#30238
The Faculty Internship Panel provides a guideline and model for faculty internship programs. Although technical communicator internships, particularly faculty internships in the corporate environment, are generally considered a good idea. They are difficult to set up. The Austin STC chapter (in collaboration with members of the Austin Technical Communications Mangers' Focus Group and the Technical Communications Department at Austin Community College) set up and ran a successful pilot Faculty Internship program. A panel offaculty interns and corporate sponsors provide pointers in planning, implementing, and evaluating such a program.
Rosenquist, Deborah J. STC Proceedings (1996). Academic>Internships>Education
#13737
Finding a Home for Technical Communication in the Academy 
The placement of technical communication within an academic curriculum presents an interesting challenge for university administrators and faculty. Technical communication is a young discipline that borrows content from several older, more established disciplines. As a younger discipline, technical communication must combine its borrowed ingredients from other areas into a new and complete offering that can attract research funding for professionals in the academy and deliver job opportunities for its students preparing to enter industry. The credibility of technical communication as a new discipline is dependent on its ability to develop a cohesive body of basic and applied research, its ability to manage technological change, and its ability to promote its identity among an army of competing disciplines.
Carver, Michael. ACM SIGDOC (1998). Academic>Education>Assessment
#14427
#18999
From Soup to Nuts: Fashioning the Menu for a New Program in Technical Communication 
The process of revising an English Communications emphasis proceeded smoothly for the most part because of good planning by a Curriculum Committee. However, unseen pitfalls and departmental politics hindered some aspects of the experience. It will be necessary to apply lessons learned to continue the revision process and create a successful emphasis.
Allen, Lori A. STC Proceedings (2002). Academic>Education>Instructional Design>Assessment
#19481
German Academic Programs in Technical Communication
In June 2000, FORUM 2000 was held in London. As the founding member of INTECOM, one of the sponsors of the FORUM conferences, Germany has experienced a major growth in the technical communication profession. As of 1999, there were more than 2000 members in tekom, the German Society for Authors and Writers of Technical Documentation (5). Likewise the number of institutions offering technical communication programs is growing. In 1991, Fachhochschule Hannover began offering the first technical communication program. The purpose of this article is to describe some representative German technical communication programs.
Smith, Herb J. STC Proceedings (2001). Academic>Education>Regional>Germany
#19100
Going it Alone: How a Freestanding Program Develops Its Own Identity
Going it alone, the SFSU program has integrity as a community, yet struggles a bit within an institutional structure designed for established discipline departments.
Rehling, Louise. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA
#23370
Those who find themselves the solo technical writing faculty in their department often have to deal with infrastructural issues as well as curricular and programmatic concerns. Infrastructure involves creating learning environments conducive to building skills students need to be qualified technical communicators, and such learning environments often require access to technology.
Carnegie, Teena A.M. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Academic>Education>Technology
#14877
Graduate Programs in Professional Writing, Technical Writing and Rhetoric
An international directory of graduate academic programs in PW, TW and Rhetoric.
#19099
It is not industry collaboration that has caused the Wayne State program to founder. Indeed, many in the English Department might bristle at that term, believing the program is thriving. Nevertheless, contradictions within the department that reflected and repeated historical patterns have allowed the program to wither.
Ranney, Frances J. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA
#19093
Growing Technical Communication Programs through Recruiting
This paper lists recruitment strategies that technical communication programs can use. Its purpose is to prompt discussion at the CTPSC conference in response to the following question: Which strategies bear the most promise for recruiting sufficient numbers of students to supply the growing need for technical communicators?
Maylath, Bruce A.R. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA
#19065
Here Comes That Song Again: The Theory and Practice Blues
An issue that continues to affect our strategies for developing undergraduate programs is the old contest between theory and practice, or, as it frequently occurs in technical communication programs, between theory and tools. Should we focus our undergraduate programs on understanding principles of communication in the technical world or should we focus on teaching the tools that are called for in the job ads for technical communicators?
Allen, Nancy J. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Undergraduate>Theory
#19075
How Does the Institutional Home of a Program Affect its Development?
Having the department of technical communication located within the School of Engineering has a significant impact on the program’s development.
Davis, Marjorie T. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Engineering
#23066
How Genre Choices Effect Learning in a Digital Environment
Makes the argument that research into the impact of media on learning often misses the impact of genre choices on learning. The article presents a series of studies that imply that genre choices are more important than media choices.
Hailey, Christine E. and David E. Hailey. Journal of Engineering Educators (2003). Academic>Education>Multimedia>Bandwidth
#19097
If You Build It, Will They Come? The Importance of Promoting Technical/Professional Writing Programs
Although the field of technical/professional writing continues to grow apace with the demand for its graduates, a large number of people, especially students, have never heard of it, or, if they've heard of it, have no idea what it is. Consequently, our program has begun an aggressive promotional campaign.
Patterson, Celia. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA>Marketing
#19074
A Layered Literacies Frame for Articulating Program Goals 
Anyone who presumes to use language for workplace tasks and problem-solving will need literacies beyond the formal ones traditionally and historically at the center of technical communication programmatic instruction. Today’s technical and scientific communication students must possess multiple literacies to be successful in the dynamic workplaces they will enter, no matter what their chosen specialties&endash;environmental, safety, medical, information technology, or multimedia writing. To meet students’ needs whether they enter programs for a single course or a course of study, I propose a pedagogical frame for articulating technical communication program goals. This frame is defined in terms of six key literacies--basic, rhetorical, social, technological, ethical, and critical.
