Society News: AdCom News
AdCom Elections Open Until 30 October 2009
By Atsuko Yamazaki
The following people have been nominated for the four open AdCom positions:
- Majorie Davis (Mercer University)
- Michaël Steehouder (University of Twente)
- Suguru Ishizaki (Carnegie Mellon University)
Marjorie and Michaël are current AdCom members interested in continuing their service. Suguru is the winner of the IPCC 2009 Best Paper award and is interested in becoming more active in the society.
Each of the candidates was asked to respond to a set of questions. Please review their statements and then vote for the two candidates you would like to represent you this year. Ballots are due via the online voting by 30th October, 2008. Vote at http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pcs/index.php?q=node/876.
(You must be a PCS member to vote and must have a PCS portal login to access this page. To request a login, send a request via this page: http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/pcs/index.php?q=contact.)
Marjorie T. Davis, Ph.D.,
Professor, School of Engineering, Mercer University
Who are you and what do you do in your career?
I am professor and founding chair of the Department of Technical Communication at Mercer University. We offer communication courses to engineers at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels, plus we offer a BS and MS degree in technical communication.
What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?
I served for three years as Membership Development Chair. I have served on several ad hoc committees, notably the Operations Manual, Strategic Planning, and Conference Quality committees. I was General Chair of IPCC 2005 in Limerick, Ireland, which was a very successful conference. I regularly present and publish proceedings papers for IEEE PCS events. I am a Senior Member of IEEE.
What other professional organizations do you belong to and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?
I am also active in Society for Technical Communication, where I am involved in a leadership role in creating the body of knowledge for the profession. Awards include the Jay R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication, Frank R. Smith Award for Outstanding Journal Article, and Fellow recognition. I have held many different volunteer positions with STC over the past 15 years.
What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?
Because I have years of experience on the board, I bring perspective and insights about society management, conferences, and strategic planning. I have also helped to strengthen the focus on international collaboration and information sharing. Capturing and transmitting corporate memory/knowledge are important for sustainability and positioning of PCS as a Society. In my opinion, PCS is poised to take a much stronger role in professional and technical communication, both within IEEE and within the discipline of technical communication. I would like to help contribute towards that increased role.
How many meetings will you attend each year?
All of them.
What is your current IEEE membership grade?
Senior Member.
Michaël Steehouder
Professor, University of Twente, the Netherlands
Who are you and what do you do in your career?
I lead the department of Technical and Professional Communication at the University of Twente, with 25+ tenured and temporary faculty members for teaching and research. Our fields of interest include communication skills, organizational communication, e-government, e-health, user support, document design and accessibility. My own research focuses on user support and rhetorical aspects of technical communication.
I published over 200 articles, book chapters and a number of text books, both in Dutch and English. I received the Ronald S. Blicq Award for Distinction in Technical Communication Education (2006) and the CPTSC 2009 Distinguished Service Award. For more details: www.michael.steehouder.nl
What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?
I have been a PCS AdCom member since 2004, and my main responsibility was representing PCS in the international platform Intecom. I am the conference chair of IPCC 2010 in Twente, the Netherlands.
I have been an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on technical communication since 1997.
What other professional organizations do you belong to and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?
I am a member of STC and STIC, the Dutch society for technical communication. I was president of STIC from 2000-2007, and I was appointed as honorary member in 2008.
Representing STIC, I was one of the founders and board members of TCeurope, the European platform for organizations of technical communication. Within that organization, we developed the European guidelines for the education of technical communicators. Representing IEEE-PCS, I am currently Vice-President of Intecom.
What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?
First, I will act as conference chair of IPCC 2010 and I am determined to make it one of the most successful IPCCs ever. I would like to continue my task as representative in INTECOM. In addition, I would like to strengthen PCS’s role as a platform for research into the professional communication of engineers.
How many meetings will you attend each year?
All
What is your current IEEE membership grade?
Senior Member
Suguru Ishizaki
Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Who are you and what do you do in your career?
I am an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Communication Design in the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University, where I am responsible for developing and teaching courses on visual/multimedia design, user-centered design methods, and visual rhetoric that target professional & technical writing students, both at the graduate and undergraduate levels.
I was recently appointed the co-director of the masters program we are offering jointly with the School of Design. I regularly advise masters and doctoral students whose projects are related to design and communication inside and outside of my department—including Human Computer Interaction, Design, and Architecture. I also have a courtesy appointment in the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon.
My current research projects include computer-aided, corpus-based rhetorical analysis, intelligent critiquing systems, and visual-verbal rhetoric. My professional experience includes user-experience design, software engineering, product management, and visual/multimedia design. I have a PhD and MS in Visual Studies from MIT, and Bachelor of Art and Design from the University of Tsukuba, Japan.
What contributions have you made previously to IEEE and particularly to PCS through your volunteer activities?
I joined the IEEE PCS this year, and have attended the IPCC in the past two years, and presented three papers. One of my papers for IPCC 2009 was selected for the James M. Lufkin Award for Best IPCC Paper. I also recently reviewed a research paper for the TCP.
What other professional organizations do you belong to and what are your past and present volunteer activities with them?
Since my work has been highly interdisciplinary, I have presented at a broad range of conferences, including ACM CHI (Computer Human Interaction), AAAL (American Association of Applied Linguistics), and IIID (International Institute for Information Design). I have been a program committee member for ACM Creativity and Cognition 2009 and ACM Design for Interactive Systems 2000; and have been a reviewer for ACM’s CHI and CSCW conferences, as well as books and book chapters on visualization and document design. I am also an editorial board member of Design Issues; and a member of AIGA.
What specific contributions do you think that you could make if elected to the PCS AdCom?
I am especially interested in contributing to the strategic aspects of PCS’s future development and planning. Considering the increasing complexity of communication media and technology in the professional environment, I believe a greater population in the technical professions will benefit from PCS’s activities.
Based on my broad experience both in academia and industry, I would like to help communicate the value of PCS to scholars, educators, and practitioners who are working in relevant disciplines, yet, have not discovered PCS; and encourage them to participate in PCS and its conferences.
In addition, as a scholar with broad research interests, I am interested in sustaining the scholarly excellence of PCS. As a practitioner with a scholarly orientation, I am interested in assuring the dialogue between research and practice within PCS. As an educator, I am committed to enhancing the communication literacy of the future professionals through PCS’s activities.
How many meetings will you attend each year?
I will attend all the meetings.
What is your current IEEE membership grade?
I am a PCS affiliate.