STC/A Professional Development

The Advanced Practicum has several purposes:

We synthesize what you’ve learned in your HU and other MTU course and project work with one eye on the past—reflection—and one on the future: how you want to engage the world as professionals
We focus on your chosen area of specialty and how it functions in the historical, theoretical, and professional aspects of Technical, Professional, and Scientific Communication (TPSC)
We practice research methods that draw on your academic experience, but that resemble more professional and workplace practices
We engage the practice and production of TPSC by developing complex client- and audience-based projects that solve some communication problem and that can serve as a compelling entry in your professional portfolio

In our initial reading together, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Thomas Friedman writes that, “the most important attribute you can have is creative imagination–the ability to be the first on your block to figure out how all these enabling [globalizing/technologizing] tools can be put together in new and exciting ways to create products, communities, opportunities and profits.”(469)

We’ll begin the Practicum by doing an intensive close reading of that passage, considering its terms–creative, imagination, products, communities, opportunities, profits, technology–and putting them into some context of what we know and want to know about TPSC.

Next, we read and discuss The World Is Flat together, supplementing the book with what we know and want to know from TPSC research: Practicum groups will present a section of the book each class session, integrating historical and contemporary TPSC materials.

The Practicum then shifts to your off-campus client projects, which emphasize project management, documentation, client relations, print and digital communication platforms, and presentation technologies in professional contexts.