By Bailey Herring

Two new Student Ambassadors for the Technical Communication Department were inducted in a ceremony on Tuesday, April 10th, 2018: Ellen Biggerstaff and Brooke Jackson.

As undergraduate representatives for both the department and UNT as a whole, Brooke and Ellen will work to provide a student's perspective on subjects like courses, workload, and campus life.

They will also assist new and continuing students in the tech comm department, and serve as positive role models. Ambassadors also make appearances at events like UNT Preview Day to recruit and speak with students who have not yet enrolled at UNT.

Brooke Jackson has possessed a passion for user experience (UX) design since high school, and came to the University of North Texas to pursue this passion with the Communication Design program offered by the College of Visual Arts and Design.

Brooke said that program didn't offer what she was hoping for, so a professor referred her to Dr. Chris Lam in the tech comm department because of the UX work he was doing in his classes. Brooke enrolled in his TECM 3200 course, where she found a better fit for her career goals.

Brooke puts her technical communication skills to work as a UX designer for the UNT Systems office of IT Shared Services. She is currently working on a new design for the student portal that she hopes will be used by future students.

Brooke felt honored to be selected as an ambassador for the tech comm department. "I think the job puts me in a great position to be a mentor to other students following my career path," Brooke said.

Ellen Biggerstaff originally came to UNT as an English major with a concentration in rhetoric.
She wanted to pursue analytical and audience-focused writing as a career, but didn't know where to begin.

After taking TECM 2700 on a recommendation from her boyfriend, Ellen discovered how much she enjoyed technical writing and quickly changed her major to technical communication.

Since that change, Ellen has become heavily involved with the tech comm department. In addition to her ambassadorship, Ellen works as an assistant in the TECM Lab, a teaching assistant and lab instructor for TECM 3200 (Information Design for Electronic Media), and a research assistant for Dr. Lam's current research project.

Ellen was excited to find another way to get involved and to give guidance to new students who aren't yet knowledgeable about what technical communication professionals do.

"It will be cool to help out people who are in the same position I was in," Ellen said.