Leadership

Jackie E. Hoermann-Elliott, PhD

Director

PhD, English: Composition and Rhetoric, Texas Christian University
MA, English: Rhetoric, Composition, and Professional Communication, Iowa State University
BA, English: Language and Literature, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Hoermann-Elliott’s approach to administration, teaching and research centers around the role of well-being in the writing processes of student and professional writers, particularly in terms of embodied cognition and mindfulness.

Her first book, Running, Thinking, Writing: Embodied Cognition in Composition, was published by Parlor Press in 2021, and her scholarship has also been published in several edited collections as well as national journals, such as Composition Forum, WPA Journal, and The Journal for the Assembly of Expanded Perspectives on Learning. She attends several conferences regularly, including the Conference on College Composition and Communication, where she enjoys meeting other teachers who share her ardent interest in creativity and embodiment. At TWU, she enjoys teaching first-year courses, including ENGL 1013 and ENGL 1023, professional communication courses, and graduate courses focused on rhetoric and composition theory and writing program administration.

Sierra Mendez, PhD

Associate Director

PhD, English: Rhetoric & Writing, University of Texas at Austin, 2022
MA, Visual Arts & Design: Design & Innovation Studies, University of North Texas, 2012
BA, English: Language & Literature, Texas A&M University, 2009

Mendez is an assistant professor in rhetoric and composition. Her research pulls from visual, memory and material rhetorics to understand the engulfing epistemologies and ecologies of coloniality/modernity.

She works with mundane, mass-produced and mass-circulated texts in community-based archives to trace the materialization of colonizing narratives into civic infrastructure, particularly local constructions of race. How, in other words, settler stories in Texas were made real and the ways their realization has affected and infected communities.

Her pedagogy is invested in supporting students as power-wielding message makers moving in long histories of mattered meaning. Her research and classroom are informed by her experiences in public humanities, creating educational resources and installations for the San Antonio Public Library from archival materials. Her work has been published in Rhetoric Society Quarterly. You can find more information here.

Juliette Holder

2024-2025 FYC Assistant Director

PhD candidate, Rhetoric, Texas Woman’s University
MA, Rhetoric and Writing Studies, San Diego State University, 2016
BA, English, San Diego Christian College, 2014

Juliette Holder is a teacher-scholar interested in feminist rhetorics, revision theory, and popular culture studies. Her research focuses on feminist revision practices and the value of public revision, taking the work of Taylor Swift as a model.

She has also written about the formation, promotion and transformation of feminist messages in popular culture for both academic and public-facing audiences, including Ms. Magazine and USA Today. She remains interested in thought leadership and emphasizes writing for multiple audiences and in varied forms in her FYC classrooms as part of a commitment to multimodal, embodied and accessible pedagogical practices.

Past FYC Leaders

We are so thankful for the initiative and support of:

• 2023-2024 – Jennifer Conner, Assistant Director
• 2022-2023 – Dr. Desireé Thorpe, FYC Program Assistant
• 2022-2023 – Dr. Margaret Williams, Assistant Director
• 2020-2021 – Dr. Rachel Daugherty, Assistant Director
• 2020-2021 – Dr. Justin Cook, FYC Program Assistant
• 2019-2020 – Dr. Mike Fraley, FYC Program Assistant
• 2018-2020 – Dr. Amanda Oswalt, FYC Program Assistant