About Me

Charlsye Smith Diaz, PhD: Professor and Consultant

Hi. My name is Charlsye (charl-see) Smith Diaz, and I a professor and consultant. I have a PhD in technical communication and rhetoric and concentrations in engineering communication, writing pedagogy, and online education. In practical terms, this means I like to help researchers explain their complex ideas in plain language. 

This page describes some of the things I have been doing.

Write When Ready: Writing Resources for Grad Students and Academic Writers

Lately, you can find me at WriteWhenReady.com working with graduate students who are writing dissertations or masters theses. We have writing groups and writing workshops about writing dissertations and journal articles. We start with the rhetorical purpose of specific genres of academic writing and work all the way down to drafting, revising, and finally editing sentences. Participants also learn how to work with their committees and academic advisors, how to build good academic writing habits that lead to finishing writing projects, and how to edit for specific publications in their fields. 

Online Education (Virtual Education) 

I specialize in online education, and I understand first-hand the challenges educators have in relying on online teaching during the events of 2020.  

My perspectives related to virtual classrooms have been influenced by teaching technical and engineering communication online; developing college courses and program elements for online delivery; parenting children who have taken online courses for five years now; coaching graduate student writers as they work on theses, dissertations, and journal articles; and my favorite virtual education project has been working with the National Association of Legal Assistants/Paralegals (NALA) during the development of its advanced training and certification program for paralegals, a nationally recognized certification program. 

Director, Professional & Technical Writing and Director, Engineering Communication

I was the director of Professional & Technical Writing at the University of Maine from 2006-2018. UMaine student alumni have created a profession of professional writing in Maine, and together, we built a robust program that leads students to find meaningful work during and after college. 

On one of my last days at the University of Maine, Professional & Technical Writing students and I attended the 2018 UMaine Research Symposium. After students presented their work, we stopped to snap a photo with Paul Bunyan, a 31-foot statue outside the Civic Center. This is the Paul Bunyan that is brought to life in Steven King's 1986 novel, It.

In the photo on the right, UMaine mechanical engineering seniors use the swim deck to prepare to test their catamaran in the university pool instead of on open water where testing usually occurs because during this particular spring, the lake was still frozen in April. A successful test and project stood between these students and something they wanted: graduation.