Technical and professional communication master’s students work with a faculty advisor to complete a three-credit independent research (IR) project, featuring original research. Stakeholders recommended the IR thesis be revised to better communicate IR to industry. Using a writing, activity theory, and genre theory lens, I analyzed what contradictions emerged between academic and workplace activity systems as stakeholders recommended genre revisions. I analyzed faculty and professional advisory board meeting transcripts, alumni and student surveys, and a Graduate School director and thesis examiner interview. Results indicated the thesis’ spectrum of functions, from its strengths encouraging students’ research proficiency to the limiting way it showcases IR as a product, not a process. Stakeholders suggested no thesis changes but recommended IR genre system modifications. As agents of change, students are uniquely positioned to use the IR genre system to address workplace communication problems and help mend our discipline’s academia-industry divide.

Previous research has indicated that engineering faculty do not follow best practices when commenting on students' technical writing. However, it is unclear whether the faculty prefer to comment in these ineffective ways, or whether they prefer more effective practices but simply do not enact them. This study adapts a well known study of response in composition to ask whether engineering faculty prefer authoritative, form-focused comments, or whether they may prefer to write different sorts of comments. We asked ten civil engineering faculty to comment on a sample paper and then rank their preferences for provided versions of comments on the same paper. One provided version emphasized comments on content, one emphasized comments on form, and one was balanced. Comparisons of the respondents' preferences and practices suggest that the engineering faculty recognize and value content-focused, non-authoritative responses, but generally do not write comments that conform to these values. We consider the implication of these findings for research on response to technical writing as well as for technical writing faculty in their own course. While recognizing the need for more research, we also discuss ways in which writing professionals, including WAC administrators and technical writing professors, can encourage engineering faculty to enact their preferences for response styles that reflect best practices.

Although rhetoricians have studied the discourse practices of engineers, little is known about the production workers who must assemble engineering knowledge into functional products. This case study examines what happens when a production worker tried to improve manufacturing documentation, and how her success depended upon both her craft knowledge and the rhetorical skills she attributes to a Writing Across the Curriculum program she experienced in college. … although the goal of engineering may be to produce useful objects, engineers do not construct such objects themselves. Rather, they aim to generate knowledge that will allow such objects to be built [1, p. 5].

For three years, the School of Business explored writing across the curriculum (WAC) approaches for developing written communication skills of undergraduate business majors. In selected classes, instructors stressed links between understanding concepts and being able to write clearly about them, improved design of assignments, and improved feedback to students. Instructors participating in this study concluded that a WAC approach improved the quality of student writing and the applications of course concepts. They also concluded that these improvements carried over to subsequent courses. Students reported using more care in revising drafts and more attention overall, to writing in certain settings. Their attention peaked when the instructor emphasized writing. A minority of students maintained, however, that writing should be evaluated only in writing classes taught by English faculty and that evaluation of writing should not be used to determine the grades they receive on assignments or for the course itself.

Although engineers spend a substantial amount of their time writing or delivering oral presentations, the typical engineering curriculum segregates communications instruction from technical coursework. But out of an increasing sense of responsibility to provide more authentic professional training, engineering educators are developing programs which bring “real-life” contexts into the classroom. As a result, technical communications instruction is changing in significant ways. Writing clinics are tailoring their services to the precise needs of those they serve and expanding the range of professional support they offer. Furthermore, writing across the curriculum has significantly influenced engineering by linking composing and understanding. New communications courses parallel professional classes, and some redesigned engineering courses actually integrate verbal communication with “subject matter” instruction, Since these broad structural renovations are paradigmatic for other professional programs, technical writing teachers can and should facilitate and support such developments.