notesetc.umr.edu

I hadn't realized how much time had passed since the last entry here. Here's a brief entry:

Dr. Ed Malone, assistant professor of English and Technical Communication, and Director of Technical Communication, has begun writing a quarterly column on the history of technical communication. His column appears in the IEEE Professional Communication Newsletter. The latest column is about Dorothy Dahle, a pioneering woman in the field. The column touches on the difficulties a woman faced entering the field in the 1950s. It's well worth reading.

The next entry will show up here much sooner than the four weeks between this one and the previous.

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We're experiencing our third winter storm of the year — with sleet mostly, but also a little snow. The sleet verges on freezing rain. What happens at Missouri University of Science & Technology when we have icy, slushy streets and sidewalks, with more sleet falling as I type?

Many faculty and some students live where it's dangerous or impossible to drive to campus. Walking, too, is hazardous when everything is coated with ice. It's fairly quiet in the department this morning, although I've seen four faculty members, and talked with three or four students. The department's administrative assistant, Linda Sands, lives several miles out in the country amid hills that, when the roady is iced over, make driving very hazardous. She's not here today.

The quiet and relatively few people are somewhat disconcerting. It's almost lonely.

I drove to campus, as I usually do, although I live within a 15 minute walk. I have walked to campus in worse weather than this, but . . . perhaps I have more (or less) sense.

Continue reading "Education in Winter" »

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To learn who wrote the first user manual for computers, go to Ed Malone's column in the IEEE/PCS online newsletter.

Dr. Malone has agreed to write a quarterly column for the newsletter of the IEEE Professional Communication Society. As this first column shows, Ed has been doing extensive research in the history of technical communication and is able to present the results effectively.

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People are becoming more concerned about the origins of their foods, including beef. In his PhD dissertation, David Wright (assistant professor of English and Technical Communication) studied the efforts of the US Department of Agriculture to use RFID devices implanted in cattle to trace them from origin to use. The cattle industry was not receptive to the proposal to implant Radio Frequency Identification devices in their stock.

On Friday, January 18, Dr. Wright was interviewed by Wayne Huebner, host of radio station KMST's TechnoFiles program. You may listen to the full interview in MP3 format here.

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The spring 2008 semester for Missouri University of Science & Technology starts on Monday, January 14. Here it is, Saturday, January 12, and I'm putting together course materials. (I suspect I'm not alone in that!)

This is the university's first semester as Missouri S&T, rather than the University of Missouri - Rolla. We're all making the transition in how we refer to the campus, with some uncertainty whether it is "MST," "MS&T," or "Missouri S&T." Officially, "mst" is reserved for our email and Internet domain, not for print or speech. However, it's only three syllables versus four or seven in the other possibilities.

"S&T" is a good designation but a little too obscure right now. The Rolla Daily News uses it, so maybe it will spread.

I did quite a bit of class preparation back in December but still have plenty to do. I'm teaching Creative Writing for the first time in several years and using Blackboard for the first time for that class.

For a department chair, preparing for a new semester means much more than writing up (or revising) the course syllabus. It also means making sure all the courses taught by the department have teachers assigned to them, that everyone has appropriate office space, that the courses have sufficient enrollment.

In fact, I've been constructing the class schedule for the fall 2008 semester.

My colleagues in the department are doing their preparations (or have already completed them); some of my students have already visited Blackboard. Unfortunately, there won't be much there until sometime late today or tomorrow.

Enrollment for this spring semester is slightly higher than for last spring. This weekend, the population of Rolla will expand by several thousand. The campus has felt very empty recently; that changes soon.

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This afternoon, Missouri University of Science & Technology's chancellor, John F. Carney III, delivered his fifth semi-annual State of the University speech. A high point was Tom Shipley's brief documentary on Missouri S&T's entry in last summer's human-powered vehicle contest. The vehicle was designed and built by UMR — pardon me — Missouri S&T's Human-Powered Vehicle Team, a part of the campus's Student Design and Experiential Learning Center. Shipley's film is tight and clean and the source of the title of this entry: it takes a team and a lot of effort for someone to pedal a little over 59 mph.

Yes, I jumped the gun on the name-change from University of Missouri - Rolla to Missouri University of Science & Technology. But that particular gun is being jumped more and more often. Why not me?

• First, I admire the student design teams, having known students in them in my own classes.
• Second, our department is a vital part of the campus and its endeavors, as Chancellor Carney noted early in his state of the university talk. The chancellor reminded the audience forcefully that, while he would talk mostly about scientific and technological matters, he did not want to overlook the humanities, the social sciences, or the business program.
• Third, there are numerous ways, many yet to be discovered, in which the scholars, teachers and students of our department can relate to the campus's major thrust. One important way is to pursue our own research and teaching interests with energy and imagination. Our efforts do contribute to the overall accomplishments of the campus. Another way is participation of our students and faculty in projects of other departments and organizations.

Enough with metaphor and analogy! The university is not a bicycle in an aerodynamic cocoon, with its power-source, a student, concealed inside: the university is a complex enterprise, dependent on everyone, everything, every place that make it up. Ending his talk, the chancellor called on the university to focus on our world's needs for energy and environmental renewal. Those of us who work with words and images can contribute our knowledge, skills, wit, and wisdom to that project.

