Biography
Nicole (Niki) Turnipseed is a PhD candidate in the department of English and the Center for Writing Studies.
Her scholarship, teaching, and service are committed to cultivating open, equitable, and collaborative environments where community members are empowered to develop and express their individual and collective capacities as learners, teachers, and historical change agents.
Research Interests
- Writing Studies
- Holistic Development
- Literate Activity
- Sociocultural Theory
- Ethnographic Methods
- Writing Across the Curriculum
- Multimodal Composition
- Writing Program Administration
Research Description
My dissertation, "Supporting Liberatory Literate Praxis across Disciplines and Institutions," is a cross-institutional comparison of liberatory curricula. I employ discourse-based interviews with students, teachers, and administrators across sites to trace the complex entanglements between students’ literate practice, teachers’ praxis, and the institutional structures supporting and inhibiting that action. I draw on this broad set of situated strategies to build a heuristic for the design and sustenance of programs capable pf supporting students’ holistic literate development.
Since fall 2016 I have worked closely with a transdisciplinary team of faculty and graduate students from writing studies and across STEM fields to develop, and iteratively implement, study, and revise, a program we call Writing Across Engineering and Science (WAES). The goal of WAES is to cultivate an active community of practice around the teaching of STEM writing by supporting STEM teachers in learning, integrating, and innovating on relevant writing pedagogy practices to suit the specific contexts of their courses and disciplines.
Education
Ph.D. English, Concentration in Writing Studies. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Champaign, IL. Expected May 2021.
M.A. English: Composition. San Francisco State University. San Francisco, CA. May 2014.
B.A. History of Art and Visual Culture, & B.A. Anthropology. University of California at Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz, CA. June 2011.
A.A. Liberal Arts & A.S. Social Science/Anthropology. West Valley Community College. Saratoga, CA. May 2009.
Grants
National
National Science Foundation. Division of Undergraduate Education - Improving Undergraduate STEM Education—Engaged Student Learning: Level II. Advancing adaptation of writing pedagogies for undergraduate STEM education through transdisciplinary action research. Julie Zilles (PI), S. Lance Cooper, John Gallagher, John Popovics, and Paul Prior. Initial request: $477,721. Submitted December 4, 2019. Revised proposal invited; revised request, $599,999; resubmitted May 22, 2020. Accepted July 23, 2020. (As a team member, I participated in preparation of the grant proposal.)
Writing Across the Curriculum Graduate Organization (WAC-GO) WAC Summer Institute Registration Scholarship. $750. Awarded March 2020. Institute postponed until August 2021.
Campus
College of Engineering Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP) Implementation and Exploration Award for 2019-20. Improving the Writing Skills of Undergraduate Engineering Students: Empowering Engineering Faculty and Teaching Assistants. Julie Zilles (PI), Lance Cooper, Celia Elliott, John Gallagher, John Popovics, Paul Prior, Nicole Turnipseed, and Ryan Ware. $52,650.
College of Engineering Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP) Implementation and Exploration Award for 2018-19. Improving the Writing Skills of Undergraduate Engineering Students: Empowering Engineering Faculty and Teaching Assistants. Julie Zilles (PI), Lance Cooper, Celia Elliott, John Gallagher, John Popovics, Paul Prior, Nicole Turnipseed, and John Yoritomo. $45,510.
College of Engineering Strategic Instructional Innovations Program (SIIP) Implementation and Exploration Award for 2017-18. Improving the Writing Skills of Undergraduate Engineering Students: Empowering Engineering Faculty and Teaching Assistants. Julie Zilles (PI), Lance Cooper, Celia Elliott, John Gallagher, John Popovics, Paul Prior, Nicole Turnipseed, and John Yoritomo. $30,500.
College of Engineering Strategic Instructional Innovations Project (SIIP) Start Up Award for 2017-18. Improving the Writing Skills of Undergraduate Engineering Students: Identifying Common Challenges and Scalable Solutions. Julie Zilles (PI), Lance Cooper, Celia Elliott, John Popovics, Paul Prior, and Nicole Turnipseed. $20,842.
