Sunday’s Keynote – Dr. Saul Carliner

Dr. Saul Carliner has a double-double career in learning and communication with substantial tenures in both academia and industry in both fields. He currently is Professor of Educational Technology and serves as Chair of the Department of Education at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec in Canada. His teaching and research focus on topics ranging from the design of instructional and informational materials for the workplace, the management of groups that produce these materials, and related issues of professionalism. He has received research funding from SSHRC, Entente Canada-Quebec, Canadian Council on Learning, Society of Technical Communication, and Hong Kong University Grants Council to address the research and scholarship in Technical and Professional Communication, as well as Instructional Design.

As an international consultant, he has provided strategic planning and evaluation services for organizations in Africa, Asia, Australia, North America, and Europe, includiing Alltel Wireless, Boston Scientific, AT&T, Equitas, IBM, Microsoft, ST Microelectronics Turkish Management Centre, Wachovia, and several U.S. and Canadian government agencies.

Among his 250-plus publications are several award-winning articles in Intercom and Technical Communication, the best-selling Training Design Basics, award-winning book Informal Learning Basics, numerous book chapters, articles, and op-eds and over 50 peer-reviewed publications. His recent work focuses on systemic stress on students, their financial wellness and navigation through global and transnational educational systems, as well as studying the bullying faced by LGBTQ+ faculty—all of which has been especially impactful on academic communities.

He has appeared on CNBC Asia, CTV Montreal, Global National, Globe and Mail, Jerusalem Post, Les Affaires, Montreal Gazette, and the Wall Street Journal. His Vice President of the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education, Fellow and past board member of the Institute for Performance and Learning, past Research Fellow of the Association for Talent Development, and Fellow and past international president of the Society of Technical Communication.

RIGO Award Winners

Dr. Johndan Johnson-Eilola

Dr. Johnson-Eilola passed away suddenly on November 14, 2023. He was Professor and Head of the Communication, Media and Design Department at Clarkson University, where he worked for over two decades. At Clarkson, he also directed the Eastman Kodak Center for Excellence in Communication and chaired the Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research. Dr. Johnson-Eilola earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University, where he wrote a dissertation about pre-Internet hypertext, which was supported by a fellowship from the Ford Motor Company. His dissertation became an important book in the field, but he also published books about new media, online work, web design, and more. He published widely in technical communication journals, including Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Technical Communication, and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited widely in the field, and his work has won awards from the National Council of Teachers of English, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Computers and Composition, Kairos, and Technical Communication Quarterly. Dr. Johnson-Eilola’s innovative work, especially in and around writing and communication technologies, has been instrumental in helping the field advance in many important ways.

Dr. Johnson-Eilola’s award will be accepted by Dr. Stuart A. Selber: a Professor in the Department of English at Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson

Dr. Hart-Davidson passed away suddenly on April 23, 2024 of a heart attack while on a regular run. He was 53 years old. He was Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Dr. Hart-Davidson earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University. He co-edited two books, Rhet Ops: Rhetoric and Information Warfare (2023) and Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities (2015 and published over 100 articles and books chapters that have been cited over 1,700 times.  Dr. Hart-Davidson was one of the few authors who contributed to all three of SIGDOC’s publication outlets: our conference proceedings, Communication Design Quarterly (CDQ), and the defunct Journal of Computing Documentation (JCD). In fact, he co-wrote a piece in the final ever issue of JCD in 2002 and in the first ever issue of CDQ in 2012. In all, he authored or co-authored 22 pieces across SIGDOC’s pages—from research articles, to workshops, to poster abstracts and everything in between. In tracing the ecology of his work, we see a deeply collaborative scholar and supportive mentor and friend who truly believed in what he was researching. He saw things others couldn’t and brought us into that vision. Our students, our research, and ourselves are all better off because of  Dr. Hart-Davidson’s research, teaching, mentoring, and leadership.

Dr. Hart-Davidson’s award will be accepted by Dr. Bradley Dilger: a Professor and Director of Writing in the Department of English at Purdue University.

Dr. Halcyon Lawrence

Dr. Lawrence was Associate Professor of technical communication at Towson University and Vice President of SIGDOC before her untimely passing on October 29, 2023. She earned her PhD degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Dr. Lawrence was well known for her pioneering research on bias in speech recognition technology and anti-racist pedagogies. She made significant contributions to the field of rhetoric and technical communication, particularly how accent bias affects user experience. She published extensively, including a notable chapter titled “Siri Disciplines” in the book Your Computer Is on Fire, where she critiqued how virtual assistants reinforce standard accents and marginalize diverse speech patterns. Beyond her research, Dr. Lawrence was celebrated for her dedication to mentorship, student engagement, and the creation of inclusive environments where every voice was heard. She actively worked to ensure that students from diverse backgrounds felt valued and supported in their academic journeys.  Dr. Lawrence contributed to SIGDOC actively throughout the years, including serving as a conference co-chair for SIGDOC 2021 during the pandemic before being elected as SIGDOC’s Vice Chair in 2023.

Dr. Lawrence’s award will be accepted by Dr. Sarah Gunning: an Associate Professor and Director of the M.S. Professional Writing in the Department of English at Towson University.