Celebrating Arts and Humanities Speaker Series Presents Joshua Welsh: Google vs. Microsoft

This year’s Celebrating Arts and Humanities Speaker Series features Joshua Welsh, associate professor at Central Washington University, who will discuss his work on Thursday, April 20 at 4 p.m. in the Student Union Recreation Center at CWU, Room 137 A/B.

In a fast-changing world, Welsh stresses that the ways people communicate through technology may be changing, too. His talk will focus on “How different visions of collaboration and innovation impact the development of technologies such as smartphones, electric cars, and artificial intelligence.”

A professional writer for almost 20 years, Welsh began his career by earning a B.A. in German studies at the University of North Carolina. After graduating, he worked as a professional writer, technical writer, and as a reporter for public radio. Welsh earned his M.S. in scientific and technical communication, followed by a PhD in rhetoric and scientific and technical communication, both from the University of Minnesota.

Welsh, who works in the Department of English, began teaching at CWU in 2013 and coordinating the Online Professional and Creative Writing program in 2016. He remains a relevant technical writer, most recently publishing an article breaking down the rhetoric surrounding smartphone patents in the January 2017 edition of The Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric.

Welsh refers to his work as both challenging and rewarding. He sees Central as a place “where people—both faculty and students—have the opportunity to build new things.” However, the real privilege of his work, he feels, comes from getting to see students “build new things.”

He describes his own relationship with writing as an evolving one. Welsh remembers a time when writing was painfully difficult. Though, now he reflects and can appreciate the process.

“As I have learned more about writing and process, that pain has diminished. Writing for me is a way of learning about the world. We learn about the world through the ways we communicate and writing about it,” Welsh says.

Admission to the presentation is free and open to the public.

To learn more about this event, please contact Ashlie Crawford in the College of Arts and Humanities, at 509-963-1845 or ashlie.crawford@cwu.edu.

Media contact: Dawn Alford, public affairs coordinator, 509-963-1484, dawn.alford@cwu.edu.

--April 13, 2017