Program Overview
The undergraduate certificate in Technical and Professional Communication is a rigorous, transcripted course of study for students who want to explore the field of technical and professional communication.
The required courses offer a foundation through which students can develop skills as writers and editors while also getting a survey of the opportunities available to them in technical and professional communication.
This certificate is particularly appropriate for students in STEM who would like to add credentials in Technical and Professional Communication to their transcripts.
The elective courses invite students to hone their writing in one of several courses designed to offer students a taste of what a 21st-Century technical and professional communication professional can expect.
Learning Goals
- Student Learning Outcome 1: Ethically assess diverse audience needs for appropriately chosen communication outputs and create content to serve these audiences’ needs.
- Student Learning Outcome 2: Collaborate with colleagues and community partners (corporate partners and non-profit partners) to design and produce responsive communication outputs in various appropriate modalities
- Student Learning Outcome 3: Understand and analyze the history of the TPC field and its role in codifying communication genres that have oppressed those who have not historically been involved in document and information design generation and distribution and who may have been subject to the impacts of such documents.
- Student Learning Outcome 4: Clearly and in well-organized fashion, create written and rich-media communication outputs that inform, guide, instruct, protect, and educate audience members
- Student Learning Outcome 5: Develop and produce collaborative communication outputs in remote and local, synchronous and asynchronous, workplace contexts
- Student Learning Outcome 6: Design technical documents and workplace communications that further social justice aims, such as centering voices of communities often marginalized in instructional, operational, environmental, and governmental communications.
Admissions
For students who are English majors seeking to add the Certificate, there are additional requirements. The English undergraduate advisor can discuss these.
For other majors, this undergraduate certificate may be added to your degree plan by simply visiting your advisor.
Degree Requirements
Technical & Professional Writing Certificate Required Courses
| Course Number | Course Name | Credit Hours |
| ENGL 2210 | Professional & Technical Communications* | 3 |
| ENGL 2220 | Introduction to Professional Writing | 3 |
| ENGL 417 | Editing | 3 |
*Or the Writing & Speaking Core Curriculum Equivalent from another institution.
Technical & Professional Writing Certificate Elective Courses (Choose One)
| Course Number | Course Name | Credit Hours |
| ENGL 319 | Usability and User-Centered Design | 3 |
| ENGL 320 | Advanced Expository Writing | 3 |
| ENGL 413 | Scientific, Environmental, and Medical Writing | |
| ENGL 414 | Documentation | 3 |
ENGL 418 | Proposal and Grant Writing | 3 |
ENGL 419 | Visual Rhetoric | 3 |
ENGL 420 | Topics in Professional Writing | 3 |
ENGL 441 | English Grammars | 3 |
Technical & Professional Writing Certificate Capstone Courses (Choose One)
| Course Number | Course Name | Credit Hours |
| ENGL 444 | Practicum: Tutoring Writing | 3 |
| ENGL 499 | Internship | 3 |
