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Okay, I'll add my degrees to the "pile" accumulating on the floor. I also
wish to comment on another post.
AA - Physical Sciences (Chemistry) - San Jose City College
AA - Business and Management - University of Maryland
BA - Business (accounting major) - University of Maryland
MBA - Management (securities emphasis) - Golden Gate University
David Hailey wrote:
> My concern is not with
> technical writing education but (as always) with technical
> writing education
> that is so inadequate that our students go out and immediately drown in a
> morass of technology--embarrassing themselves and their educators.
During the past 10 years I've hired as interns students from the San Jose
State University's technical writing program. I worked with and
trained/mentored those students as I would any new entry level technical
writer. In one case, that meant giving the intern an old hardware
installation manual to rewrite. At each step of the rewrite, beginning with
outline for the "new" publication, I reviewed the interns work, discussing
her decisions and the approach she wished to use to present information to
the user. That intern wrote in her intern class paper that she learned more
from me in six months then she had during the university's two-year
technical writing program. I seriously doubt that. She learned the
foundations of technical writing from the university. All I did was assist
her in assembling that information in a usable form, then applying what she
had learned.
David, the same thing applies to your students. You teach them the basics.
There is no way you can provide them with the day-to-day, year-to-year
experience of a working technical publications department. Assembling and
applying what the student has been taught comes through a good intern
position, or a competent technical publications manager and department after
the student graduates. Some managers and departments develop the skills of
their writers. Others are unwilling to invest in employee and department
development and stability.
