PhD and MA, Carnegie Mellon University; MEd, University of Massachusetts–Lowell; BA honors, University of Massachusetts–Amherst
Former Director of Writing and Communication at Georgia Tech.
Former Class of ‘58 Endowed Professorship in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication.
Rebecca Burnett is the former Director of the Writing and Communication Program (WCP) at Georgia Tech. The WCP fosters a culture of communication excellence emphasizing a rhetorical approach to WOVEN communication (written, oral, visual, electronic, and nonverbal).
Her research areas include assessment, collaboration, constructed environments, digital pedagogies, innovation, literacy studies, multimodality, risk communication (most recently, historical studies related to risk), technical communication, and visual rhetoric (leading to her work as an expert witness in litigation).
At Georgia Tech, she regularly taught The Rhetoric of Images (a version of LMC 3410: The Rhetoric of Nonlinear Documents), The Rhetoric of Risk (a version of LMC 3412: Communicating Science and Technology to Public Audiences), and LMC 3408: The Rhetoric of Technical Narratives. She periodically taught LMC 3403: Technical Communication—Theory and Practice. Her photographs have been included in shows and in publications; representative examples of her work are on this website in the photography tab. Her interest in international communication has taken her to more than 20 countries including Canada, Japan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.
Dr. Burnett can be contacted at rebecca.burnett@lmc.gatech.edu or at 404-662-0240.