Official Completion of PhD

Post On08/14/2026
ByShankar Paudel

My PhD journey has come to an end!!!

I successfully defended my dissertation, “Transnational Indigenous Environmental Justice: A Distant Comparative Study of Nepali and U.S. Environmental Policies and Counter-Archives in Technical Communication,” earning my PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from the University of Texas at El Paso. This marks the completion of one of the most meaningful chapters of my life.

This journey was filled with challenges, sacrifices, countless hours of learning, sleepless nights, and moments of self-doubt. But every obstacle strengthened my determination and reminded me why I started. I have always believed in following my dreams and committing to them with passion and hard work until they become reality. Today is a reminder that dreams do come true when you refuse to give up.

I am deeply grateful to my dissertation chair, Lucia Dura, PhD, and my committee members, Soyeon Lee, PhD, and Carlos Tarin, PhD, for their guidance throughout this journey and for believing in me and my project. I am equally grateful to my parents, relatives, mentors from Nepal and the U.S., colleagues, and friends for their unwavering support. Most importantly, special thanks to my wife, Shanta, and our daughter, Anshrutaa, for always being by my side, bearing with me, and supporting me through it all. I could not have reached this milestone without them.

And I extend a note of gratitude to everyone who ever suggested I wasn’t good enough. Their skepticism unintentionally lit a fire under me, and that fire fueled the drive to cross this finish line.

Shankar Paudel

यत् भावो – तत् भवति।

My name is Shankar. I currently teach at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. I am a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing Studies (RWS) from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). At UTEP, I was an assistant director in the first-year composition program. Apart from being a doctoral student, I am working as an instructor of technical writing (RWS-3359) and first-year composition (RWS 1301). I have worked as an assistant director for the Rhetoric and Writing Studies program (2024-2025) and the University Writing Center (2022-2024) for three semesters (2022 Spring, 2023 Fall, and 2024 Spring). Prior to that, I was a graduate consultant at the University Writing Center (UWC) for a year and coordinated the Workshop Committee during that time. In the summer of 2022, I also worked with the School of Nursing at UTEP as a PhD Research Associate. My areas of interest in research and teaching include technical and professional communication, environmental rhetoric and communication, environmental humanities, environmental historiography, rhetoric and composition, digital humanities, and multimodal composition. My dissertation is focused on Indigenous Environmental Justice Communication, which involves environmental rhetoric and the field of technical and professional communication. I served as the president of two student organizations at UTEP, Frontera Retorica (a student chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America at UTEP) and Nepali Students Association at UTEP (NSA-UTEP), until July 2025. Internationally, I am associated with the South Asian Foundation for Academic Research (SAFAR) as an academic counselor and the Center for Advanced Studies in South Asia (CASSA) as a digital consultant and am also involved in various projects led by Prof. Arun Gupto and Prof. Sangita Rayamajhi.