[ATTW-L] In Memory of Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson

[Dragga, Sam]

Bill’s citation deserves a reading.

Sam

Sam Dragga
Professor Emeritus
Texas Tech University
sam.dragga at ttu.edu<mailto:sam.dragga at ttu.edu>
1-806-543-6099


Citation for Bill Hart-Davidson
Elevated to ATTW Fellow April 6, 2016
On this day, April 6, 2016, I am honored to elevate Bill Hart-Davidson to Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing. With your elevation, Bill, we recognize you for your many contributions to our organization and for changing our field for the better through the high quality and strong positive impact of your research and publications. We also recognize you as a valued and respected contributor, collaborator, and colleague. Few colleagues have consistently been as kind and generous with others as you have been, and your conduct as a professional is to be admired and emulated.

You have been a highly valued and respected contributor to the scholarship of our field since you were a graduate student. You have engaged our field’s perspectives on content management, technology, and the changing roles of technical communicators. The impact of your research is extensive. You have given us insights into the work of technical and professional communication practitioners, exploring knowledge work and its many facets: digital writing and review, organizational writing, content management, project management, collaboration, and workstreams, to name a few. Included among this research is your article “Content Management in the Workplace: Community, Context, and a New Way to Organize Writing,” which won the 2013 CCCC award for Best Article Reporting Qualitative or Quantitative Research in Technical or Scientific Communication. Your cutting-edge, pioneering perspectives of technology have provided critical insight and clarity for our field during an era of rapid and often chaotic change in industry. In addition to your workplace research, you have provided academics with insight into the research needs of industry and encouraged us to bridge the academic-industry divide.  Your scholarship has also informed us in how best to prepare our students so that they are ready to perform knowledge work upon graduation. Most recently, your collection Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities has asked us to consider how we can “[build] interdisciplinary discussions between rhetorical studies and [digital humanities] by defining shared research trajectories, methods, and projects” (2014, p.9). Whether you are reporting on the needs of practitioners or encouraging academics to be better researchers or teachers, your scholarship has influenced our field and those of us who work within it.

As a professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, you have developed, participated in, and led the Computational Rhetoric research cluster. You have served as Senior Researcher and Past Director in WIDE (Writing, Information, and Digital Experience), a Research Center in the College of Arts and Letters, and as WIDE Senior Researcher in MATRIX, the Center for Digital Humanities and Social Sciences. In addition to your own scholarship, the research cluster and these two centers have contributed dozens of collaboratively and individually written publications to the field. Working with your fellow inventors, you created ELIReview, co-founded Drawbridge, and have applied for multiple patents. Your scholarship is remarkable because you use it not only to inform but also to innovate and create. No summary of your scholarship this brief can do justice to your intellectual contributions because they are so outstanding for their expanse and diversity of thought.

While your record demonstrates your contributions as a scholar and collaborator, it also shows that this excellence extends to your teaching and mentoring. Over the years, you have chaired over a dozen dissertations and sat on over two dozen dissertation committees. In 2009, as a member of the ATTW Research Committee, you helped to organize our first annual research workshops, which have since influenced scholars and graduate students across the country and the world. Through this work, you have assisted with mentoring many technical communication scholars.

Your record of service as a leader in the field and within your institution is equally stellar. You have served ATTW for over a decade in many capacities. You were the conference program chair in 2009, and you have held leadership positions within the organization since then, serving as member-at-large, vice president, president, and past president. You have volunteered for many committee assignments and roles that have helped to move the organization forward. These roles have all addressed timely and important needs of the organization. You have always been available whenever there has been a challenge or opportunity that has needed our attention. Your leadership is further evident at your home institution, where you have served as Director of Graduate Studies, as Associate Chairperson for the Department of Writing Rhetoric & American Cultures, and as co-Director of WIDE. Currently you serve as Associate Dean for Graduate Education in the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State.

For these many accomplishments and contributions, we are grateful. Your scholarship is a model for the field, and your generosity of spirit has touched and inspired all of us who have worked with you. Please accept this honor and our hearty congratulations, Bill, on your elevation to Fellow in the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing.

From: ATTW-L <attw-l-bounces at attw.org> on behalf of "Gonzales,Laura" <gonzalesl at ufl.edu>
Date: Wednesday, April 24, 2024 at 7:00 AM
To: "Attw-l at attw.org" <attw-l at attw.org>
Subject: [ATTW-L] In Memory of Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson

This email originated outside TTU. Please exercise caution<https://askit.ttu.edu/phishing>!

Dear ATTW Members:

It is with profound sadness and unmeasurable grief that we share the unfathomable news that Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson has passed away. When he wrapped up his 12-year term on our Executive Committee in 2018, we gifted him an ATTW cycling jersey (thanks to Jim Ridolfo for the suggestion). Though Bill could have easily pedaled away from any additional ATTW labor, we asked him to stay on and serve as Secretary. Without hesitation, he happily agreed. When that term was up, we asked him to serve in our inaugural position of ATTW Historian; again, he happily accepted. Bill always generously stepped up and genuinely showed up with humility, intelligence, grace, and humanity. The holes he leaves in our hearts and organization--and the discipline--are infinite. We love, appreciate, and miss you, BHD! And our hearts and deepest sympathies go out to Leslie and Lily Hart-Davidson, and the rest of his family and friends.

Attached image: BHD posting a FB selfie in 2018, looking proud and fit in his exclusive ATTW cycling jersey.

With deep sympathy,
The ATTW Executive Committee


Laura Gonzales, PhD
Associate Professor of Digital Writing and Cultural Rhetorics
Associate Director, TRACE Innovation Initiative<https://trace.english.ufl.edu/>
Department of English
University of Florida

Editor, Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric<https://reflectionsjournal.net/>
Vice President, Association of Teachers of Technical Writing <https://attw.org/> (ATTW)
Diversity Committee Chair, Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication<https://cptsc.org/> (CPTSC)
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