Rebecca Walton

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

English 

Rebecca Walton is an assistant professor of technical communication in the Department of English. She is a passionate supporter of undergraduate research, serving as faculty mentor for six Honors projects since 2012 in addition to chairing two Honors theses in the last year. These Honors projects involved a range of research designs, including human subjects research requiring IRB review. Her mentorship has led to publications, including a student poster presented at the National Conferences on Undergraduate Research and a blind-reviewed journal article co-authored by an undergraduate student, graduate student, and Professor Walton. Her own research explores the role that communication can play in more equitably distributing power, making explicit connections between technical communication and concerns of social justice. Professor Walton has invited undergraduate students into this work, for example by including an undergraduate research fellow on a collaborative team with the University of Washington and the Red Cross. This student played a key role in helping the team to organize, document, and safely store research data that were collected to discover, legitimate, and share the practices of successful emergency preparedness practitioners in Red Cross/Red Crescent societies worldwide and particularly those in the Global South.