Interview of Recent Graduate

Interview of Texts and Technology recent graduate Thomas Cavanagh, Ph.D.
By John Bork

Dr. Cavanagh graduated from the Texts and Technology program in 2006, the fourth student to do so. His dissertation The Kiosk Culture: Reconciling the Performance Support Paradox in the Postmodern Age of Machines was chaired by Dr. Karla Kitalong. He is currently Director, Course Design & Production - Worldwide Online and Assistant Professor, Department of Arts & Sciences - Worldwide at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona, Florida. He is also an accomplished author of mystery novels and script writer for film and television.

I see your background is English and Technology Management. Did you feel you were adequately prepared for the program when you started? How did you do it--part time, full time, with financial aid, summer sessions, etc?

I think I was prepared, for the most part. I started as a post-bac, so I got a sneak peek into the program before I "officially" started. I did not have any formal grounding in textual theory, or even a concept of what that meant, so I had to play catch up in the beginning. In my first course (it was the History course taught by Tony Grajeda), some of the other students started dropping names like Foucault and Derrida and Barthes and I was utterly clueless. I feel I caught up quickly enough, though. I completed the program part-time with no financial aid. For most of the program, my employer covered the tuition, but I paid for the last few courses myself. Ouch. I had a real plan for completion and may have set a land speed record for the amount of time it took to finish. I was pretty organized and deliberate about it.

Tell me about the internship component of your degree work. What did you do? How long did it take?

I was working as the Program Manager of an e-learning portal at the time and arranged my internship to coincide with my full-time employment. It actually fit very well and I was able to relate the practical day to day activities with the more general and theoretical concepts surrounding the experience. Although the work was continuous, the internship period was limited to the semester that I earned the credits.

What single course, if any, do you feel was the most significant, interesting, and challenging during your time in the program?

Hmmm. I'm not sure I would single one out. I really liked all my courses, even the electives. The History course mentioned above was my first in the T&T core and it really opened my eyes. There was an elective I took through the engineering department on interactive simulation that was pretty cool--I got to build a military simulation with avatars (my son really enjoyed seeing it when I brought him in one day to see it). I took two courses with Tony Grajeda and Karla Kitalong and eventually asked them both to be on my committee (Karla was the chair). Tony offered a course on Acoustical T&T that I thought was very original.

Congratulations on your accomplishments as an author, Tom! Did you ever find yourself "blocked" writing for coursework in T&T? How did you get going again?

No, I was never blocked. I have worked as a freelance writer in the past and never had the luxury of writer's block or I might risk a paycheck. I had a general idea of what my topic could be when I started the program and refined it throughout my coursework. Whenever possible, I tried to write my seminar papers on some aspect of that topic. Thus, when the flag finally dropped and I could start officially writing my dissertation, I already had about 50% of the first draft completed. It really helped me hone the concepts and gave me a huge head start on the writing. It's one of the reasons I was able to move so quickly through the program.