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Publishing in Scientific and Engineering Contexts1
Over the past several years, faculty participants in Writing Across the
Curriculum (WAC) workshops at Colorado School of Mines (CSM) have been
asked what they know about writing that they did not know when they completed
their doctoral degrees. When their responses are compiled, faculty are asked to
mark separately those items they think undergraduates and graduates should
know before completing their respective degrees. Faculty responses indicate that
an overwhelming majority of faculty members want their students—and
particularly their graduate students—to be better prepared than they were in
terms of their written communication skills that augment chances for professional
success. Faculty members then discuss which writing abilities they think most
graduate students actually possess when they receive a graduate degree.
According to most faculty, the abilities students possess depend on several
variables, such as their writing ability when they arrive, the quality of advising, the
degree to which professors’ and advisors’ knowledge of written communication in
the discipline is tacit of explicit, and whether faculty view the process of initiating
graduate students into the ways of communicating in a specific discipline as their
active responsibility or as something that will simply be learned “along the way.”
Out of these and other exigencies, we designed and co-taught a seminar for
graduate students called Academic Publishing, intended primarily to equip
students with the knowledge and skills necessary for success in publishing in the
academic arena and, since some of the knowledge is transferable across the
rhetorical contexts, in the workplace. This paper describes the need for the
course; the course goals; our “concept application” instructional approach,
1
Jon Leydens and Barabara Olds, “Publishing in Scientific and Engineering Contexts: A Course
for Graduate Students,” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 50, 1 (2007): 45–
56. The passages selected are from pages 45–46.
Note that I have not strictly replaced every fifth word, creating exceptions when the fifth word is
a statistic or endnote number; however, on average I have replaced every fifth word. The
passage following the heading (“Need for the course”) is 419 words. I replaced 82 words.
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including the rhetorical tools and their application; and our assessment of the
pilot offering of the course in 2000 and subsequent offerings in 2002 and 2004.
Need for the course
When Albert Einstein completed
dissertation on molecular dimensions
the University of Zurich
1905, it was 21
long and did not
a single reference [1]. In
last century, much has
: scientists and
engineers today
dissertations that are both
and draw from a
wealth of existing research.
complexity inherent in writing
theses and
dissertations was
motivator for this course.
with some graduate students
the applied sciences, most
enrolled in Academic Publishing
from engineering disciplines, a
of
the CSM graduate
body. Of the 38
who have taken the
in the
first four
, 32 have come from
disciplines. Learning to write
engineering and applied science
contexts differs from doing
same in
workplace contexts
to different exigencies, genres,
, and more.
However, some
rhetorical principles apply in
contexts, especially the
need
rhetorical awareness of audiences,
, occasions, writers, and
topics.
, this course serves students
their careers take them
industry or academia by
a need for greater
understanding of
scientific and
writing. Writing exigencies in
academia
may be obvious,
studies on workplace communication
underscore
the important role
also plays in the
of practicing engineers.
Interviews
surveys of practicing engineers
emphasized the
importance of
and writing skills for
in the workplace [2]-[5].
also indicated a
correlation between the amount
technical
communication instruction in
and career advancement [6]. A
has
of
studies on workplace
concludes that between 20%
40% of a typical
workday is spent writing,
figure that climbs as
moves up the
career
[7]. In another study, engineers
had been in the
for two
to three
estimated that they spent
30% of their workday
, while
middle managers estimated 50%–70%,
as much as 95% [8].
amount
of time these
may spend writing in
or in academia represents
significant financial investment by
employers, who also have
stake in
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efficient, effective
communication. Based on the
of one survey, a
report estimates that the
of remedying writing deficiencies
employees of major US
exceeds $3 billion annually [9].
research
underscores the need
our course and indirectly
its design, which
focuses
developing both specific disciplinary
abilities and overall
communication
rhetorical abilities.
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