Dr. Christina M. LaVecchia is Assistant Professor of English (Discipline-Based Education Research) at the University of Cincinnati. There she contributes to cross-disciplinary pedagogical research (particularly focused on first-generation college students) and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in first-year and intermediate writing, writing pedagogy, WAC, and rhetorics of health and medicine.
Dr. LaVecchia’s research spans multiple disciplines. In rhetoric and composition, her work focuses on contemporary composing theories, writing pedagogies, invention, digital literacies, and professional practices. Currently she is co-editing a volume on revision practices (Revising Moves: Writing Stories of (Re)Making, Utah State University Press) in which contributors tell stories about revising and its impacts on thier work, identities, and everyday lives. Her published work in rhetoric and composition appears in College English, Composition Forum, Peitho, and WPA: Writing Program Administration, among others.
Currently, Dr. LaVecchia is also a Research Collaborator (formerly a Research Fellow) in the Knowledge and Evaluation Research (KER) Unit at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. There she uses her training rhetoric and writing to researched patient-clinician communication and care (shared decision-making) that is individualized to meet patients’ values and preferences and fits their lives. Her collaborations appear in Patient Education and Counseling, Health Expectations, BMJ Open, and Mayo Clinic Proceedings: Innovations, Quality, & Outcomes. She also has several works in progress with KER, most notably a study on patients’ experiences with contested, medically unexplained illnesses and conditions, an experience she terms undercared-for chronic suffering. While at Mayo Clinic she has also taught a workshop series on scientific writing to biomedical sciences postdocs and graduate students.
From 2019 to 2021 Dr. LaVecchia supported faculty and programs from across disciplines with writing pedagogy as the founding Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) Program and Assistant Professor of English at Neumann University in Aston, PA.
In 2012 Dr. LaVecchia was the UC English department’s William C. Boyce Excellence in Teaching Award recipient and is the UC College of Arts and Sciences 2014 recipient of a university-wide teaching award.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5607-2618