Melissa Toomey

Melissa Toomey

  • College of Liberal Arts

    English

    Assistant Professor

    Programs
    • First Year Writing Program
Office Location

Mazur Hall, 1113

Expertise

First Year Writing, Women’s Rhetoric, Social Movement Rhetoric, ESL/ELL Writing, Digital Writing, Literacy Studies, Technical Writing

Biography

Melissa Toomey has taught in the First Year Writing Program since 2017. An implant from Ohio, she came from the University of Cincinnati and prior to that Miami University where she engaged in several assessment projects used to place students into their courses and explore what strong writing in given majors looks like across the university. She earned grant monies that allowed her to work with various departments on creating effective writing assignments and grading rubrics in their courses. As well, she won a grant allowing her to complete a community literacy project that assisted local second language speakers in advancing their English skills through the use of multi-genre writing. Her research interests include activist rhetorics, digital rhetoric, assessment theory, and literacy studies.

Selected Publications

  • “You’ve Got to Download This!: Cultivating Substantive Student Work through an Examination of the Rhetorical Capabilities of Apps.” CCCC Annual Convention.  Portland, Oregon.  March, 2017. 
  • Toomey, Melissa. “Teaching Rhetorical Analysis through the Examination of Apps.” Mobile Technologies and the Writing Classroom: Resources for Teachers.  Ed. Claire Lutkewitte. New York: NCTE, 2016.
  • “For End to Every Wrong, We Stand as One’: How Embracing a Theory of Emotion Helped Perpetuate Social Activism in the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL).” Rhetoric Society of America Conference (RSA). Atlanta, Georgia. May, 2016.
  • “Theorizing Feminist Rhetorics within the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL): Taking the Risk of Extrapolating the Value of Emotion.” CCCC Annual Convention.  Tampa, Florida.  March, 2015.
  • Toomey, Melissa, and Melissa Faulkner.  “Balancing Graduate Studies with Writing Instruction.” Teaching with the Norton Field Guide to Writing.  New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2006.             

Courses Taught

  • English 0701: Introduction to Academic Discourse
  • English 0802: Analytical Reading and Writing (Synchronously and Asynchronously as well as through WebEx)  
  • English 0812: Analytical Reading and Writing (ESL)
  • English 2696: Technical Writing