RE: The Challenger and Tech Comm (was: The Columbia)

["Kreth, Melinda L" <kreth1ml -at- cmich -dot- edu>]

I spent Tuesday and Thursday of last week teaching the implications of the Challenger accident to my undergraduate on-campus technical communication students. I prepared the same lesson for my my adult-ed students who met on Friday night and Saturday (1/31 & 2/1) at our Grand Rapis MI campus. 

In both classes, we watched the made-for-TV movie about Challenger, after which we discussed a variety of interpretations of how dysfunctional organizational culture and ineffective communication practices contributed to the accident. (The movie is not good overall--terrible in fact--but it does contain a very good dramatic recreation of the pre-launch teleconference, with Peter Boyle playing Roger Boisjoly.)

When the adult-ed students returned to class on Saturday morning (2/1), telling me that Columbia had burned up on re-entry, I thought they were playing a sick practical joke on me. I wish they had been. We spent most of the rest of the morning glued to MSNBC's live video stream. And as my students noted, it will be interesting to see in the months ahead whether or to what extent dysfunctional organizational culture and ineffective communication contributed to Columbia's demise.

For those who might not be familiar with this topic or who would simply like a refresher, please visit my Challenger bibliography at http://www.chsbs.cmich.edu/Melinda_Kreth/shuttle.htm
(The "Scholarly Resources" link focuses on interpretations relevant to technical communicators.) 

Melinda Kreth, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of English
General Education Coordinator
Anspach 206
Central Michigan University
Mt. Pleasant MI 48859
989-774-3371
kreth1ml -at- cmich -dot- edu


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