Shelley Rodrigo Elected Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English
Rodrigo will take office during NCTE’s Annual Convention in November 2021.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Abby Heverin, aheverin@ncte.org
Champaign, Illinois—
Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo has been elected Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).
“NCTE has been my professional home for 20+ years because its mission aligns with mine: ‘The Council promotes the development of literacy, the use of language to construct personal and public worlds and to achieve full participation in society, through the learning and teaching of English and the related arts and sciences of language,’” Rodrigo said. “I am honored to be elected as NCTE’s next Vice President. I look forward to collaborating with my professional ‘family’ members and serving my colleagues as we continue to construct our way to new, and better, literacy learning environments. To do this work, I eagerly anticipate showing up, listening, and speaking out during the tough conversations we have with our students, colleagues, and the larger public.”
Rodrigo is the senior director of the Writing Program; associate professor in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English; and associate writing specialist (continuing status) in the Department of English at the University of Arizona. She has also taught fulltime at Mesa Community College, Arizona, and Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. Rodrigo teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in writing, rhetoric, and film studies. She researches how “newer” technologies better facilitate communicative interactions, specifically teaching and (online) learning. Rodrigo coauthored three editions of The Wadsworth/Cengage Guide to Research and coedited Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press). Her scholarly work appears in journals such as Computers and Composition, Technical Communication Quarterly, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, and various edited collections.
Rodrigo has served on NCTE’s Executive Committee (EC) as the elected chair of the College Section Steering Committee; the CCCC’s EC, both as an elected member and as parliamentarian; TYCA-West’s EC as elected chair and treasurer; and on TYCA’s EC. She was honored to chair both the NCTE LGBTQ+ and Disabled Leadership Award Development Committees as well as NCTE’s Advancement of People of Color Leaderships Award Committee. She also chaired the Resolutions committees for both NCTE and CCCC. In 2021 she won the Arizona Technology in Education Association’s Ruth Catalano Friend of Technology Innovation Award; in 2018 she became an Adobe Education Leader; in 2014 she was awarded Old Dominion University’s annual Teaching with Technology Award; in 2012 she received the Digital Humanities High Powered Computing Fellowship; and, in 2010 she became a Google Certified Teacher/Innovator.
In her candidate statement Rodrigo said, “All of NCTE’s members, and their students, embody and/or are interested in a variety of identities, interests, and experiences that inform their personal and professional identities and literacy practices. At the same time, many members and students face great inequities entrenched by cultural and societal frameworks. By sharing these realities and how they impact our teaching and our students’ learning, we can support one another as we engage in the difficult work of teaching in socially just ways. In particular, we must help one another as we develop effective and equitable practices for teaching people to listen, learn, and communicate with one another in both respectful and critical ways.”
“Shelley Rodrigo’s addition to our team of elected leaders adds expertise in technology and related areas such as film studies at an important time,” NCTE Executive Director Emily Kirkpatrick said. “NCTE has led and innovated during the COVID-19 pandemic and plans to continue to do so. Rodrigo’s pedagogical and research areas will add important knowledge and insights to the organization.”
Rodrigo will take office as Vice President during the NCTE Annual Convention in November 2021. She will join the Presidential Team, which will include Valerie Kinloch, María E. Fránquiz, and Alfredo Celedón Luján.
Full election results can be found here.
About NCTE
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) is devoted to improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. For more than 100 years, NCTE has worked with its members to offer journals, publications, and resources; to further the voice and expertise of educators as advocates for their students at the local and federal levels; and to share lesson ideas, research, and teaching strategies through its Annual Convention and other professional learning events.
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