Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

English

Cana Uluak Itchuaqiyaq is a third-year PhD candidate in Technical Communication and Rhetoric. Cana recently passed her comprehensive examination “with Distinction,” which was a programmatic first for her department. She is the managing editor of Technical Communication Quarterly, the flagship academic journal in the field of technical communication, currently housed at USU.

An Iñupiaq (IN-you-pack) from an isolated northwest Alaskan village, Cana was concerned that she had only two people of color as instructors in all her years of education and was often subject to course readings lists written entirely by white authors. Because of this reality, her research uses mixed methods approaches to addresses how mainstream academic practice often perpetuates the marginalization of underrepresented scholars and communities and consequentially interferes with diversity and inclusion efforts. She uses computer science and rhetoric techniques to conduct large-scale publication research.

Cana’s recent fieldwork in rural Alaska investigating how researchers can respectfully build collaborative relationships while working with marginalized communities was funded through USU’s GRCO grant. She is the winner of the USUSA’s Graduate Enhancement Award and multiple national awards, including CPTSC Bedford/St. Martin’s Diversity Scholarship, CCCC Scholars for the Dream Award, and the AIGC Science Post Graduate Scholarship.