To evaluate Technical Communication faculty requires understanding of the distinctive nature of the research, teaching, and service performed by faculty in the field. This article documents the work situations and accomplishments of a cadre of twenty-four accomplished faculty members in Technical Communication. The study group, identified by a prior survey of 275 people in technical writing, composition, and rhetoric, provides an empirical basis for defining the kinds and quantities of work that currently can be expected in the field. The article thus helps to provide empirically-based guidelines and criteria for evaluation. Included also is a discussion of other relevant research on faculty evaluation.

This paper discusses crosscultural differences in audience analysis, using research conducted during a series of consulting trips in Japanese industries. The paper identifies problems implicit in the way technical writing is taught to nonnative speakers in this country and abroad, and shows how awareness of and experience with audiences in non-American and non-Western cultures can benefit instruction in technical communication classes for American students.

Teachers new to technical writing must understand that “Technical Writing” is not one course. Rather it is a whole variety of courses distinguished from one another primarily by differences in objectives and only secondarily by differences in subject matter. To identify needed technical writing courses and to define coherent sets of courses, teachers of technical writing and program administrators need “a mapping procedure” to help them consider alternatives systematically in terms of objectives. This paper proposes such a mapping procedure.