Bluffton High School graduate, Lindsay Steiner, this winter was awarded the Stephen P. Witte Fellowship at Kent State University, where she is a doctoral candidate.

The competitive fellowship is awarded annually to two Rhetoric and Composition doctoral candidates in the Literacy, Rhetoric and Social Practice program of the English Department at Kent State University.

Each fellowship recipient receives a teaching release for spring semester (2013 for Steiner) to work on her dissertation and explore employment opportunities. Stephen P. Witte was the Knight Professor of Rhetoric & Composition at Kent State, and was a key scholar in rhetoric and writing research.

"My dissertation describes how professional graphic designers articulate and use rhetorical concepts during their design processes," said Steiner.

"Professional graphic designers are, in a sense, multimodal composers; they use two or more modes of representation in the documents that they create," she said. "To understand how these designers use these many modes as they compose, a rhetorical framework guides my research.

"In so doing, I work towards understanding multimodal composing through the contextual nature of design conventions as observed in professional practice."

"To that end, I will observe four participants as they take on a design task in a think-aloud protocol, collecting the data with audio and video screen capture recording. I will then complete retrospective interviews with stimulated elicitation using selections from the video screen capture recordings. This project will contribute to current research on workplace literate practice, rhetoric, and multimodality by developing a more clear articulation and understanding of how rhetoric is deployed in professional multimodal composing practices. In addition, this project may contribute to the literature on using think-aloud protocols with experts in naturalized situations."

Steiner is a 2001 Bluffton High School graduate. She holds a bachelor's degree in visual communication from Ohio University and a master's degree from Kent State.

She is the daughter of Fred and Mary Pannabecker Steiner of Bluffton.