Join us as we chat with Dr. Joel Bergholtz, a member of our UCF faculty, who currently teaches Composition I and II along with ENC 4416 Writing in Digital Environments. Dr. Bergholtz's research interests include assemblage and circulation as methodological frameworks for internet research methods, raciolinguistics as an interpretive framework, public spaces (physical, digital, and hybrid), social media pedagogies, antiracist pedagogies, and more.  He is also currently a faculty editor of the UCF publication Convergence Rhetoric and presented at Conference on College Composition and Communication 2025 with his research titled:

"R-R-R-Reeeemixxxx: Diggin’ in the Comments, Flippin' the Spreadsheets, Cuttin' the Racial Ideologies, Amplifyin' the Antiracist Strategies (Insert Airhorn Here)"

Our guest for this episode is Dr. Esther Milu, Associate Professor here at the University of Central Florida. Dr. Milu’s research includes language diversity, multilingual pedagogies, translingual writing, immigrant Black literacies, and Global Black Rhetorics. Dr. Milu has been published in multiple publications, most recently including Composition Studies, Rhetoric Society of America Quarterly, and College Composition Communication, along with contributing to several books. 

Our guest on this episode is UCF Assistant Professor Dr. Kara Taczak. Dr. Taczak is currently co-editor of  College Composition and Communication, and her award winning research examines composition theory and pedagogy, with a focus on teaching for transfer and reflection. Her work has appeared in numerous edited collections as well as in CCC, Writing Spaces, International Journal of Work Integrated Learning, the WAC Journal, Composition Forum, Teaching English in a Two-Year College, and Across the Disciplines. 

This episode also features our Assistant Producer, and DWR Podcast Intern, Madelyn Alvarez joining in the conversation.  

In this episode we are joined by Heather Vazquez, a lecturer here at the University of Central Florida in our Department of Writing and Rhetoric. Heather is the Education Coordinator and an instructor with the Florida Prison Education Project, or FPEP, working with incarcerated Central Floridians to achieve an undergraduate degree. Additionally, Heather is one of our designated UCF Global instructors, teaching student populations of international students. Beyond FPEP and UCF Global, her teaching and interests include first-year composition, multilingual writing, language diversity, translingualism, and World Englishes. 

In this episode we are joined by colleague Megan Lambert. Professor Lambert is currently an Associate Instructor for the Department of Writing & Rhetoric, where she teaches composition courses 1101 and 1102, , Professional Writing (ENC 3250), and Professional Editing (ENC 4212). She is the new Internship Coordinator for the Department of Writing and Rhetoric here at UCF. She has also been the editor of our first-year writing journal Stylus for four years.

Rebecca Watkins is a Lecturer in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at UCF. She holds a PhD in English from Florida State University, an MA in English from Indiana-University-Purdue-University-Indianapolis (IUPUI), and a BS in Secondary English Education from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her work has appeared in Stoneboat, Touchstone, Pangyrus, and elsewhere. Her essay “Blonde Sugar” was nominated for Best of the Net Anthology. Professor Watkins’ pedagogical interests include visual and material rhetoric, and the interconnection of composition and creative writing. 

For this episode, we are going to switch things up a little- to our very first episode sharing  live recordings of students on a campus event at  UCF. On Monday April 28th 2024 UCF hosted the Not So Total Eclipse event, organized by the Florida Space Institute, Department of Physics, and UCF Libraries in partnership with Office of Research. It was basically an eclipse watch party at the reflecting pond on our main campus.  Attendees could get safe Eclipse viewing eyewear and participate in a community oriented opportunity to, if not celebrate, at least witness this celestial event.  For our part, in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, we hosted a table for the College of Arts and Humanities Total Eclipse of the Arts. This included writing prompts related to the event created and executed by members of our Writing Center for participants to and share their thoughts and experiences with the eclipse and as well as live interviews capturing the thoughts and feelings in the moment.

Transcript Episode 16

Have you ever found assessment work interesting? If not, then you’ve never met Dr. Shane Wood, the current Writing Program Administrator and Director of First-Year Composition here at UCF, who’s here to break down why teacher responses are so crucial to students’ development, and give a riveting dissection of the reductive history/application of the letter-based grading system. Also discussed is the origin of Dr. Wood’s award-winning podcast Pedagogue, which aims to bridge institutional gaps in writing education, and how it inspired his recent book, Teachers Talking Writing: Perspectives on Place, Pedagogies, and Programs.

How students receive feedback is the backbone to promoting learning, so join us in discussing how assessment can be made as productive as possible!

• Introduction - 00:07

• The Origin of Pedagogue - 01:42

• The Importance of Academic Institutional Podcasts - 12:02

• UCF’s Writing Department vs. Others - 17:16

• Why Writing Program Administration? - 22:21

• What’s Interesting about Assessment? - 26:12

• Subverting Assessment as Punishment/Reward - 32:53

• How Enthusiasm for Writing is Squashed - 39:37

• A-F Grading Scale - 43:17

• Collaborative Efforts - 48:26

• Inspiration for Teachers Talking Writing - 52:00

• Valuing Diverse Writing Voices/Identities - 58:20

• Closing Thoughts - 1:02:55

• Teacher Response to Student Writing - 26:55

• Exclusionary Methods of Assessment - 34:44

• Punished by Rewards - 42:59

• Writing Tied to Identity - 58:47

Transcript Episode 15

The UCF Department of Writing and Rhetoric holds an annual event called Knights Write Showcase to celebrate the work of student writers. This event began in 2010 as a place to highlight and share the research and writing occurring in the first-year writing program, and has since become a multi-day event that encompasses work in composition courses, writing across the curriculum, our three departmental publications Stylus, Convergence, and Imprint, and also The University Writing Center, undergraduate, and graduate student work.

In this episode, we talk with the following students who participated in the event:

(0.00-15:24) Rosalind Rohrbaugh “Stephen King Is Right: We’re All a Little Nuts, and That’s Okay”

(15:25-32:49) Erick Rodriquez “How Course Requirements are Communicated to Students” / Imani Rodriguez “Online Identification of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Creators”

(32:50-52:59) Evonne Simpron “Beta Incels vs. The World” / Jenna Sutphin “Online Book Communities”

(53:00-1:11:45) Kaitlyn Pottinger “The Fool’s Journey to Enlightenment: How Tarot Cards Work” / Mikayla Crawford “Graphic Pathography” / Tasha Rentas “Graphic Journalism: The Stanton Energy Center”  

(1:11:46-1:31:59) Bella Love “Scrapbooking as Narrative”

Thank you to all the wonderful students who shared their experiences with us!

Transcript Episode 14

Joining us for this episode is Natalie Madruga, Instructor in writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. 

Natalie’s research interests include eulogistic rhetoric, public memory and memorialization, critical race theory, cultural rhetorics, and writing pedagogy, with a pedagogical philosophy centered on a foundation in testimonio. Natalie was published in 2023 in Writers:Craft and Context with the article “ What it’s like to lose Papi: A counterstory on Grief''. Natalie was chosen for HSI Faculty Fellowship through the Office for Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives for the 23-24 academic year, working with the Title 5 POTENCIAL grant to design and implement the faculty development component of Project POTENCIAL.