Currently, colleges and universities have developed assessment systems that can collect student work products for evaluation in an effort to make student learning transparent and ensure accountability in higher education. At the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, we have developed a digital portfolio system, the RosE Portfolio System (REPS), that allows for efficient data collection; the results of portfolio evaluations are used by academic departments and programs to improve curricula and provide evidence to external accrediting agencies. The results of evaluations of student performance are also used to ensure the quality of academic curricula.

This special issue of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION focuses on developing new case studies for use in technical and professional communication courses. The term “case study” used here refers to descriptions of real world events that illustrate particular communication problems through collections of primary documents and secondary materials. While case study pedagogy provides students with many benefits, such as concrete applications of technical communication theory, there are distinct challenges that may prevent instructors from developing case studies, such as collecting primary documents as they become available in the media. The case studies treated in the special issue focus on the following events: the crash of Air Midwest Flight 5481; the accounting scandals of the Enron corporation; the communication crisis at Brookhaven National Laboratory; the leaking of nuclear material at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant; the Texas A&M bonfire collapse; and airline press releases in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center.

Sherron Watkins has been labeled a corporate whistleblower based on the letter she sent in August 2001 to Kenneth Lay, Chairman of the Board of the Enron Corporation. In her letter she identified Enron's unethical and illegal financial management practices, but her letter was never made public until the company's stock was all but worthless. This case is based on the Watkins letter, as well as other articles published in the New York Times and Time magazine. First, we identify the context of the Enron scandal, reviewing the accounting practices that Watkins revealed in her letter. Second, we analyze the Watkins letter, focusing on the rhetorical moves that Watkins makes in the letter and discussing how these moves constitute a persona for Watkins as author. Finally, we present a developed case for use in the classroom; the case continues the analysis of Watkins' persona as it evolves through articles in other publications. We argue that the persona Watkins creates for herself in her letter undergoes a transformation so that by the time she appears as Time magazine's Person of the Year 2002, she is corporate whistleblower. The case includes a two-day course plan with specified student learning outcomes, teaching resources, a group activity, and a selection of student responses to the case.