After youthful forays into industry, I succumbed to the legacy of a multigenerational family of educators and took up teaching, work that has become, for the past 25 years, my calling. That calling has been less to the seminar table or a singular mission than to connections forged through collective learning, sharing, and growing.

Those connections began by teaching language and computer skills to displaced immigrant factory workers in Queens and Harlem, fanned wide to teens and entrepreneurs in Spain, Polish postgraduates and tech experts, and Lithuanian central bankers and supreme court justices, then headed west to Washington undergrads from Seattle, Walla Walla, and Kelso, and back cross-continent to Northeastern co-op jedis and Suffolk scholar-poet incarnates from Lynn and Scituate, a journey that has brought me to MIT, where I primarily work with grad students and postdocs researching at the bright edge of so many domains—a privilege and a joy.

Across this work, my teaching has been grounded in the belief that communication is an opportunity—to participate, spark change, and shape knowledge. To do this work, students need more than algorithms and prescriptions. They need creativity, rhetorical judgment, and a flexible repertoire of communication strategies—all prerequisite for navigating landscapes transformed by generative AI. My practice is social, agentive, and decision-driven, where meaning is built step by step, connection by connection.

Selected Course and program Designs

Public Writing Certificate Program — Guide MIT grad students and postdocs through rhetorical accommodation, genre ecologies, and discursive framing to translate complex technical research into civic engagement and submission-ready public writing.

Advanced Writing in the Disciplines: Writing in the Technical Professions — Lead Northeastern STEM students through a nested project sequence using activity theory, literature synthesis, and genre remixing to engage technical, professional, and public audiences.

Advanced Interdisciplinary Writing: The Future of Cities — Engage upper-level Northeastern students in discourse community analysis, collaborative problem mapping, and multimodal research proposals as a means of addressing wicked problems stemming from hyper-urbanization, structural inequities, and climate change.

First-Year Writing: Community Literacy & Service-Learning — Teach Northeastern undergrads to examine and apply critical, asset-based theories of literacy through a semester-long service-learning partnership with 826 Boston at the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science in Roxbury.

Intermediate Expository Writing: Participatory Culture — Show University of Washington undergrads in computer-integrated environments (CIC) how to use writing and situated inquiry to analyze platform affordances, multimodal media discourse, and digital public spheres.

Mentorship and Advising

Parallel to my instructional design, my work at MIT is rooted in intensive, individual mentorship for graduate scholars and postdoctoral researchers navigating high-stakes career milestones. Using dialogic coaching and a sociocognitive approach, I guide researchers across their time at the Institute—from early dissertation framing and NSF or Fulbright proposals to peer-reviewed journal pipelines, thesis completion and defense, and job market packages. Through this process, scholars transform their complex technical research into major career placements across academia and industry while growing into agile, authoritative communicators.

A comprehensive history of my course designs, curriculum development, and institutional service can be found in my CV, also available on the About page.