University of Illinois Graduate College Dissertation Travel Grant 2017-18. Holistic development: Longitudinal case studies of literate identity construction in social justice education programs. $1,909.
Center for Writing Studies Conference Travel grants, $100-$125, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.
List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Fall 2016, Spring 2019, Fall 2019.
Graduate Distinguished Achievement Award, College of Liberal Arts Recipient. San Francisco State University, May 2014.
College honors, HAVC honors, senior seminar honors. University of California, Santa Cruz, June 2011.
Departmental
Dissertation Completion Fellowship, $10,400, 2020-2021.
Gragg-Barr Fellowship, $5,200, 2020-2021.
Smalley Fellowship, $8,000, 2015-2016.
Conference Travel grants, $200-$350, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.
Courses Taught
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. 2015-present
Informatics/Writing Studies 303: Writing Across Media.
Four semesters and one summer session, ≈18 students per semester.
Rhetoric 105: Writing and Research.
Three semesters, ≈18 students per semester.
San Francisco State University. 2012-2015
Business 300 GWAR (Graduate Writing Assessment Requirement): Business Communication for Professionals.
One semester, two sections, ≈26 students per section.
Hospitality and Tourism Management 531 GWAR: Hospitality Services Management.
Co-taught three sections of ≈26 students, one semester.
English 214: Second Year Written Composition.
One semester, two sections, ≈26 students per section.
English 214 Hybrid Pilot.
One semester, ≈26 students.
English 214 Metro Academy of Child and Adolescent Development.
One semester, ≈26 students.
English 114: First Year Written Composition.
One semester, ≈20 students.
Early Start English 99: Introduction to College Reading and Writing (online and F2F).
One summer term, four sections (3 online, 1 f2f), ≈17 students each.
Highlighted Publications
Kovanen, Bruce, Ryan Ware, Megan Mericle, Nicole Turnipseed, Paul Prior, Julie Zilles. (July 2020). Implementing writing-as-process in engineering education. Proceedings of the 127th American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition. https://peer.asee.org/34786
Gallagher, John R., Nicole Turnipseed, John Y. Yoritomo, Celia M. Elliott, S. Lance Cooper, John S. Popovics, Paul Prior, and Julie L. Zilles. (2020). A collaborative longitudinal design for supporting writing pedagogies of stem faculty. Technical Communication Quarterly. Online first version: January 2020. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10572252.2020.1713405
Ware, Ryan, Nicole Turnipseed, John Gallagher, S. Lance Cooper, Celia M. Elliott, John S. Popovics, Paul Prior, and Julie L. Zilles. (June 2019). Writing across engineering: A collaborative approach to support STEM faculty’s integration of writing instruction in their classes. Proceedings of the 126th American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Conference and Exposition, Tampa, FL. https://peer.asee.org/33671
Yoritomo, John Y., Nicole Turnipseed, Maxx Joseph Villotti, Aric Tate, Kelly Searsmith, Matthias Grosse Perdekamp, Paul Prior, and Julie L. Zilles. (June 2019). A tale of two rubrics: Realigning genre instruction through improved response rubrics in a writing-intensive physics course. Proceedings of the 126th American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference and Exposition. Tampa, FL. https://peer.asee.org/32012
Yoritomo, John Y., Nicole Turnipseed, S. Lance Cooper, Celia M. Elliott, John R. Gallagher, John S. Popovics, Paul Prior, and Julie L. Zilles. (June 2018). Examining engineering writing instruction at a large research university through the lens of writing studies. Proceedings of the 125th American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference & Exposition. Salt Lake City, UT. https://peer.asee.org/30467
Roe, Susan J. and Nicole Turnipseed. Increasing hospitality and tourism management students’ rhetorical awareness. (July 2015). Proceedings of the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education (ICHRIE) Annual Conference & Marketplace. Orlando, FL.