faculty

Megan Fletcher, PhD she/her/hers

Assistant Professor

English & Communication

Contact

508-999-8274

mfletcher@umassd.edu

Liberal Arts 305A

Education

2022

North Carolina State University

PhD

2016

North Carolina State University

2013

Bridgewater State University

Teaching

Programs

Teaching

Courses

ENL 237: Intro Strategic Communication

Introduction to principles and theories of strategic communication. Students will develop practices for researching, defining, and engaging strategic communication as a rhetorical effort to persuade and identify audiences in/through various media environments.

ENL 490: Capstone in Communication

Capstone study. The course focus will change with the instructor, but topics may include professional writing and communication, mass communication, strategic communication, technical communication, and others.

ENL 602: Grants Writing

The course includes intensive research into funding sources, analysis and interpretation of guidelines and writing several drafts of grant proposals. This specialized rhetorical form involves analyzing complex audiences and learning persuasive techniques unique to grants writing.

ENL 621: Document Design

Emphasis on combining textual and graphic components to accomplish production-oriented, informative, instructional, and persuasive tasks. Students will acquire a broad understanding of the fundamentals of visual communication and document design. Students will then evaluate the effectiveness of design choices for particular rhetorical situations and apply those principles to specific projects using industry-standard design/publishing software.

HLT 211: Comm about Health and Illness

Development of intermediate level of communication skills about health-related concerns. Students learn to communicate effectively with diverse professional and public audiences and to connect the development of communication strategies to social, cultural, and political context. The course is organized around a semester-specific theme pertaining to the social determinants of health, health disparities, and public health concerns.

Research

Research interests

Strategic Communication
Intimate Partner Violence
Media & Technology
Autoethnography
Community-Based Research

Select publications

Megan Alyssa Fletcher (2018).
We to Me: An Autoethnographic Discovery of Self, In and Out of Domestic Abuse
Women's Studies in Communication, 41(1), 42-59.
National Communication Association: Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award (2019)

Dr. Megan Alyssa Fletcher is a communication scholar of women’s health and media. Through community engaged research she incorporates narrative-driven and intersectional feminist approaches to craft interdisciplinary interventions for studying (and ultimately preventing) violence against women broadly, and intimate partner violence specifically. The aim of her research is to actively improve the conditions for women who have experienced abuse, a goal rooted in effective strategic communication. Her first research project, “We to Me: An Autoethnographic Discovery of Self – In and Out of Domestic Abuse”, was published in Women’s Studies in Communication. For this manuscript, she received the Stephen E. Lucas Debut Publication Award from the National Communication Association (NCA) in 2019. Dr. Fletcher earned her Ph.D. in Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media from North Carolina State University in 2022. Born in New Bedford, Dr. Fletcher is thrilled to partner with local organizations for research endeavors and student engagement opportunities. As a first-generation college student who attended UMass Dartmouth, Dr. Fletcher is keenly interested in supporting our students in their academic and professional pursuits.