Melonie McMichael

Having been in the field of technical communication for 25 years, Dr. McMichael has experience in both industry and academia. She worked as a technical communicator in Austin’s high-tech sector for over a decade, including multiple stints at AMD as well as a contracting work for 3M and working as a lone writer for a small software company. She held multiple roles in the field that ranged from production through writing to print buying. In 2010, Melonie earned her PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University where she taught for five years. Since 2011, she has taught at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs in the Professional and Technical Writing emphasis. With over a decade’s worth of workplace experience and another decade teaching technical communication, she brings both scholarship and industry knowledge to the classroom.

Working in the field as a desktop publisher in the 1990s when technology was changing rapidly, Dr. McMichael was required to become technologically adaptable herself. After entering academia, she found that technology was seldom being taught in technical communication programs, primarily because of the changing nature of technology. Looking over her own experience, she created a course that addresses that issue and has been successfully teaching technological adaptability to professional and technical writing students for six years.

She consults on all things technologically adaptable under the company name Technodaptability.