Skills
Adhering to a Style Guide
As Secretary for the Oregon Tech chapter of AAUP and later a Communications Committee member, I worked closely with fellow committee members to draft social media posts, blog posts, newsletters and other materials to organization members following branding guidelines we developed with help from our national organizers at AAUP.
Communication and Teamwork
I understand the value of strong communication skills and teamwork to complete any project. My role has typically been data collection, analysis and advice, and I am used to compiling information relevant to a task, organizing it meaningfully for my team or audience and making sure those readers are able to act on the data I provide. I have done this through single-recipient email, mass email, formal reports, presentations and websites.
Content Creation and Editing
I taught writing and content creation in a variety of media since 2008, with a focus on technical writing and writing for the workplace. I continue to create and edit in my work at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, and I work off the clock on this and other websites.
Independent Research
I have experience independently seeking out information on unfamiliar topics to support writing and other deliverables, as well as learning new technical skills to support projects. I have extensive experience working with subject-matter experts and content managers to ensure both the technical accuracy and messaging fidelity of deliverables.
Writing for a Brand
As Secretary for the Oregon Tech chapter of AAUP and later a Communications Committee member, I worked closely with fellow committee members to draft social media posts, blog posts, newsletters and other materials to organization members following branding guidelines we developed with help from our national organizers at AAUP.
Writing Technologies
I have experience with DITA and XML-authoring programs, primarily MadCap Flare. I am also familiar with Adobe InDesign, teaching it in a digital media design course and using it when editing content for the game design company Dirty Vortex. Consistent changes in the educational technology landscape have made me familiar with a variety of content management systems (primarily Blackboard, Canvas, Drupal and WordPress).
Education
PhD Rhetoric and Composition, Washington State University. 2017.
Dissertation: “Johnny Can Write: Identifying the Epistemological Language of Undergraduate Writers” [summary]
Committee: Patricia Freitag Ericsson (Chair), Bill Condon, Nancy Bell
MA English, Washington State University, 2012.
Thesis: “Back to Basics: An Evolution of Narrative and Community in Popular Role-Playing Games” [summary]
Committee: David Menchaca (Chair), Donna Campbell, Crag Hill
BA English, DePauw University, 2008.
Thesis: “Building a Utopia: One Skill Roll at a Time” [summary]
Thesis Faculty: Harry Brown
Content Writing
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Marketing Writer. 2022 – Current.
- Short form: Social posts, emails, ad copy, promotional webpages, event materials
- Long form: Engagement programs, product/solution webpages, product flyers
Dirty Vortex Games, Writer/Editor. 2018 – Current (Freelance)
- Manuals, instructions, narratives for game content
Make Believe Games, Writer/Editor. 2018 (Freelance)
- Manuals, instructions, narratives for game content
- Social media about the product and crowdfunding
Courses Taught
Basic Writing
[Ivy Tech Community College] ENG 024: Introduction to College Writing I
[Ivy Tech Community College] ENG 025: Introduction to College Writing II
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At Ivy Tech, Basic Writing courses focused on text production from sentence to paragraph level (ENG 024) and introductory research writing (ENG 025). I taught in 2008 and 2009, and I regularly taught these as two classes of students in the same room at the same time. Students did not always have access to their own computers or home workspaces, so we relied on in-class computers and printers for all resources beyond the textbook. As a result, much of the course’s design was focused on looking at and doing writing from multiple standpoints in big-group discussions: ENG 024 students (focused on producing basic academic writing) would be asked to analyze the ways an argument was built phrase by phrase and paragraph by paragraph, while ENG 025 students (focused on larger document production and evidence use) would analyze the macro-structure of a document and the evidence used to support a thesis.
Each course’s major assignments were standardized across the state. ENG 024 students produced three five-paragraph essays about subjects close to their personal experience (why they went to college, compare/contrast two things, explain the effects of some action or event). ENG 025 students produced four documents of increasing length, culminating in a pair of 3-5 page argumentative research papers (one in MLA format and one in APA).
These were a de facto ESL/ELL set of courses, as students were placed into them via Compass scores and there were no additional courses specifically for L2 students.
While I don’t teach basic writing anymore, the experience (like most folks’ first teaching experience) continues to shape my pedagogy and philosophy of course design. My students came from a wide variety of backgrounds—in 2008, this included individuals coming back to re-train for new skills as the recession went into full swing, refugees from Sudan, high-performing high school students preparing for a dual enrollment program, students who had been out of school long enough to need a refresher on academic writing and more. The heterogeneity of each class ingrained a need to avoid “common culture” as a reference point for writing and make material as accessible and inclusive as possible.
