2026 WRIT Undergraduate Spring Student Showcase

This Spring, the Technical Writing and Communication (TWC) and First-Year Writing (FYW) programs collaborated to celebrate the work of Writing Studies undergraduate student writers. The Undergraduate Student Showcase brought together TWC capstone students and FYW student writing award winners to share their work with family, friends, the WRIT community and partners across the university. 

The event, held in the bright and airy Beacon Room in RecWell, provided space for the writers to highlight and reflect on aspects of their products and processes and to engage with attendees in conversation. We honored and celebrated the work students shared which spanned topics and modalities, including websites, videos, slide decks, and essays. Content ranged from personal family narratives to guidelines for creating accessible web content. These diverse artifacts showcased students working across not only a range of writing projects, but also working across moments in their academic lives, from first year courses to senior capstone projects. 

FYW student work was selected by members of the FYW Student Writing Awards Committee who considered a composition’s ability to engage an audience and skillfully develop content to develop insight into the topic or question raised by the work.  FYW award winning compositions are archived and can be accessed on the University Digital Conservancy. FYW presenters at this year’s showcase included: 

1. The (Social) Circus is Coming to Town: The Unsung Benefits of Community Engaged Circus Initiatives by Esther Anderson.
2. Music & Lyrics By Ian Bell,  by Ian Bell 
3. Every Meal Tells A Story, by Brian Lin 
4. How the Lack of K12 Funding for Music Programs Affects Students Entering College and the Gig World by Shondea Thomas
5. Thanks Dad by Shueking Yang 

Among attendees at the event was Shueking Yang’s father whose story and relationship to his son (Shueking Yang) were at the center of Shueking’s composition “Thanks Dad.” After listening to his son read and talk about the impetus for and his process and choices in writing his essay, he diplomatically shared that he was equally proud of all twelve of his children.

Brian Lin shared clips of his video essay “Every Meal Tells  a Story,” and invited guests to share and make meaning of their own experiences of eating, cooking, and sharing food.

Collectively, all of the FYW projects provided guests with a window into the curiosity, creativity and critical thinking that fuels first-year writing student projects.

TWC students were selected by recommendation of capstone instructors to present their capstone or honors thesis projects. Each project demonstrates the diversity of research topics across technical communication; the TWC presenters included:

1. Exercising the Intersection between Technical Writing & UX, by Ai-Quynh Bui
2. Accessibility in Technical Writing, by Makayla Rode
3. The Forest Within The Tree, by Emily Riemer 

Ai-Quynh’s project documents the iterative design, development, and usability testing of ai-quynh.com, a professional portfolio website. Her honors thesis is an exercise in going beyond design and into redesign, balancing user feedback with professional discretion, and challenging inherent designer bias. After graduating, she continues to iterate her website.

Makayla’s project responds to a gap in accessibility knowledge. To illustrate the necessity of accessible content, she created a style guide and reference sheet, to guide users through making their content accessible from start to finish. This project works to remind us how vital it is for people producing content—particularly writers—to make information as equitable as possible. 

Emily’s thesis blends researched fact with personal narrative as it explores burnout, mental health, and resilience through the lens of the remarkable longevity and tenacity of the coastal redwood, Sequoia Sempervirens. Emily brought a redwood sapling with her to her presentation, and after describing her thesis project, an audience member commented, “who says that technical writing can’t be creative?” 

Congratulations to the presenters for their outstanding and interesting work and thank you to guests for joining us.