In this post the 2024-25 DRC Fellows cohort share their reflections of working on collaborations and developing their scholarship alongside the DRC. During this past year, this cohort of Fellows developed a variety of projects ranging from blog carnivals, podcast episodes, theoretical pieces, and more! We loved working with these Fellows and look forward to following their journey beyond the Fellowship!
Robert Beck
The Digital Rhetoric Collaborative has been a real highlight of my graduate school experience. It was great meeting and working with other graduate students with a wide-range of interests all of which are centered on digital rhetoric.
The DRC’s emphasis on collaboration was by far my favorite aspect of the fellowship. Working with Marie and Alex was a uniquely rewarding experience. Our Digital Circulation Blog Carnival was my first editorial experience and it was tremendously fun. Marie and Alex were both brilliant collaborators and our contributors wrote incredibly interesting and innovative blogs. For many of our contributors, these blog posts are either their first publication, the genesis of a larger publication, or both.
Beyond this Blog Carnival, Medhi and I have been working on a blog post of our own that both envisions and calls for a hopefulness in technology. This collaboration, like the blog posts of the Blog Carnival, is the beginning of a larger project. Both of these projects, as well as the DRC as a whole, have been great experiences and I’m very thankful for my time as a fellow.
Marie Pruitt
Joining the DRC as a Graduate Fellow has been a goal of mine since my first semester as a graduate student when a professor recommended I apply. Once I got the opportunity to join, I was excited but also nervous about collaborating for the first time with other scholars.
Working with Alex and Robert on the Digital Circulation Blog Carnival was a highlight of my whole year. Not only did I get amazing editorial experience, but I also got to help so many wonderfully talented graduate students and early-career scholars publish their work—some for the very first time. I also got the opportunity to contribute to the DRC’s syllabus repository. It was such a pleasure to see how other instructors around the world teach their “writing with data” courses and to create such a valuable resource for other instructors to use in their future classes.
This experience has been such a bright spot in my graduate career, and I’m so excited to see how future Graduate Fellows add to the insights, resources, and materials that the DRC houses.
Alex Mashny
The past two years I spent with the DRC have been wonderful. When I first applied in the summer of 2023, I had no idea I’d spend two years meeting, working with, and learning from such a smart, diverse group of scholar-teachers who I otherwise might never had had the chance to meet. The spirit of collaboration and learning the DRC fostered has so far been unmatched during my time as a graduate student over the last five years.
I have been grateful to work with and learn from all of my cohort mates, though, in particular, it has been a pleasure working with Anuj Gupta, Marie Pruitt, Robert Beck, and Alexandra Krasova, who I had the chance to collaborate with. I am also immensely grateful to the DRC team – Alyse, Simone, and Naomi – who were excellent administrators and leaders. I especially appreciate the chance they gave me to return, and to contribute to the DRC over these last two years. The intellectual community that the DRC introduced me to is one I hope to call home over my career.
I’m grateful to have had the chance to meet people outside of the DRC, too, through many of the projects that I worked on. My favorite project, however, has been the accessibility audit I conducted at the end of this year.
I’ll miss the DRC, but I’m thankful to have called it home for two years. I’ll see everyone at Computers and Writing for karaoke next year (and the years after that, too). – Alex
Toluwani Odedeyi
Joining the Digital Rhetoric Fellowship as a first-year graduate student was exciting but also a little nerve-wracking at first. I wasn’t sure how I would fit in, but over time I settled in and became more confident.
I really enjoyed working with Thais on the Let’s Talk series. I learned so much from the process, from outreach, to planning interview content, hosting and writing the articles. It was a great chance to gain more hands-on experience and practical skills.
Attending and presenting at the Computers and Writing conference was another highlight. It was my first conference in graduate school and it felt amazing to share my ideas and see the work of other scholars. I also enjoyed reading the projects of other fellows. Their work was inspiring and made me think differently about my own research.
I also want to say that the fellowship was very well organized. The team made sure everything ran smoothly and I always felt supported. Overall, this fellowship has been an important part of my first year and I am really grateful for everything I learned and experienced.
Thais Rodrigues Cons
Looking back on this year as a DRC Fellow, my favorite part was the collaborative spirit between our cohort, and the support we received from Alyse, Simone, and Naomi as we developed the projects and met each month. Our year together brought digital rhetoric concepts, such as circulation and genre ecologies, to life as I was studying them in my PhD coursework.
The Let’s Talk series that Toluwani and I developed was a major experience; we had the chance to interview industry professionals and build a project that genuinely connected with our individual graduate school interests. I will always remember some of the meaningful conversations we had with each other and with our interviewees. I hope this becomes a permanent series on the DRC website, and other fellows can keep exploring and supporting alt-ac careers and professionals in Rhetoric and Composition.
Another key moment for me was creating the Writing for Funding Hack & Yack, which brought together my coursework and professional experience within the scope of digital rhetoric. I had a great time creating a tutorial for a platform that I use weekly in my job, PIVOT, and can see it being useful for other instructors and graduate students.
Beyond our cohort, feeling part of a digital rhetoric community was much needed for me as I was discovering my interests. Part of that was attending Computers and Writing in Athens as a DRC fellow, which was incredibly energizing and affirming. The DRC gave me an intellectual home and the confidence to see how our work contributes to the field. It has been an invaluable experience that I highly recommend– as I write this reflection, I am feeling super grateful. Thank you!
Mehdi Mohammadi
As an international student, joining the DRC has been one of the most meaningful parts of my graduate school experience. Coming into a new academic and cultural environment can be overwhelming, but the DRC provided me with a supportive community where I felt welcomed and valued from the start. The fellowship helped me build confidence in my voice as a junior researcher while also giving me the chance to connect with peers who share an interest in digital rhetoric from many different perspectives. An unforgettable part of this fellowship was attending both CCCC and Computers and Writing. These conferences gave me the chance not only to present and learn but also to connect in person with my DRC cohort and the larger community. Getting together at these events was both enjoyable and affirming. I’ll always remember the conversations, the energy, and the sense of being part of something larger than myself.