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First-Year Composition and Academic Writing
[Washington State University] ENG 101: College Composition
[Oregon Institute of Technology] WRI 121: English Composition
[Oregon Institute of Technology] WRI 122: Argumentative Writing
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I have taught FYC since 2011, always with a focus on research and rhetoric. At Washington State University, the 16-week FYC course was portfolio-based with deferred grading: students would submit their assignments and receive feedback for revision, but less than 40% of the course’s grades were entered prior to students submitting the final portfolio. The structure enforced revision, growth and risk-taking as major goals in the course. Students could attempt to research topics they were unfamiliar with, could write in modes they had not tried before, or could commit to larger projects than they might have time for because initial drafts did not impact their final grade. Likewise, students who were not as well-prepared for college level writing were given the leeway to simply write and get feedback without worrying about whether their first few papers would negatively impact their grade.
At Oregon Institute of Technology, FYC is taught in two ten-week terms (the norm across many public Oregon universities). WRI 121 focuses on analytical and expository writing, with some writing from external sources (typically provided to students as course readings). WRI 122 expand students’ skills with external sources by delving into library and web-based research, evaluating sources, and developing a personal argument based on research. At OIT, WRI 122 is one of two options students may take in their General Education sequence of Communication classes, the other is WRI 227. As a result, WRI 122 is favored by programs whose students will need practice in gathering, evaluating and synthesizing information to understand a problem.
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[Washington State University] ENG 201: Writing and Research
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My Writing and Research course design focused on interdisciplinary connections. Students read popular academic books like Alfie Kohn’s Punished By Rewards, spending the first half of the 16-week semester analyzing the ways the academic research process was presented in the final document (from mechanical aspects like citations and source integration to rhetorical aspects like discussing bias and synthesizing evidence and points of view), then producing a 10 page analytical essay rooted in one of the major sources cited by our core pop-academic book. The second half of the semester asked students to research any subject related to their discipline, building a bibliography of a variety of sources and writing a research paper incorporating many of those sources.
A major focus of the course is understanding both the difference between peer-reviewed or otherwise vetted publications (like journal articles or trade publications) and non-reviewed sources (like blog posts, news articles or YouTube videos) and the uses of each of those types of resources, rather than a simple rule to avoid some source types in favor of another.
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Technical and Professional Writing
[Washington State University] ENG 402: Technical and Professional Writing
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From 2012 to 2017, I taught Technical and Professional Writing at Washington State University. The 16-week course covered, technical reports, proposals, correspondence, resumes, instructions and other common technical writing genres. Courses always culminated in an 8-week group project proposing a research-based solution to a local problem. The size of the project necessitated memo writing within the group documenting each group member’s activity to support the final report and presentation, as well as other genres along the way (e.g. instructions for group members to gather primary data, mini-reports on data gathered, and presentations explaining their solution to the class).
This class was required or recommended for a variety of majors, so project content was often left to students to decide on their own, encouraging multidisciplinary approaches to problems and class conversations about variance in technical writing conventions between disciplines.
This course was taught in both online and face-to-face formats.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] WRI 227: Technical Report Writing
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Technical Report Writing at OIT is a sophomore-level technical writing class that occupies the second half of the FYC arc. It is preferred by programs whose students will need to convey technical content to expert and non-expert readers. It includes a significant research component to provide students the base information necessary to explain their subject to multiple audiences.
Technical Report Writing culminates in a 10 page technical report on a subject within the student’s major or area of expertise. In producing it, students learn to write in the language of their discipline from a position of expertise.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] WRI 327: Advanced Technical Writing
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Advanced Technical Writing opens the doors to technical writing genres more broadly than WRI 227. While it isn’t a true sequel to the course, it assumes that students have learned many of the research and writing techniques central to writing a report-style document to fellow experts or knowledgeable stakeholders. Advanced Technical Writing covers a survey of technical writing genres, like instructions, correspondence, other report types and resumes. My course design includes a large group project, in which students must redesign the design of an object, interface, sign or document to more clearly communicate its function (with inspiration from The Design of Everyday Things) or some other information relevant to the redesigned object.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] PWR 320: Structured Authoring
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Structured Authoring covers a variety of technical writing skills, all focused around the concepts of markup and templating. Students use XML editing software (most recently MadCap Flare) to produce single-sourced documents for multiple audiences, purposes and media.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] WRI 410: Proposal and Grant Writing
[Oregon Institute of Technology] WRI 510: Grant Proposal Writing
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Grant writing courses focus on persuasion and audience awareness as the core skills necessary for successful proposal writing. Undergraduate (410) and graduate (510) versions both use genre analysis readings from Ulla Connor and her colleagues at the ICIC and Aristotle’s Rhetoric to define the rules for proposal writing in their fields and document their successful use of persuasive techniques. In this course, students produce both a solicited proposal (responding to an RFP from Grants.gov or another resource) and an unsolicited proposal (written to any person or organization not expecting the request) for the projects of their choice.
