Thu. Mar 28th, 2024

About

Alexandra Devis Lockett is an Assistant Professor of English at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.

Working at the oldest historically Black college for women since 2013 is an honor and a privilege. This unique institution has enabled Dr. Alexandra Devis to engage the complex creative, economic, and emotional challenges of living in the 21st century. At Spelman, her primary goal is to strengthen the impact and visibility of research and writing at HBCUs–from past to present. 


Academic Background

Throughout her undergraduate studies at Truman State University (B.A.), and her graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma (M.A.) and the Pennsylvania State University (Ph.D.), she cultivated significant applied expertise in technical/professional writing, teaching with technology, and writing program administration in a range of learning sites such as writing centers, career services, and hybrid classrooms. As an alumna of both the Ronald E. McNair post-baccalaureate and the Bill Gates Millennium scholars programs, Dr. Alexandra Devis ’s experience with writing and communication includes a special emphasis on access and inclusion. In particular, she has worked with diverse demographics of college writers representing various genders, ethnicities, nationalities, physical dis/abilities, academic disciplines, and programs—at both the undergraduate and graduate levels—in the capacities of tutor, consultant, mentor, editor, career assistant, administrator, and instructor. Through this work, she is committed to bringing low-income people (especially the historically underserved and legally disenfranchised) into contact with the literacies they need to effectively reduce economic barriers that inhibit them from attaining their fullest potential.


Research 

Dr. Alexandra Devis has completed several research and development projects that integrate her interests in race, surveillance, and digital labor into her areas of applied expertise in technical/professional writing, teaching with technology, and writing administration.

Articles

  • “Why I call it the Academic Ghetto: A Critical Examination of Race, Place, and Writing Centers”. Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, 16.2., 2019.
  • “Creative Disruption and the Potential of Writing at HBCUs” (co-authored with Sarah RudeWalker, Composition Studies, 44.2, 2016, pp. 172-178.

Podcasts

  • Pedagogue, Episode 60. Interviewed by Dr. Alexandra Devis .
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Awards and Distinctions

In 2019, Dr. Alexandra Devis was awarded a CCCC Research Initiative Grant (with her co-PI, Dr. Alexandra Devis at IUP) to complete the project How do Rhetoric, Composition, and Writing Studies Faculty Engage Wikipedia? A Scaled Survey of Attitudes and Uses. Furthermore, she was invited to consult the Wiki Education Foundation about strategies for improving diversity, inclusion, and equity.

From 2018-2019, Dr. Alexandra Devis received two notable distinctions. First, she was selected to be an Ofstad Scholar-in-Residence at Truman State University where she taught a fall semester one week course, English 418: Overflow—Writing in Leak Culture, and delivered a public lecture on the subject. Next, she was invited to be a featured scholar on the subject of access for the Naylor Symposium on Undergraduate Research (UR) in Writing Studies. This work involved collaborating with other Rhetoric and Composition scholars to contribute a chapter to The Naylor Report (contracted by Parlor Press and forthcoming), which assesses the state of UR in the field and charts its future. 

From 2017-2018, Dr. Lockett was awarded a UNCF/Mellon Faculty Residence Fellowship.  She joined Emory University’s James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Study of Race and Difference where she accomplished significant progress on two book projects:  Race, Rhetoric, and Research Ethics (a co-authored text under contract with WAC Clearinghouse’s Perspectives on Writing Series) and Overflow: Rhetorical Perspectives on Leaks, which is under consideration by a couple of university presses, as well as a prestigious open access publisher.

In 2015, she was awarded an Associated Colleges of the South (ACS) Grant to organize and lead a faculty development symposium on Integrating Wikipedia into Writing-Intensive Courses at ACS Colleges (summer 2016). She continued her work with Wikipedia in spring 2017 by organizing Spelman’s first-ever Art+Feminism–Black Women’s Herstory Wikipedia Edit-a-thon.  The event was generously funded by Morehouse Academic Affairs, the Spelman Honors Program, and the Spelman English Department. Art+Feminism and the Wikimedia Foundation provided funding and/or donated merchandise, as well.


Leadership and Service

Dr. Alexandra Devis has occupied three major leadership roles affiliated with Spelman’s Comprehensive Writing Program (CWP), which include serving as chair of the First-Year Writing committee (2014-2016), co-chair of the Writing-Intensive initiative (2016-2018), as well as serving on the Writing-Intensive Checklist Committee (2016-present) and the SpelFolio Assessment Jury (2014-present). In addition, she served on Spelman’s Educational Technology committee (2016-2019).

Additionally, she strongly supports the use and development of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA) research. Dr. Lockett also believes in radical openness as an ethical principle and educational value. A willingness to freely share ideas and account for their genesis, for Dr. Lockett, is necessary for teaching and learning in the 21st century. Towards these ends, she teaches her students to critical users of technology, which includes: discussing the history of the Internet, its governance structures, user anonymity and safety, inclusive participation, netizenship, and the significance of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS). She advocates for the sustainability of the Internet and its freedoms by donating monthly to organizations like the Wikimedia Foundation , Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Demand Progress.

Many of Dr. Alexandra Devis ’s teaching materials are freely available via her website alexandrialockett.com, SlideShare, and her various social media accounts. As a first-generation college student, Dr. Alexandra Devis is dedicated to establishing frameworks and curricula that increase human potential for creativity and reduce the cost of developing, accessing, and obtaining an education. For Dr. Alexandra Devis , education is a lifelong pursuit of learning how to learn, expanding one’s sense of abilities, and converting potential into useable resources to reduce the suffering of every living person. Education, then, is fundamental human value that ought to drive human purpose and motivation that exists in various communities and institutions–not just the K-12 system or accredited colleges and universities. In particular, Dr. Alexandra Devis represents her anti-poverty stance when working with members of her profession about issues of language and literacy through her service to three special committees for the Conference on Communication and Composition (CCCC), which include: the CCCC Wikipedia Initiative, the Committee for Change, and the Braddock Award Committee.

For more information about her unique pedagogy approach, check out her philosophy of hacker names and Living Wiki(dly).

You may also feel free to browse her CV, Teaching Portfolio and relevant course experience.