Student Information
Graduate StudentEnglish (Writing, Rhetorics, and Literacies)
The College of Lib Arts & Sci
Heidi Willers is a PhD candidate in the Department of English program in Writing, Rhetorics, and Literacies. She researches at the intersections of rhetoric, law, disability studies, and technical and professional writing. Her research has appeared in IEEE: Transactions on Professional Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, and Journal of Air Law and Commerce.
- J.D. Southern Methodist University, Dedman School of Law
- M.U.P. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- B.S. (summa cum laude) Illinois State University
Heidi's research interests lie at the intersections of rhetoric, law, disability studies and technical and professional communication. She is drawn to complex problems and conflicts that can benefit from collaborative problem-solving. Through her work, she seeks answers to questions of how we can make our public spaces, workplaces, institutions, and experiences more inclusive of a broader cross-section of society, particularly people with disabilities, and how we can better educate writers and community members to engage in this collaborative problem-solving work.
Peer Reviewed Journals
Willers, H. (2025). Lessons from a “Scholar on Fire” for a World on Fire: A Framework to Position Technical and Professional Communication Scholars for Policy Impact. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. 55(1), 31–57. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472816231210224
Willers, H. (2024). Bridging the Accessibility Divide: Testing the Efficacy of an Accessible User Experience Model via a Case Study of Microsoft's Inclusive Design Toolkit. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 67(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2024.3358906
Willers, H. (2012). Grounding the Cape Wind project: How the FAA played into the hands of wind farm opponents and what we can learn from it. Journal of Air Law & Commerce, 77, 605-637.
Conference Proceedings
Hedquist, A., Willers, H., and Hannah, M. A. (2024). Discipline-Driven AI: Training a GPT to Qualitatively Code for Technical and Professional Communication Research. Proceedings of the 42nd ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (refereed), 266–268. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641237.3691686
Book Reviews
Deen, L., Labani, N., Piette, L., Sullivan, V., and Willers, H. (2023). Book Review: Translingual Inheritance: Language Diversity in Early National Philadelphia. Community Literacy Journal, 17(2), 111-115.
Courses
2025 Summer
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 302 | Business Writing |
2025 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 302 | Business Writing |
2024 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 302 | Business Writing |
ENG 311 | Persuasive Writing |
2024 Summer
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
ENG 302 | Business Writing |
ENG 302 | Business Writing |
ENG 302 | Business Writing |
2024 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
ENG 391 | Writing in Context |
2023 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
ENG 311 | Persuasive Writing |
ENG 302 | Business Writing |
2023 Summer
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
ENG 302 | Business Writing |
ENG 302 | Business Writing |
2023 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 301 | Writing for the Professions |
2022 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 216 | Persuasive Writng Public Issue |
2022 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 301 | Writing for the Professions |
2021 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 101 | First-Year Composition |
2021 Spring
Course Number | Course Title |
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ENG 102 | First-Year Composition |
ENG 102 | First-Year Composition |
2020 Fall
Course Number | Course Title |
---|---|
ENG 101 | First-Year Composition |