Amber Hedquist is an assistant teaching professor and associate director of professional and technical writing programs in Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of English in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research and teaching focus is on technical and professional communication, user experience (UX), community-engaged research and emerging technologies
Tell me about your scholarly work.
I specialize in technical and professional communication (TPC), and my research investigates how people communicate and collaborate. Specifically, I study how people work together across disciplines, technologies, institutions and communities, with particular attention to the communication practices and technologies that influence and scaffold that work.
When describing my research, I reference Pam Estes Brewer’s characterization of collaboration as complex work that is “facilitated by many choices in both structure and technology.” Much of my research is inspired by those choices, leading to questions such as: How do teams coordinate their work? How do researchers build relationships with communities? How can emerging technologies support collaborative work?
To answer these questions, I study the practices, methods and tools that help people work together on complex problems.
How is your scholarly work adding to the greater field?
My contribution to technical and professional communication is developing methods, frameworks and heuristics that help people navigate collaborative work.
My contributions, developed with interdisciplinary co‑authors, fall into five categories:
- Methods for Collaborative Research: Investigated new approaches to qualitatively coding in teams, such as integrating AI, appointing a facilitator and utilizing positioning theory.
- Approaches to Emerging Technologies: Articulated a heuristic for UX testing in virtual reality (VR), proposed a framework for anthropomorphic design interventions and offered recommendations for AI implementation in the workplace.
- Orientations for Community-Engaged Research: Offered a framework for building reciprocity in community-engaged research.
- Strategies for Participant Recruitment: Proposed strategies for participant recruitment, including recommendations for planning and networking, and rhetorical approaches to drafting recruitment materials.
- Reviewing the Research Landscape: Synthesized research on collaborative resources in technical communication and the role of intersubjectivity in online learning.
Each of these is an effort to add structure to collaborating and communicating complex information.
How did you become interested in this topic?
Throughout my career in higher education, my roles have included public affairs management, UX research, research administration, project management and teaching. Each role involved working in interdisciplinary teams, requiring careful attention to how people communicate and make decisions. The recurring complexity of collaborative work led me to similar questions: How are we communicating across disciplinary boundaries? Are we documenting our processes in ways that support shared understanding? What technologies are enabling — or constraining — the work we are trying to do?
My work with WaterSIMmersive is a great example. This National Science Foundation‑funded project is focused on developing museum exhibits about water in Arizona to improve environmental action. Our team collaborated with rural, urban and tribal communities across the state to understand their goals for the exhibit and to design experiences that reflected their knowledge, values and relationships with water. The work required responsive and reciprocal communication: listening carefully, adapting our processes and building exhibit components that honored diverse perspectives. My team and I were attentive to the rhetorical, cultural and logistical decisions that shape interdisciplinary collaboration, and we worked deliberately to build processes grounded in care, respect and reciprocity.
What are you most excited to accomplish as a faculty member at CMU?
I am joining a CMU program with a strong history of leadership in professional and technical writing. I want to build on that foundation. My goals fall into three areas: programmatic leadership, research and teaching.
Programmatic Goals: My programmatic goals are focused on strengthening professional and technical writing at CMU by building a connected community and increasing awareness of the program’s value across the university.
I aim to:
- Build a connected community of writers — create opportunities that bring together students in our majors, minors and courses to celebrate accomplishments, share work and collaborate on ideas. A strong community generates energy, visibility and support that enrich students’ experiences and fosters long-term professional relationships among our program’s alumni.
- Increase the visibility of professional and technical writing’s value — help students recognize that expertise in writing can expand what they are able to do with the knowledge they gain at CMU. Professional and technical writing equips students to communicate complex ideas, collaborate across areas of expertise and articulate the significance of their work. I want students to see our courses, majors, minors and graduate pathways in professional writing and technical writing as transformative opportunities that enhance their academic experience and broaden their professional opportunities.
Research Goals: My research at CMU will continue to examine collaboration, emerging technologies and community engagement while developing a programmatic research agenda. I’m interested in identifying the communication skills and practices students need in contemporary workplaces and using that research to inform curriculum and course development.
I anticipate asking questions such as:
- How are communication practices evolving as AI and related technologies reshape professional environments?
- What writing technologies and platforms structure how professionals produce, share, and manage information?
Addressing these questions will help my colleagues and me remain responsive as technologies, workplaces and communication practices continue to evolve.
Teaching Goals: I want students to experience writing as a form of action by giving them opportunities to use their writing beyond the classroom. In my Grant and Proposal Writing course this fall, students are identifying real grant and proposal opportunities and developing submissions for actual calls; this work requires them to navigate real constraints, audiences, genres and purposes while experiencing how writing can advance an idea, secure resources and bring people together around a shared goal. Similarly, in my Introduction to Professional and Technical Writing course, students are building professional digital that showcase their work to external audiences, reinforcing writing as a tool for visibility and professional growth. As I prepare to teach Science Writing in the spring, I look forward to designing assignments that help students explain complex scientific concepts and participate in scientific discourse. I want students to analyze rhetorical situations, communicate complex information and make deliberate choices about how their writing can create opportunities for action.
What are your goals for the next generation of scholars?
To say I am inspired by CMU students is an understatement. Their curiosity, creativity and ambition make me equally ambitious about what they can accomplish. I have two goals in particular for them:
- Embrace that Everyone is a Writer. Everyone at CMU is a writer. Whatever their field, students need to communicate ideas, articulate their contributions and collaborate with others. My goal is for students to recognize the importance of developing their writing skills and to actively seek out courses and opportunities that strengthen their writing.
- Recognize Writing as Decision Making. Writing is a series of decisions, and decisions have consequences. Choices about authorship, genre, audience, language and purpose shape reach and impact. Thus, I want students to recognize writing as a significant responsibility.
Finally, inspired by “Ted Lasso,” my favorite show, I want the next generation of scholars to stay curious. Curiosity creates the conditions for creative problem solving and challenging assumptions. In short, curiosity catalyzes change. I cannot wait to see what CMU students imagine, question and build.