Should We Concentrate on Developing Specialized Programs to Fill Particular Niches?  

This question, posed as one of many in the annual call for papers, asks further if we should, in developing our technical communications programs, focus on such niches as environmental, safety, or medical writing, writing on the Web, on computer documentation, or on multimedia. As someone who has been asked to coordinate a rethinking of our school’s technical writing curriculum, such a question is paramount. From the perspective of one such as myself, who teaches at a small institution, the answer to this question hinges on three primary considerations: first, how does one balance the need to serve a small university’s duty to serve the general, liberal education requirements of a small body of students with the need to turn out graduates who have specific, marketable skills (a particularly important consideration in technical writing)? Second, how specialized can we make a class in a college like mine before enrollment figures for these classes dry up? And third, are the categories of the niches listed above really mutually exclusive, or can we say that some of them, such as writing for the Web, could be seen as a focus area that could incorporate some of the others?

LaGrandeur, Kevin. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA