LMC Professor TyAnna Herrington Passes Away

Posted September 14, 2018

TyAnna K. (Ty) Herrington, who was on faculty for 21 years in the Ivan Allen College School of Literature, Media, and Communication, passed away on July 31, 2018.

A memorial will be held on Tuesday, October 2, 4:00 – 6:00 pm at one of Ty’s favorite placed, the MidCity Café at 850 W Peachtree St NW, Atlanta, 30308. Remarks will be made and attendees are invited to share any remembrances.

Ivan Allen College Dean Jacqueline Royster shared her rememberances of Dr. Herrington.

“When I came to Georgia Tech in 2010, I didn't know many people at all. I did know Ty Herrington. We met when she was a graduate student at Texas Tech University. At the time, I was the chair (president) of our professional organization (Conference on College Composition and Communication), and she was already actively engaged in scholarship, action, and service with an incredible eye and enthusiasm for our work in international context. She came to my attention as a colleague with expertise in issues related to intellectual property, which was quite a thorny problem for writing programs and for colleagues who write textbooks in composition studies. So, I invited Ty to bring her legal knowledge, her expertise in technical communications, and her unequaled passion for justice and academic excellence to the challenges that colleagues in the field were facing in this area. I admired her work, which was so well anchored by the steadfast but gracious ways that she made good connections for our organization, shared her insights with our membership, and got important jobs done.  She helped us to work through some complex issues in thoughtful ways and to connect with colleagues in law and policy who were critical for our next steps ahead.”

“Our paths crossed regularly over the next decade or so, and, when I discovered that she was on the faculty here at Georgia Tech, I was very pleased to know that she would be part of the team. What I discovered, as I settled into my GT role, was that her passion, dedication, and deeply serious commitments to excellence remained a driving force for her in all of her professional commitments.  In her interestingly soft-spoken way, with her simply amazing southwestern drawl, she was a key asset for her school, the College, and the Institute, always willing to help.  We will miss her; I will miss her. I know that many of you will also miss her.”

LMC Professor Karen Head also shared reflections on Dr. Herrington.

“Ty was one of the most adventurous people I’ve ever known. She was perpetually in motion. Traveling was her heart’s passion, and travel was a way for her to pursue new and exciting hobbies. She took up surfing in her 50s. During the same period, she walked the Ostabat route of the Camino de Santiago. She never met a stranger, and made many friends from around the world. Ty was also a foodie who enjoyed a good meal and a great cocktail, and I was lucky enough to share in some of her “gastronautical” adventures. From the moment I arrived on campus in 2004 as a postdoc, she has been a steadfast mentor and friend. I will miss most her infectious laugh.”

Professor Herrington joined Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 1997. Previous to Georgia Tech, she had been a lecturer at Texas Tech University, a university associate at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, an adjunct research fellow and a visiting professor at the European University at St. Petersburg, Russia. She earned a B.A. in Foreign Language from Rhodes College, a J.D., M.A. in Composition and Rhetoric, and a Ph.D. in Technical Communication and Rhetoric all from Texas Tech University.

She had three books published in law: Intellectual Property on Campus: Students’ Rights and Responsibilities, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010; A Legal Primer for Technical Communicators, Multimedia Developers, Graphic Designers, and other Creative Communicators, New York: Allyn and Bacon/Longman Publishers, 2003; and Controlling Voices: Intellectual Property, Humanistic Studies, and the Internet, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001.

She specialized in intellectual property law and international technical communication. Her refereed journal publications, book chapters, and other articles treated issues in law as well as those in international communication and global internet-connected projects.

Herrington’s 1999 Fulbright allowed her to develop the Global Classroom Project, for which she was awarded the Outstanding Innovative Use of Technology Award and an IREX Starr Collaborative Grant.

She served as a senior Specialist on Fulbright’s Senior Scholar Advisory Panel and on Fulbright’s CIES Peer Review Committee. She also served the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing’s Executive Committee as its Information Officer, the Executive Advisory Board Member for the Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication’s journal, Programmatic Perspectives, and is an Editorial Board member of Kairios online journal. She was on the National Council of Teachers of English Intellectual Property Caucus from 1999 and co-chaired from 2000 - 2001; from 2009 for the life of the committee, and was a member of the Intellectual Property Committee. She was a member of NCTE’s National Standing Committee on Technical and Scientific Communication and a member of the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s Intellectual Property Task Force. Herrington served the state of Georgia as a member of the State Board of Regents Copyright Committee. She delivered keynote, featured, and plenary addresses in international and national venues, including the NINCH Copyright Town Hall, Conference on College Composition and Communication, and the Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication.