Victoria E. Ruiz, PhD
Learning & Content Operations Strategist
[Featured Work] 🗂️ Graphic Handouts
Assessing Entrepreneurial Identity | Poster & Handout
ENGL 625: Empirical Research in Writing Studies, Spring 2019
As part of a graduate seminar on empirical research methods in writing studies, I developed this research poster and accompanying handout to present a preliminary pilot study exploring how entrepreneurial identity is constructed and represented in public discourse. Using a multidisciplinary framework and document analysis of The New York Times coverage of Elizabeth Holmes, the project introduces a 3-dimensional heuristic—or “cube”—to examine how language, embodiment, and cultural domains shape public perceptions of entrepreneurial identity.
This pilot study engaged key course goals, including ethical research design, qualitative coding, and genre analysis, and ultimately laid the foundation for what would become the first iteration of my dissertation research. The work reflects a broader disciplinary shift toward empirical, data-driven inquiry in writing studies and showcases how media narratives participate in the rhetorical construction of identity.
Entreprenurial Citizenship: Inquiry & (Re)Definition
Prospectus Defense Handout, Fall 2019
This handout was developed to accompany my prospectus defense in the Rhetoric and Composition PhD program at Purdue—a milestone presentation in which graduate students formally propose and defend their dissertation research. The document introduces my project on entrepreneurial identity and citizenship, which investigates how individuals perform entrepreneurship across cultural domains through a feminist and rhetorical lens. It outlines key research questions, hypothesized concepts, and a custom “cube heuristic” used to analyze identity across micro-, organizational-, and collective-levels. This artifact captures the conceptual groundwork that shaped the trajectory of my dissertation.