S5E18: Marybeth Shea - Montana Irish Translator of the Technical
Join us in a westward journey to the Irish enclaves of Butte, Montana and on to a chicken coop on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as Marybeth Shea guides us along little-known paths of Irish migration and through little understood profession of technical communications.
She describes herself as a humanist and cites her Catholic education, specifically with the Jesuits, as foundational to her worldview and her career.
She’s now a professor of English in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Maryland and a technical writer who draws on the Irish storytelling tradition to bridge the gap between scientific specialists and the rest of us.
It was Marybeth’s research for a technical writing project that took her into that chicken coop as part of her hands-on research to develop the storytelling needed to get buy-in from poultry farmers on ways to decrease their ammonia output.
It’s a wide-ranging conversation that adds to our understanding of the complexity of Irish immigration and the growing importance of effective technical communications.
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Photo Credit: Chris Suspect
Marybeth Shea
Marybeth Shea joined the University of Maryland Professional Writing Program in January 2002, but her work on at the university dates back to 1986, when she led incoming School of Public Policy graduate students and mid-career professionals through “Writing Boot Camp.” She has also worked on institutional development projects for the university’s Center for Global Change and created publications for the School of Public Policy. She currently is co-Principal Investigator on a USDA-funded research project that brings together agricultural scientists and farmers from Maryland’s Eastern Shore to develop best practices both for reducing chicken farm pollution and for communicating these practices to the broader agricultural and scientific community. Marybeth is currently working toward her Ph.D. in Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences here at Maryland, and she brings these academic and professional experiences to bear in her teaching of Science Writing and Writing about the Environment in PWP.
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