Biography

Sherry Burgus Little is Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters and a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University.  Until 1996, she directed the Technical and Scientific Writing Program, which she originated and developed.  From 2002 to 2007, she served as Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at San Diego State University.  She has served on the Senate for many years, chairing the Faculty Honors and Awards Committee. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in literature and rhetoric. Her research interests include social construction and collaboration, rhetoric of technical and scientific communication, gender studies, the disciplinarity of writing studies, pedagogy, experiential learning theory, assessment, ethics, writing in nonacademic settings, genre studies, usability and validation testing methodology and principles, technology and writing, and modern British and American Literature, with a focus on James Joyce.

Her research has been published in such journals as Issues in Writing, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, WPA: Writing Program Administration, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Computers and Composition, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, The Technical Writing Teacher, and numerous proceedings and other periodicals. She has edited and co-authored technical texts for McGraw-Hill, Prentice-Hall, Houghton Mifflin, American Technical Society, and Breton publishing companies and contributed chapters to books published by Irwin Press, the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, and Croom Helm.  She is currently at work on a text on rhetoric and ethics in technical communication in addition to a study of archival materials about James Joyce in Dublin, Ireland.  She is also working on a text tentatively titled, The Woman Figure in the Early Works of James Joyce.

She is on the editorial board of Writing on the Edge, Issues in Writing, and Technical Communication Quarterly.  From 1999 to 2008, she was Co-editor of Special Issues for Technical Communication Quarterly, and from 1987 to 1997, review editor of Issues in Writing.  She served as President of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing from 1995-97 and Vice President from 1991 to 1993, and she has held the office of Secretary in the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication and President and Vice President of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. In 1992, she was selected Associate Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication, and in 2000, she was elevated to rank of Fellow in the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing.  In 2007, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication.

She also works as a technical writer, editor, and consultant in business and industry, conducting workshops and seminars in communication and improvement of instruction in training programs for supervisors, technicians, engineers, and management personnel; proposal writing and sources of funding; job search training; usability testing; and documentation principles.  Her clients have included YWCA, The Price Club, Woodward-Clyde Consultants, Medtronics, Xerox, Nike, and NCR, as well as federal and state agencies.

She received her Ph.D. from Arizona State University in Modern British and American Literature, with a specialization in James Joyce.