Cargile Cook, Kelli. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>TC
#29144
Carolyn Miller's oft-cited "Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing," published in 1979, tries to give technical communication faculty more cultural capital in English departments controlled by literature professors. Miller replaces a positivistic emphasis in technical communication pedagogy with rhetoric. She shows how technical knowledge is produced by individual activity and social affirmation and not by objective descriptions of sensory impressions. Her "Rationale" is an attempt to change institutional and discursive structures by persuading literature professors that technical communication can have as much distinction in the academy as literature.
Moore, Patrick. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2006). Academic>Education>TC>Professionalism
#14285
Literature Reviews in Student Project Reports
Writing project reports is an important part of the engineering curriculum at Singapore universities. One important section of the formal report is the literature review. Most universities around the world provide guidelines on writing reviews, emphasizing that plagiarism is unethical. However, these guidelines do not offer explicit training on how to avoid plagiarism. In order to write academically acceptable reviews while avoiding copying from source materials, students face a major challenge and resort to employing various strategies to cope with the task. In this study, we examined the literature review sections of final year project reports to find out how engineering undergraduates in a Singapore university cope with writing reviews and to suggest ways in which they can extend their skills to improve their literature reviews.
Krishnan, Lakshmy A. and Sujata S. Kathpalia. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication (2002). Academic>Education>Writing>Plagiarism
#23382
Looking for Trouble: Moments of Crisis in a Professional Writing Curriculum
As a new director of a new Professional Writing program, my colleagues and I spent much of our time designing curriculum. The sequence and content of our courses, we felt, were the only real way to make our program more than the sum of its parts.
Franke, David. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Academic>Education>Management
#24599
Messages from Josefa: Service Learning in Mexico
The article discusses service learning in a women's natural health clinic in Josefa Dominguez, Mexico. The author also discusses how students in writing classes can learn from community service and learning.
Clark, Gloria. LLAD (2000). Academic>Education>Service Learning>International
#19192
New Accessible Web Design Program at Northeastern University
Web accessibility is a hot topic, and now there is a brand new place to gain the knowledge and credentials you need to succeed in this increasingly important field. Northeastern University, in Boston, Massachusetts-- already well known for its technical writing program-- is now offering a graduate certificate program in Interactive Design. This new program, one of the first in its kind, focuses specifically on topics surrounding web accessibility and design for interactive media of all kinds.
Gardner, P.J. and Lori Gillen. Usability Interface (2003). Academic>Accessibility>Education
#19076
As faculty and administrators responsible for program implementation continue to explain to each other how engineers, computer programmers, business managers, and technical communicators view the world, I hope that a new and genuinely collaborative, interdisciplinary program will emerge. The resulting opportunities for students will--I hope--be worth the trouble.
Ecker, Pamela S. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA
#20881
Professional Writing Mentoring
The main objective of this practicum is to encourage your pedagogical, technical, and professional development.
Romberger, Julia and Kate Agena. Purdue University (2003). Academic>Courses>Graduate>Education
#13021
Proposal to Support ABET Accreditation for Technical Communication Programs
The Ad Hoc Committee on Accreditation recommends that the IEEE Professional Communication Society act as the sponsoring cognizant technical society to present technical communication program criteria to the Related Accreditation Commission (RAC) of Accreditation Body for Engineering and Technology (ABET). This report contains the background documentation for this recommendation.
Davis, Marjorie T., Leslie Olsen and Mark P. Haselkorn. Mercer University (1998). Academic>Education>Assessment>Engineering
#19106
Re-Visioning and Repositioning Technical Communication Programs in Digital Spaces
As society increasingly inhabits digital spaces in addition to physical places, the environment in which technical communication programs are developed undergoes fundamental change. To a large extent, these changes occur because networked digital spaces exhibit different dynamics, dimensions, and characteristics than do physical places. For example, while physical places have three dimensions, digital spaces are unlimited in their dimensions, connections, and relationships. In such spaces, different entities, such as people, agents, objects, technologies, and information relate to each other in unlimited numbers and ways. With this capacity, digital spaces allow for the nearly instant aggregation of mega-structures called portal technologies, which command the lion's share of traffic in these spaces. According to Adamic and Huberman, digital spaces thus follow what they call a 'universal power law,' resulting in a winner-take-all environment.
Starke-Meyerring, Doreen. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education
#19109
Reflective Instrumentalism as a Possible Guide for Revising a Master's Degree Reading List
Although we only used Durst's model as an initial starting point to help us articulate one of the main tensions in our revision process and then basically abandoned it, the final reading list we generated--although not perfect--does reveal a degree of 'reflective instrumentalism.' Students who have seen the new list make positive comments about it because the list manages to bring what seem to be opposite poles--reflection and instrumentalism--into a single reading list that represents the current state of our discipline. Although we seemed during the process have lost sight of our model, our list, though not perfect, does seem to represent reflective instrumentalism.
Williams, Sean D. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Graduate
