Although service-learning has the potential to infuse technical communication pedagogy with civic goals, it can easily be co-opted by a hyperpragmatism that limits ethical critique and civic engagement. Service-learning's component of reflection, in particular, can become an uncritical, narrow invention or project management tool. Integrating cultural studies and service-learning can help position students as critical citizens who produce effective and ethical discourse and who create more inclusive forms of power. Rather than being tacked on, cultural studies approaches should be incorporated into core service-learning assignments.

Abstract Preparing students for civic engagement requires new knowledge about the uses of documents for advocacy and social change. Substantial social change results from repeated rather than from single rhetorical acts. Reconsideration of the rhetorical canon of delivery suggests expanding the concept beyond its present connection to publication (visual design, medium) to a rhetorical situation comprehensively defined. Delivery may take place over time and embrace a web of activities including field work, updates, and interconnections with other publications.

Abstract This article argues that technical communicators are uniquely poised to function as public intellectuals. To demonstrate this point, the author offers the example of her work on a major AIDS prevention program report. Situating this work within the history of technical communication, the current discussion of rhetorics of risk, and the writing classroom, the author argues that technical writers don't have simply the opportunity to engage in textual activism; in many cases they have no alternative.

Although the concept of community has been advanced in technical communication as a moral reference point for civic rhetorical action, this concept is typically used in romantic, redemptive, and essentializing ways. This article argues for a radical and symbolic/rhetorical view of community, regarding it a discursive construct purposefully invoked by technical writers for strategic reasons.

Abstract Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

Abstract Technical communication practices have been changed dramatically by the increasingly ubiquitous nature of digital technologies. Yet, while those who work in the profession have been living through this dramatic change, our academic discipline has been moving at a slower pace, at times appearing quite unsure about how to proceed. This article focuses on the following three areas of opportunity for change in our discipline in relation to digital technologies: access and expectations, scholarship and community building, and accountability and partnering.

Abstract This article reports results from a survey of US technical and professional communication undergraduate programs concerning core concepts emphasized and most commonly taught procedures, skills, and tools. Snapshot views of current programs are derived from the results, and the developmental processes and directions of four new programs are described in more detail. The article concludes with challenges for programs to maintain humanistic concerns while also providing effective professional and technical preparation.

This article presents the history, purposes, outcomes, and significance of the CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication during its first five years. It analyzes the topical areas and research methods of the 34 dissertations nominated for the award from 1999 to 2003, as well as the evaluations of the judges. Methods of the nominated dissertations are interpretive (41%) and empirical (59%), but many dissertations combine methods. In the empirical category, qualitative methods (17) outnumber quantitative methods (3). The most frequent topical areas are workplace practice (8), rhetoric of the disciplines (7), and information design (6). Topics that are not widely investigated include issues of race and class and international communication.

The debate over certification of technical and professional communicators has occurred with periods of relative intensity and quiescence for more than twenty years. This article surveys the historical developments of the debate; describes the arguments for and against certification; surveys technical communication curricula and theoretical arguments for literacies, standards, and competencies; and examines various efforts to study certification, including a description of published documents regarding certification.

There have been many attempts to assess the state of research in our field. This article is our attempt to both (1) synthesize recent analyses, opinions, and conclusions concerning the status of technical communication research and (2) propose an action plan aimed at redirecting our field's agenda for its research. We explore these questions: What are the recent research trends in our field? What is and is not promising about our recent approaches to research? Where do we need to go next? What are the critical components for a new agenda for our research?

Because of accreditation, budget, and accountability pressures at the institutional and program levels, technical and professional communication faculty are more than ever involved in assessment-based activities. Using assessment to identify a program's strengths and weaknesses allows faculty to work toward continuous improvement based on their articulation of learning and behavioral goals and outcomes for their graduates. This article describes the processes of program assessment based on pedagogical goals, pointing out options and opportunities that will lead to a meaningful and manageable experience for technical communication faculty, and concludes with a view of how the larger academic body of technical communication programs can benefit from such work. As ATTW members take a careful look at the state of the profession from the academic perspective, we can use assessment to further direct our programs to meet professional expectations and, far more importantly, to help us meet the needs of the well-educated technical communicator.

Abstract This article reports United States salary data from the April 2003 survey of Society for Technical Communication members who identify themselves as educators. It provides analysis of salary data based on type of institution, rank, tenure status, experience, education level, sex, and age. It also reports on benefits, administrative responsibilities, job satisfaction, and program size.

