Technical and Professional Communication Programs and the Small College Setting: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

This article argues that the small school context has been a relatively unexamined or under-examined context for technical and professional communication program development. While graduate program development holds a large share of the field's attention in recent national forums, growth in graduate programs is a consequence of demand in the job market among mostly “teaching” schools. Thus, the field must consider how well we are socializing new Ph.D.s into the values and the real work of institutions where they will find employment. Toward this end, this article articulates three mediating forces of program development in the liberal arts and humanities settings of small schools: 1) interdisciplinarity and flexibility are lived dynamics of small schools; 2) the campus-wide privileging of writing and communication skills presents ongoing opportunities for curricular initiatives and program development; and 3) compression of decision-making structures leads to more involvement of/with administrators and units across campus.

The Province of Sophists: An Argument for Academic Homelessness

“…319); the institution may be too small to support more than one or two faculty members in technical or professional communication (Latterell, 2003), or the administration of the program might require coordination between departments; financial burdens may require departments to be consolidated; or institutions facing accreditation issues may be administered by another agent. The claim is logically valid and the warrants appear to make sense, but because the warrants do not account for legitimate reasons to the contrary, they create the "imperfection marked by urgency" (Bitzer, 1968, p. 6) that must be addressed and healed through our discourse.…”

“…Once a program grows to a critical mass, the administrative structure of a department can foster a broad and deep curriculum and can create degree programs for majors-both good things in themselves. However, the structure (Latterell, 2003) or philosophy (Moskovitz & Kellogg, 2005, p. 319) of any particular institution may prevent that critical mass from forming.…”

The Lone Ranger as Technical Writing Program Administrator

“…According to Amorose (2000), research on specialized writing programs with few faculty members remains underdeveloped (see also Latterell, 2003b), especially given the widely held belief that the "campus environment . .…”