected officials to generate documentation for homeland security planning, exercise and technical assistance programs. Past and current projects include the following:

• After-Action Reports (e.g., 2009 El Dorado Chemical Fire, 2008 Hurricane Season, San Angelo Sheltering Operations (2008), and Hurricane Dean Mobilization (2007))
• Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Plans
• Policy Recommendations for Pandemic Influenza Continuity of Operations in the State of Texas
• Urban Area Homeland Security Strategies
• Texas Preparedness Advisory Committee Reports

Linda Coker - Technical Writer

Linda Coker attended University of California, San Diego, and graduated in 1979 with a degree in Linguistics from Muir College. Prior to enrolling in the MATC program, she worked at Xerox Corporation as a customer business representative. She then moved to DPT Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company, as a technical writer, where she is still employed.

Linda went into the MATC program with a solid foundation and strong analytical, interpersonal, and organizational skills. 

She selected this degree so she could gain further knowledge in technical writing, advance her career, and do research. As a student, she enjoyed the small classes and the interaction it allowed with the professors and students. Special assignments and outside projects were also a highlight for her because she was able to use computers and the Internet for research. 

She said this was a big change from her undergraduate days when she used a manual typewriter and numerous trips to the library to do her work!

As a technical writer for DPT Laboratories, she assembles technical information and uses it to write pharmaceutical protocols. A typical day consists of commuting to the DPT Laboratories office in downtown San Antonio from her New Braunfels home.  The environment is quiet, but sometimes intense, and includes frequent interactions with chemists, microbiologists, and project managers.

Linda currently sings in her church choir and two German choirs.

"I love the singing (wish I were better at it) and the camaraderie of the people. No hidden agendas, just folks who enjoy singing," said Linda.

Linda enjoys cooking for her husband and has two adult sons.

Lonie McMichael

Year Graduated: 2005

Current Position: PhD candidate, Graduate Part-Time Instructor, Assistant Editor to TCQ

Employer: Texas Tech University

Brief Job Description: Writing my dissertation, teaching basic technical communication, tasks
as needed to produce a scholarly journal.

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Susan Leininger

Year Graduated: 2005

Current Position: Owner

Employer: Leininger LLC

Brief Job Description: As a contractor I currently provide office management services for a hi-tech non-profit trade association. I will also be teaching a Business Writing class at Concordia University in 2010 and have just been accepted into the ACTiVATE program at Texas State.

Alumni Profiles - 2004

Carol Landry

Year Graduated: 2004

Current Position: Manager, Information Technology Services

Employer: Texas Department of Insurance

Brief Job Description: In 2000, she applied for and was selected to participate in a pilot program offered by the State of Texas. The program was developed by Billy Hamilton, Deputy Comptroller at the Comptroller of Public Accounts agency, to attract people to government technology.

The concept was that students selected for the program would receive information technology training and then be placed in entry-level positions with state agencies in the information technology field. In exchange, the students agreed to remain with the agency for at least two years. Carol was selected for the Texas Department of Insurance and has been with the agency for seven years. She is now Manager for the Project Management Office and Division Support.

Carol is one of four managers within the Information Technology Services division at the Texas Department of Insurance who report to the Director of Information Technology Services (ITS). The ITS division provides technology support for the entire agency, which consists of about 1,800 staff members. The group she manages is a diverse a group of 18 people and is composed of four subgroups: project management, systems analysis, division administration, and contract management.

She manages a busy schedule by using an electronic calendar to schedule and prioritize her workload. As a manager involved with both the budget and with all ITS projects, she attends many meetings that also double as work sessions. Communication is a common theme throughout all of the tasks and projects that she works on and the division relies on her team to ensure that the project or the technology component has been clearly communicated.

Graduation Year 2002