Academe/Industry Relationships: Balancing Academic Principles and Marketplace Demands  

Recognizing that theory is of value only if it can be applied, academics must envision the world beyond the classroom and prepare students to compete in a market-driven world. Practicing professionals must be willing to share their expertise and their technology with academic programs and must work to strengthen connections with the academy. Advisory boards, mentoring programs, internships and fellowships for faculty and practitioners as well as for students, team teaching, guest lecturing, distance learning, and collaborative research projects– these are but a few of the ways to bridge the gap between and industry, thereby improving the education of future technical communicators and advancing the profession.

Sutliff, Kristene. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

Academic/Industry Relationships: A Challenge for Both Sides    

Emerging technologies create new challenges for academicians and practitioners alike. The two groups must have mutual respect and must strive for balance between academic principles and marketplace demands. Through shadowing, mentoring, internship programs (for faculty and practitioners as well as for students), collaborative research projects, and other means we can begin to share expertise and technology that will help bridge the gap between academe and industry.

Sutliff, Kristene. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

The Academy/Industry Binary: The Effect of Distance Education on the Debate  

The academy/industry debate usually centers on whether instruction should be education-based or experience-based, and on whether instructors should have more academic or industrial experience. Distance education can change both of these debates, lessening the difference between the workplace and the academy. The academy can be relocated within the workplace through dedicated classrooms and online courses performed on workplace computers, and by making classes asynchronous so that practitioners can fit them into their structured schedules. The debate over instructor training is changed because of the additional industry-based expertise needed to produce a distance education class and because distance education technology facilitates participation of practitioners.

Eaton, Angela. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Education>Industry and Academy

Adventures in Collaboration: The Story of an STC Faculty Internship  

Rentz relates the lessons she learned as an academic who contributed to a writing project for a private company.

Rentz, Kathryn. Intercom (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

Bridging the Gap Between Industry and Academe  

Using their own mentor-mentee relationship as a pilot project, the authors planned and implemented a successful mentoring program pairing professionals in the Orlando Chapter with graduating seniors in the technical communication program at the University of Central Florida. This paper (and presentation) provides a detailed description of the planning and execution of the new program, along with feedback from participants at the end of the first year, and an update on the program midway through its second year. It also provides a glimpse into the special trust that can grow between mentor and mentee--and the mutual personal and professional growth that can result from such a relationship. In addition, the session includes a turnkey package (both hard-copy and electronic) of administrative forms and materials that can readily be adapted to implement a mentoring program within another STC chapter or organization. The package is also available from either presenter or from the Orlando Chapter Education Committee.

Spivey, Bonnie and Daniel W. Voss. STC Proceedings (2005). Academic>Education>Industry and Academy

Building Relationships Between University Programs and Local STC Chapters  

Collaboration between academic programs and STC chapters builds a sense of community and relevance for all participants. Neither academic programs or professional chapters by themselves provide sufficient educational or professional development opportunities. Working together helps inform faculty and students about workplace trends, helps introduce students to their future professional opportunities, and provides chapter members and their companies and organizations with access to up-to-date research and to students before they go on the job market.

Cunningham, Don. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy>STC

Design as Practiced

Design as practiced is considerably different from design as idealized in academic discussions of 'good design.' A few years ago, I made the transition from the university to industry--a deliberate decision on my part to practice what I had long been preaching, and to try to understand the constraints and pressures from the business point of view. How nice it would be, I thought, to be able to see products in the marketplace that reflected my design philosophy. This chapter recounts one stage of my learning process: issues that seem simple from the vantage point of academia are often extremely complex when seen from inside the industry. Indeed, the two sides seem hardly to be speaking the same language. In the course of my experiences, I have come to recognize that industry faces numerous problems that are outside of the scope of the traditional analyses of design. In particular, there are management and organizational issues, business concerns, and even corporate culture.

Norman, Donald A. JND.org (1999). Design>Usability>Industry and Academy

Expanding Internships to Enhance Academic-Industry Relations: A Perspective in Stakeholder Education    

To improve technical communication education, educators and internship providers need to find ways to revise internship experiences so that educators, internship providers, and students/interns can use internship experiences in a way that benefits all three parties. This article uses a stakeholder education approach to propose two new kinds of internship processes to benefit all three groups. The first approach--colloquia--allows all three parties to interact via the same scheduled event. The second approach--student publications groups--shifts internship from a workplace to a school activity. By including such approaches into their curricula, technical communication programs can both improve their relationships with local internship providers and improve the training received by their students.

St. Amant, Kirk R. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2003). Careers>Internships>Industry and Academy

Expanding the Learning Community: Using Electronic Mentoring to Build Academic/Industry Partnerships  

New technologies provide technical communicators with opportunities to expand their learning communities. Establishing and maintaining an electronic mentoring forum will benefit students and teachers.

