In addition to Business & Technical Writing, Zachariah McVicker has taught courses in the Creative Writing and Rhetoric & Research Programs at the University of Illinois. He was awarded the English Department’s Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2022. During his time at the University, he taught BTW 263: Writing a Web Presence (now BTW 285), working with students to develop an analytical and professional engagement with online platforms and content beyond LinkedIn and printable resumes. As online audience members and online authors, students consider both content and medium when engaging with and developing their own online presences. He also taught ENGL199: Writing to Get That Job (soon to be BTW 279) and assisted in revisions to course design. Previously, he worked with a team of BTW instructors to develop the current curriculum of BTW 250: Principles of Business Communication, along with revisions to the BTW Instructional Wiki while teaching BTW 250.

His research interests include considerations of interpassive and interactive media experiences, uncoupling content from structure across mediums, and genre concerns that connect contemporary narrative poetry and lyrical nonfiction. His own creative writing attempts a more civic poetry, and a more personal prose, often about raising two young children between digital and natural landscapes

Jamie Keener has taught a variety of English courses in both writing and literature in her four years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In her capacity as a writing instructor and PhD student of medieval literature, she has taught Rhetoric 105: Writing and Research, Business and Technical Writing 250: Principles of Business Writing, and English 216: Legends of King Arthur over the course of her time at the University of Illinois. Her pedagogy merges these variegated experiences, and she works to address cross-cultural communication and race in her classrooms. To better disrupt power structures assumed to be inherent to the classroom and in professional writing, she exercises student-centered pedagogy through contract grading, a practice she is extremely grateful to colleagues in the Program in Professional Writing, such as Kate Newton, for helping her workshop.

In addition to considerations of race and culture, Jamie’s teaching is informed by experiential and playful pedagogy. She seeks out creative ways to encourage her students to engage with writing multimodally with the goal of providing them with new perspectives and understandings of their own positionality. In May 2023, she traveled to Birmingham, UK, with her colleagues in Medieval Studies to participate in a workshop titled Language Learning and Pedagogy of Play.