Lisa Melonçon

Professor of Technical Communication

CONTACT

Office: CPR 360A
Phone: 813-974-9496
Email

BIO

Pronouns: she/her/they

Lisa Melonçon is a professor of technical communication. Dr. Melonçon’s research areas are rhetoric of health and medicine, programmatic issues in technical and professional communication (TPC), research methodologies, and user experience.

You can find Lisa’s publications, current research projects, teaching sites, and more at http://tek-ritr.com.

Dr. Melonçon’s research in RHM includes work with disability and embodiment, understanding the impact of place on healthcare and communication, and mental health. In disability studies, she focuses on the importance of merging theory to practice and was the first to call for a specific integration of disability studies with technical communication to move the theory of disability studies into practice. Lisa is the founder of the biennial Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium, and co-founder and emerita editor of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine. You can learn more about the journal’s aims and scope or submit at the journal’s website.

Dr. Melonçon’s programmatic work in technical and professional communication examines curricula and programs as one way to understand the field, and she was the first in the field (along with her collaborators) to examine the status of contingent faculty. More recent work focuses on using data from USF Writes to gain deeper understandings into the effectiveness of curricula in the service course through an analysis of student work and instructor comments.

She has also started to look closely at research methodologies in the field to include the ethics and practices of research study design, while doing meta-analytic work into the field’s current practices.

MENTORING AND TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

The graduate program at USF understands that not all students have the same goal. Thus, our program is focused on coursework and content knowledge of the field, and it pays deliberate attention to preparing students for the diverse higher education landscape. We will help you figure out where you want to be in that landscape or we will work to prepare you for your next step outside of higher education.

My goal as a graduate faculty member is to help you find your voice, your vision, and your path. While students enter a graduate program with an idea, or several, or just a vague sense of something, my job is to assist you in finding your way into who you want to be as a teacher and a scholar.

Outside of the knowledge work, my emphasis is in helping you build good habit to

  • to develop a sense of who you are as a teacher and scholar
  • to have balance in your life,
  • to understand and practice time and project management, and
  • to develop strategies on how to accomplish your goals

Please feel free to email me if you have questions about the program.