Rate My Professor Trixie Smith

Trixie Smith is a professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures at Michigan State University, where she joined the faculty in August 2007. She serves as Director of The Writing Center and the Red Cedar Writing Project, founding director of GALE: Global Alliances in Literacy and Engagement, Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Programs in Rhetoric and Writing, and faculty in the Center for Gender in Global Contexts. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. in English with a Composition/Rhetoric focus from the University of South Carolina (2002), M.A. in English (1999), M.L.I.S. (1999), and B.A. in English and Elementary Education from the University of Mobile (1988, summa cum laude). Previously, she was Director of the University Writing Center at Middle Tennessee State University (2004–2007), founding director of the Middle Tennessee Writing Project, and held positions at the University of South Carolina and as a secondary school teacher.

Smith's research specializations encompass writing center theory and practice, writing across the curriculum (WAC)/writing in the disciplines (WID), writing pedagogy, teacher training, cultural rhetorics, embodiment, queer and feminist rhetorics, community and global engagement. Key publications include co-editing Graduate Writing Across the Disciplines: Identifying, Teaching, and Supporting (WAC Clearinghouse, 2020), The Pop Culture Zone: Writing Critically About Pop Culture, 2nd ed. (Cengage, 2014), and Building Bridges through Writing (Fountainhead Press, 2014). Recent chapters feature “Collaging the Classroom, the Personal, and the Critical: Autoethnographic Writing in the National Writing Project” (Utah State UP, 2021) and “Embodiment, Relationality, and Constellation: A Cultural Rhetorics Story of Doctoral Writing” (WAC Clearinghouse, 2021). She has received the 2025–2026 Charles Carpenter Fries Award from the Michigan Council of Teachers of English and the 2025 Outstanding Service Award from the International Writing Centers Association. Smith has served on the CCCC Executive Committee, boards of IWCA, ECWCA, and MiWCA, and contributes to global writing center development, including invitations to the International Conference on Water in Africa.