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Writing on the Web
[Oregon Institute of Technology] PWR 102: Intro to Web Authoring
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Intro to Web Authoring focuses on contributing to and crafting full websites using the WordPress CMS. The course covers a variety of technical concerns related to writing on the web and in digital media broadly (like HTML/XML and CSS, accessibility and information architecture) as well as design concerns in any kind of professional publication (like color schemes and page layout). The majority of student writing is produced within the WordPress Block Editor.
Students create their own websites on their personal subdomains attached to the pwr-oit.com website. They retain these websites throughout their college careers as a tool for creating a digital portfolio.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] PWR 315: Advanced Web Authoring
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In Advanced Web Authoring, students work on personalizing their own WordPress Theme, starting with the base Underscores template. This course focuses on the languages that make modern websites run: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and SQL. In creating their own themes, students not only generate their own page templates but also shortcodes and additional page functionality. The course assumes a basic level of programming knowledge from all students.
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Digital Media Design
[Washington State University] ENG 355/DTC 355: Multimedia Authoring
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Multimedia Authoring covered the theory and techniques for crafting documents and other materials in multimedia design software (primarily the Adobe Suite for face-to-face courses and a variety of web-based tools for online courses). Students learned the rhetorical and communication theories that
This course was taught in both online and face-to-face formats.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] COM 135: Office Software
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Office Software was a course I proposed and began teaching in 2018 to fill a gap noticed within the Communication department at OIT: specifically, that students were reaching Junior-level research methods courses and struggling with the university office software suite (Microsoft Office). The course was designed to teach basic and intermediate skills with Word, PowerPoint and Excel, including basic XML fluency, template creation, reference management and Visual Basic for Applications. It remains flexible enough to transition into Apache Open Office and STAR Basic.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] COM 248: Digital Media Production
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Digital Media Production focuses on the Adobe Creative Suite as an industry-standard tool for multimedia production. In this course, students learn the fundamentals of Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere, weaving them together to create products incorporating parts from each program. Projects change yearly and have included board games (using graphic design and publishing tools to create full products and instruction manuals), apocalypse survival guides (centered on a brief instructional video to be viewed before the internet goes down forever) and an animated children’s book (using graphic design and video editing tools to create something similar to Storyline Online videos).
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Communication, Rhetorical Theory and Applications
[Washington State University] ENG 360: Principles of Rhetoric
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This Junior-level introduction to rhetoric course served as a foundation for English and Digital Technology and Culture majors interested in areas of English that weren’t literature-focused. The course approached the practice of rhetoric globally: students read from ancient rhetoricians from China, Greece and Rome; contemporary rhetorical practice from the US, the Middle East and north Africa; and considered some arguments that were like rhetorical theory from other disciplines.
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[Oregon Institute of Technology] COM 309: Communication Technology in Use
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Communication Technology in Use is the final stage of the four-course “technology sequence” in the OIT Communication Studies program (of which, I teach Office Software, Digital Media Production and Communication Technology in Use). Each of the prior courses focuses on either a specific type of software or crafting media with narrow audiences and purposes. Communication Technology in Use broadens the scope to mass communication, incorporating social media and traditional mass media to give students the runway necessary to craft a full communication strategy for the issue or subject of their choice.
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Presentations
Wendy Olson and Matt Frye. 2021. “Investigating and Innovating the Curriculum: Studying Writing Transfer and Genre Awareness in Engineering Lab Reports” Delivered at the Fifteenth Annual International Writing Across the Curriculum Conference. Supported by NSF Grant #1914593. [summary]
Matt Frye. 2021. “Nominalization and Narrative: Identifying Undergraduate Engineers’ Zone of Proximal Development through Written Lab Reports.” Delivered remotely to the annual American Association of Applied Linguistics conference. Supported by NSF Grant #1914593.
Matt Frye. 2021. “Open WRI 227: Challenges in Assessment and Robust Design.” Delivered remotely to the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication.
Matt Frye. 2020. “Can My Boss Read This Project?” Delivered at the annual Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication conference in Minneapolis, MI.
Matt Frye. 2020. “The Door Swings Both Ways: Rhetorical Hospitality in Curriculum Design.” Accepted to the Rhetoric Society of America Biannual Conference in Portland, OR, not delivered due to COVID.
Matt Frye. 2020. “Promoting Cross-Disciplinary Buy-In: Teaching Discipline-Specific Research Writing in General Education Technical Writing.” Accepted to the the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication in Milwaukee, WI, not delivered due to COVID.
Matt Frye. 2017. “What Function Does this Serve?: Code Comments in Advanced Electrical Engineering Labs as an Indicator of Disciplinary Membership.” Delivered at the annual American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference in Portland, OR.
