Nicole Gonzales Howell

Photograph by Tracy Gregory

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Language at the University of San Francisco, where I also serve as Co-Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and lead the university’s AI Faculty Advisory Board. I earned my doctorate in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University, my master’s in Composition Theory at California State University, Fresno, and my bachelor’s in English Literature and Language at the University of Southern California.

I am an English-monolingual Chicana who, as a young child, fell in love with reading and writing. My path to the academy was not a straight line: it took over ten years after finishing my bachelor’s degree for me to decide to return to school. Coming back a decade later, I recognized that my early experience in the university had been marked by feelings of disenfranchisement and of not belonging. It was then that I became aware of the political nature of writing and language, and became passionate about teaching Rhetoric and Composition.

That awareness shapes everything I do. My upbringing in a Latino family, my education, and my long detour away from higher education have as much to do with how and why I teach writing as the scholarship I have done on good pedagogical practice. As a Latina, I have seen firsthand the effects of racism, classism, and sexism, and my teaching is always guided by promoting social justice and creating spaces in which all people have an equal opportunity to thrive.

My research and teaching sit at the intersection of antiracist pedagogy, raciolinguistic justice, writing assessment, and the ethics of writing in the age of AI. Understanding the gatekeeping function of writing—especially now—drives my commitment to helping students and faculty negotiate their own writing while considering the social implications of standardization.