Fink, Bonnie L., Leslie K. Gasser and Kara L. Schubert. STC Proceedings (1996). Academic>Internships>Industry and Academy>Education

Focus Groups: Planning the Education of Technical Communicators During the Next Ten Years  

These focus groups continue the dialogue begun in focus groups organized by Ken Rainey and Katherine Staples, Education and Research PIC, at the 1993 annual conference in Dallas. Participants discussed the topic of how partnerships among the Society, business and industry, and colleges and universitates could strengthen academic programs in technical communication, empower the profession, and promote research.

Barnum, Carol M., Saul A. Carliner, JoAnn T. Hackos, Rita Reaves, Stuart A. Selber and Sherry G. Southard. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Education>Industry and Academy>STC

Inside Out/Outside In: Transcending the Boundaries That Divide the Academy and Industry

Having lived and worked on both sides of the academe-industry border, I've thought a great deal about the negative attitudes held by so many who live in both of these parts of the larger world of technical communication.

Hayhoe, George F. George Hayhoe Associates (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

Interact to Produce Better Technical Communicators: Academia and Industry  

Focus groups exploring the possibilities of collaborations between industry and academia took place at annual STC conferences in 1993 and 1994. As a result, the STC Academe-Industry Advisory Committee has developed bibliographies and research tools concerning this subject and in 1996, spearheaded the successful effort to appropriate STC funds for academic internships. This session builds upon those earlier programs and has a specific goal: the findings of the focus groups will direct the next round of the Society’s Academe/Industry Relations Advisory Committee’s efforts to find new ways of increasing industry and academic collaboration.

Teich, Thea, Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish and Kenneth T. Rainey. STC Proceedings (1995). Presentations>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

Moving Between Academe and Industry: Lessons Learned  

The author discusses her transition from academic professor to corporate worker and back to academic professor. She compares and contrasts some fundamental differences between these environments on the dimensions of teaching, research, collaboration, problem solving, and ethics. She describes some of the lessons she learned as she moved back and forth across these environments. She concludes by suggesting that, however large these transitions seem, they are transitions we routinely expect our students to make when they migrate from school to work.

Levine, Barbara J. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

"Operation Butterfly" and Other Adventures in Cooperation Between Industry and Academe: When Rip Van Winkle and Shirley Temple Join Forces, the Sky's the Limit!  

This article, as well as our conference presentation, catalogues a year in the symbiotic relationship between the Orlando Chapter of STC, the University of Central Florida's technical writing program, and the student-run technical communication club, Future Technical Communicators (FTC)--and the ways in which this powerful partnership has helped sustain many of the chapter's varied and successful initiatives that led to its designation as a Chapter of Distinction in 2003. In this article, authors Bonnie Spivey and Dan Voss report on the UCF-STC legacy, the development of the chapter's new mentoring program, their contribution to educational outreach/ fundraising, and the numerous ways in which these institutions are working together.

Spivey, Bonnie and Daniel W. Voss. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy>STC

The Orlando Chapter/University of Central Florida Partnership: A Win-Win-Win Scenario!  

The twenty-year partnership between the Orlando Chapter and the technical writing program at the University of Central Florida (UCF) has reached new heights in the past two years. This paper reviews several highly successful programs that have either grown directly out of the UCF-Orlando Chapter partnership or which have benefited from and been improved by it: (1) an annual scholarship program; (2) student projects that benefit the chapter (or feature the chapter as client); (3) strong student support to the STC AccessAbility SIG; (4) an annual fund-raising initiative; (5) an educational outreach initiative to Central Florida high schools, and (6) a highly successful formal mentoring program pairing students with professionals.

Lippincott, Gail and Jennifer Selix. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy>STC

Services Academics Offer: Considering Ways Organizations Can Seek Help from Universities  

In technical communication, we talk about bridging academy and industry quite often, and we usually brainstorm ways that academics can forge relationships with professional organizations. This paper focuses on the reverse: helping technical communicators seek out academics who can help with workplace writing problems. Academics can offer expertise in training, problem-solving methodologies, and research facilities and can help organizations work through problems of collaboration, technology, design, and communication.

Smith Diaz, Charlsye. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Collaboration>Industry and Academy

Should Academic Programs in Technical Communication Try to Strengthen the Bond between Academia and Industry?  

Whether the answer to this question is a resounding yes or no, we need to address this question when we consider models for strategic development. My own experience is that technical communication is drawing closer to issues present in both academia and industry, issues such as visualization of data, usability and field testing of products, design of instructional material for the web, and other research issues. But as the two domains need each other to begin to solve problems, the collaboration is fraught with perils, perils such as who states the problem, who manages the project, what resources are available for working on the project, and who owns the results? As we begin to try to strengthen the bond, do we currently have models for successful collaborations? Are there strategies in place that lead to success? Are certain approaches doomed to failure?

Feinberg, Susan G. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Industry and Academy>Collaboration