Patricia Ericsson, Beth Buyserie and Matt Frye. 2017. “The Portfolio Outcomes Project: Completing the Feedback Loop in Programmatic Assessment at Washington State University.” Delivered at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland, OR, 2017.
Matt Frye. 2016. “Writing in the Disciplines as Performance: Identifying Epistemological Growth and Complexity in Undergraduate Writing.” Delivered at the annual American Association of Applied Linguistics Conference in Orlando, FL, 2016.
Matt Frye. 2016. Metagaming and Metanoia: Player Knowledge as the Rebirth of Kairos. Delivered at the annual Southwest Popular Culture/American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, NM, 2016.
Matt Frye. 2015. “Epistemological creativity as Knowledge Transfer?: Tracking Changes in Evidence Use during a Gen Ed Curriculum.” Delivered at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication in Tampa, FL, 2015.
Matt Frye. 2014. “Exploring Discipline-Specific Writing Feedback/Assessment Aids for Local Learning Objectives.” Delivered at the Pacific Northwest Two-Year College Association/Pacific Northwest Writing Centers Association annual conference in Vancouver, WA, 2014.
Matt Frye. 2014. “The Machine has Spoken: Automated Invention in an Era of Automated Assessment.” Delivered at the Computers & Writing conference in Pullman, WA, 2014.
Matt Frye. 2014. “Developing Disciplinary Tourism: Using Cognitive Change Theories to Create Common Ground in the Classroom.” Delivered at the University of Idaho Graduate Student Conference in Moscow, ID, 2014.
Matt Frye. 2013. “Documenting Change in Student Ethos: A Longitudinal Study of Reflective Writing.” Delivered at the Council of Writing Program Administrators annual conference in Savannah, GA, 2013.
Matt Frye. 2013. “One of These Days, Foucault, Straight to the Moon!” Delivered at the Pacific Northwest American Studies Association annual conference in Seattle, WA, 2013.
Publications
Beth Buyserie, Tialitha Macklin, Matt Frye and Patricia Freitag Ericsson. 2020. “Opening an Assessment Dialogue: Formative Evaluation of a Writing Studies Program.” In Diane Kelly-Riley and Norbert Elliot (eds.) Improving Outcomes: Disciplinary Writing, Local Assessment, and the Aim of Fairness. Modern Language Association.
Institutional Service
Assessment Commission Executive Committee
Chair: 2020-2023 (Three Year Term)
Member: 2017-2020
Communication Department, Assessment Coordinator: 2018-Current
Communication Studies Assessment Coordinator, 2018-Current
Professional Writing Assessment Coordinator, Annual Report 2019-Current
Washington State University Writing Program: 2011-2017
FYC Placement Exam Reader, Tier I and Tier II, 2011-2017
Junior Writing Portfolio Rater, Tier I, 2016-2017
Junior Writing Portfolio Rater, Tier I, 2012
Washington State University History Department: 2013
Roots of Contemporary Issues (History 105) Course Assessment Reader, 2013
WSU Composition Program Portfolio Outcomes Assessment Project: 2015-Current
Researcher and software designer, 2015 – Current
Aided in designing the research objectives, processes and instruments for a local assessment project of FYC final portfolios, intended to identify the ways in which students are meeting our program outcomes. The software designed for this project is currently being revised for application to a wider variety of assessment projects, and is meant to be portable to organizations with their own assessment criteria.
English Graduate Student Organization, Washington State University
Fall 2013, President
Fall 2011, Secretary
Fall 2010, Secretary
Institutional Assessment Experience
Neider, Xyanthe, Matthew Frye, Miriam Fernandez and Jonathan Torres (2015). Washington State Unviersity Writing Portfolio: 11th Findings, June 2013-May 2015. Delivered to the Office of Writing Assessment. Washington State University.
Frye, Matthew, and Nathaniel Hunsu. (2014). Washington State University Writing Portfolio: 10th Findings, June 2011-May 2013. Delivered to the Office of Writing Assessment. Washington State University.
Biswas, Shampa, and Matthew Frye. (2013). WSU Graduate and Professional Writing Center Supplementary Report, Fall 2008-Spring 2013. Delivered to the Washington State University Writing Center.
Skills and Software
Adobe Creative Suite: Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator, InDesign, and Dreamweaver.
Microsoft Office: Skilled in Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, including the Visual Basic for Applications language and interface.
Programming Languages: PHP, JavaScript, and HTML/CSS on the web. C/C++ and Java offline.
Data Management Languages: SQL
Awards and Honors
CLASP Faculty Award, 2015
Louise Schleiner Book Award, 2014
Avon Murphy Scholarship, 2014
Harold and Jeanne Rounds Olson Writing Across the Curriculum Graduate Fellowship, 2013
EGO Service Award, 2011
EGO Service Award, 2013
WSU Certification of Professional Development in Composition, 2010-2017 (Re-certification each semester)