Analysis of the academic job market in 2002-2003 reveals that 118 nationally advertised academic jobs named technical or professional communication as a primary or secondary specialization. Of the 56 in the "primary" category that we were able to contact, we identified 42 jobs filled, 10 unfilled, and 4 pending. However, only 29% of the jobs for which technical or professional communication was the primary specialization were filled by people with degrees in the field, and an even lower percent (25%) of all jobs, whether advertised for a primary or secondary specialization, were filled by people with degrees in the field. Search chairs report a higher priority on teaching and research potential than on a particular research specialization, and 62% of all filled positions involve teaching in related areas (composition, literature, or other writing courses).

Don Cunningham, the founding editor of The Technical Writing Teacher and a founding member of ATTW, recalls key moments in the history of ATTW and its journal, and the people who shaped the organization in its early years.

Abstract This article traces the development of Technical Communication Quarterly (TCQ), beginning with the first issue in the winter of 1991, through the 2003 issues. As co-editor of TCQ, charged with the manuscript review process, I shepherded more than 350 manuscripts through evaluation and about one-fourth of those through publication. In this article, I explain that process and how it changed when The Technical Writing Teacher became TCQ and what features our reviewers now believe make a successful TCQ article.

This article presents the results of an April 2003 electronic survey of ATTW members. Results and interpretations are categorized as follows: a professional profile of respondents; member observations about ATTW and its activities (member participation, appraisal of benefits, and preferred topics for TCQ); and current issues and views of the field's future.

Scientist-writers Rachel Carson and Loren Eiseley use a variety of narrative strategies to describe natural phenomena and explain scientific concepts. These techniques also contribute to an incisive yet balanced critique of science, one rooted in an ethical approach to nature, a rejection of anthropocentrism, and a healthy suspicion of the blind faith in scientific and technological progress. This article analyzes their use of metaphor and perspective, construction of narrative personae, emotional appeals, and invocations of the imagination.

Abstract This article explores the writing of archaeologists to argue that the metaphor of context-as-rhetorical-situation may understate the power that context has to shape scientific discourse. The author offers instead the metaphor of context-as-active-agent in the rhetorical situation—one that sometimes reifies values that are dangerous to the archaeologists' belief systems. As scholars of technical writing, we must develop a greater understanding of the subtle but powerful influences that context wields on the writing we read and help to produce.

This article argues that fact sheets produced by environmental activists in response to proposed nuclear waste repositories constitute a new genre of scientific rhetoric. By analyzing the rhetorical features of these texts, including the simultaneous reliance on and distrust of scientific evidence, this article demonstrates how effective environmental activists' texts can be, in spite of the constraints and pressures of their rhetorical situation.

Forest management plans, written by natural resource professionals for private landowners, provide a useful mechanism for analyzing documents concerned with communicating information about natural resources. The documents suggest that maintaining a sharp distinction between the professionals and the lay audience leads to stylistic and structural problems that hinder clear communication and mediate against collaborative decision making, even when such collaboration is the goal. This article offers specific mechanisms for overcoming these textual problems.

This article examines one mechanism for the radical change in public perception of wilderness. The published papers of the Harriman Expedition, a scientific expedition at the end of the nineteenth century, are used to illustrate a process that I call "metaphoric reconstruction." I argue that conceptual metaphors are one of the tools through which texts and rhetorical contexts can be mutually transformative.

In this article, a biochemist and a rhetorician collaborate to define "junk science." They apply that definition as they rhetorically analyze a book that makes strong claims about endocrine disruption (Our Stolen Future) and a website developed to embarrass those claims (Our Swollen Future). This article argues that junk science and accusations of junk science evince ideologicaVeconomic motives and pronounced efforts to construct, or assail, scientific ethos.

Ernst Haeckel was a fascinating German scientist, philosopher, and advocate of social Darwinism who sought to reinvent science as the basis of all knowledge and best guide for human activities. His monistic and vitalistic philosophy of science influenced later German holistic science and Nazi pseudo-science. Recent research reveals several of his most famous illustrations, of embryos of various animals and that are still published today, to be incorrect and probably knowingly so. The complex rhetorical connection between theory and visual support is revealed, as creationist critics contend that the falsity of the visuals implies the refutation of evolution. We see that our decisions made in crafting illustrations carry serious rhetorical and ethical implications for various audiences.

Using field study to teach writing and speaking in rhetoric impacts both how technical communication defines itself and its role in the curriculum. This article reviews materials that support field study, describes course assignments, and examines student writing. I find that as field study offers a precise, event-based resource for teaching rhetoric, so rhetoric offers an audience-centered format to bring properties of the field inside.

Abstract This article explores the introduction of science writing into the undergraduate classroom. By asking students to write about science for popular audiences, teachers can illuminate the social and cultural aspects of science that are often lost in the complex prose of scientists writing to their peers. Not much has been written about the place of science writing in technical writing classrooms, though some articles focus on the process of training students to be science staff writers for a newspaper or magazine. But teaching science writing goes beyond professionalization. It has to do with a poetics of science that heightens and enhances our appreciation of the world around us.

This article examines advice from a century ago that anticipates current calls to relocate the value of technical communication. Chemist Ellen Swallow Richards coined euthenics, the science of controllable environment, and then discussed communication technologies to teach scientific principles to the public. She emphasized women's pivotal role as audience and communicator, helping us understand how to enact the practices of symbolic analysis that give value to our work.

Abstract The focus of workplace communication research on visual rhetoric has tended to be the efficient and unproblematically "effective" functioning of visual texts. By suggesting ways in which the visual representations of science are construed by expert readers, this article responds to a call within our discipline for more critically focused contributions to the study of visual literacy. A former editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Botany was asked to explain his interpretation of visuals appearing over an 80-year period in that journal; his responses illustrate how visual explanations testify to their creators' authority and how, once established, such authority actuates the rational arguments of science. Rhetorical appeals within and arrangement of visual texts are considered, as is the persuasive power of legends and captions.

Abstract Based on an ethnographic study of scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this article describes how the rhetorical invention process of a group of working scientists is strongly rooted in social collaborative processes. These writing practices of working professionals are not always synonymous with the way students entering the professions have been taught to write. Because invention is such an important aspect of the writing process, it is important to teach students the approaches to invention that are actually used in science, approaches that include a great deal of interaction, including talking to other scientists and reading journal articles. This article ends with pedagogical suggestions for teaching collaborative invention to students based on the results of the study.

(2003). Review of Technical Communication, Deliberative Rhetoric, and Environmental Discourse: Connections and Directions. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 234-236.

(2003). Review of The New Careers: lndiwidual Action and Economic Change. Technical Communication Quarterly: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 230-234.

In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh received from Queen Elizabeth a patent to colonize any region of North America not possessed by a Christian prince. In 1585 he sent a fleet of seven ships to plant a colony under the governorship of Ralph Lane on Roanoke Island near what is now the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The colony lasted less than a year and then returned to England, where Lane produced a commercial report explaining the failure. Using research from speech communication on the rhetoric of apologia, this essay analyzes Lane's attempts to answer four criticisms of his governorship: that he mistreated the Indians, that he failed to explore the region to find commodities valuable to Raleigh and his investors, that he was an incompetent military commander, and that he deserted the colony. The essay also evaluates Lane's recommendations that future colonies be established further north on the Chesapeake Bay.

Abstract In 2002, cable television news programs adopted modular presentation styles visually similar to the design of news website home pages and newspaper front pages. This design convergence of print, television, and the Web is the result of a dynamic media context in which information acceleration is a catalyst for the formation of visual trends across media. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to information design and using grounded theory methodology, this article examines the visual evolution of the news and discusses the study's relevance to technical communication.

Technical writing instruction often operates in isolation from other components of students' communication education, partly as a consequence of assessment practices that lead to a narrow perspective. We argue for altering this isolation by moving writing instruction into a position of increased programmatic perspective, which may be attained through a means of assessment based on educational outcomes. Two models of technical writing instruction, centralized and diffused, are discussed, and we show how outcomes-based assessment provides for the change in perspective we seek.

Reforms in engineering education have caused a shift from the traditional stand-alone course in technical communication for Engineering students towards communication training integrated in courses and design projects that allows students to develop four layers of competence. This shift creates opportunities for realistic and situated learning, but offers challenges for assessment of communication competence at student, course and program levels. On the basis of a detailed definition of communicative competence, three formats for integrated communication training are described: Linked to design projects, integrated in design projects and integrated at program level. Assessment of communication competence in these formats is constrained by their characteristics with regard to student motivation, individual and group work, and situated learning.

This article presents the results of an empirical study comparing writing and engineering instructors' responses to students' technical writing. The study, which identifies a repertoire of 21 categories of response, indicates that the gap between engineering and writing teachers' standards for evaluating technical writing is not as wide as is generally assumed. The differences that do emerge suggest ways that the teachers can learn from each other.