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Recently, two English and Technical Communication faculty members accompanied students to events in St Louis. Dr. Kathryn Northcut took students to a regional meeting of the Society for Technical Communication; Dr. Kristine Swenson took a group of students to attend a play. These events enrich the students on-campus education.

Six MS students and Dr. Kathy Northcut attended the St. Louis regional chapter meeting of the Society for Technical Communication. The topic was "Cool tools for Technical Communicators <$100." The speaker, Nicky Bleiel, demonstrated dozens of tools which are either free or available for a nominal fee. Examples include voice-to-text applications, the GIMP, and icon-building design software.

A brief side trip to Global Foods International Market rounded out the evening.

The GIMP is the Gnu Image Manipulation Program, a tool that I use myself, on both Windows and Linux. It is a freeware parallel to PhotoShop.

Dr. Kris Swenson took a group of students to see Alan Bennett's award-winning play, The History Boys (2004) at the St Louis Repertory Theatre on September 29. The play is set in a boys' school in England in the 1980s. A group of history students preparing for Oxbridge entrance exams is being pulled in contrary directions by the teaching styles and goals of different faculty members. It's really a play about the ends of education and something of an indictment of the current emphasis on testing versus life-learning. I set up the trip especially for students in my Contemporary British Literature class, though all were welcome. The trip was partially supported by Sigma Tau Delta, the English honorary society.

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Many people write diaries, journals, logs, and so on. Most write for their own purposes — keeping records, expressing emotions, exploring ideas, and exploring writing are all done by journal keepers. To read someone else's journal is to enter in some way into the writer's experience, especially if the writer did not intend her journals to be read. The diary or journal becomes a kind of mirror for the writer's self, and, unlike a literal mirror, the diary retains an impression of what it reflects.

On September 7 and 8 of this year, Dr. Anne Cotterill, Associate Professor of English and Technical Communication, attended a conference at Princeton that explored this topic. The conference focused on Elizabeth Isham, a 17th century diarist.

Dr. Cotterill presented a paper on Saturday, September 8, along with a young man named Isaac Stephens, a graduate student in history whose almost-completed dissertation concerns this memoir and this woman and her family. They are the two scholars who've been working the longest on Elizabeth Isham and her text. Dr. Cotterill's paper was taken from a longer piece she's written on Elizabeth's memoir, entitled, "Fitting Words at the 'pitts brinke': The Achievement of Elizabeth Isham." Dr. Cotterill plans to send the longer article to The Huntingdon Library Quarterly.

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The English Department began developing ideas for a writing center in the 1990s. Dr. Elizabeth Cummins and Dr. Larry Vonalt were important forces behind the department's request for a Center for Writing Technologies. Their project was finally realized in the establishment of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program, which includes the Dr. Beverley Moeller Writing Studio and the Center for Writing Technologies.

A pod of new computers in the Writing Center
Photo taken with the webcam on one of the new computers

While administratively separate from the Department of English and Technical Communication, the Writing Center and the department are close allies, especially concerning the Center for Writing Technologies (usually called "The Writing Center").

This summer, the department arrived at a plan to share licensing fees for new and upgraded hardware and software. I'm sure you are aware of the rate of change of software and hardware. To best serve our students, especially majors in Technical Communication, we need the best equipment and software available. The Writing Center was updated this August.

The updates this summer make the Writing Center UMR's premier authoring lab. It was designed by a committee of faculty and staff from various departments: Todd Kreuger (Information Technology [IT]), Connie Melone (IT), Jim Turner (IT), John Sequin (Library), Kate Drowne (English and Technical Communication), Richard Hall (Information Science & Technology), and Ed Malone (English and Technical Communication). The new equipment and software were paid for by IT, Center for Technology Enhanced Learning, and English and Technical Communication

In the future, this lab will accommodate such courses as Web-Based Communication and Multimedia Development and Design. In TCH COM classes this semester, students are authoring help systems with RoboHelp and creating books with FrameMaker; next semester, they will be conducting usability tests and creating tutorials with Camtasia.

The lab has extended hours this semester (6-9 M-Th and 12-9 on Sundays) and hired a lab monitor to help patrons.

The new and updated software is available in two other locations on campus. In Computer Science 207, all of the Adobe programs — except RoboHelp — are available 24/7. One of the machines in the library also has all of the Adobe programs — including RoboHelp — so that a student can complete assignments on Friday evenings or
Saturdays. The library also purchased a collection of Adobe classroom-in-a-book tutorials for the specific versions of Adobe programs we have and other tutorials for RoboHelp, Camtasia, and so on.

Continue reading "New and Better Computing" »

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One consequence of the increasing use of the World Wide Web is the migration of scholarship to online venues. Internet publication has many advantages for scholarly and creative work, especially ease of access for millions of people.

Dr Elizabeth Cummins, Professor Emeritus of English and Technical Communication, is one of the scholars whose work is being published online. Her Judith Merrill: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography has just been published by the Center for the Bibliography of Science Fiction and Fantasy at Texas A&M University.

The site's Introduction explains the background: the loss of print publishers for scholarly bibliographies and yet the continuing need scholars have for such bibliographies. Sponsored "by the Science Fiction Research Association, The International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, Extrapolation magazine, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection, Cushing Library, Texas A&M University," the Center is a fully qualified scholarly publisher

Earlier in the history of publication on the World Wide Web, many questioned whether such publication really counts as "scholarly," as legitimate publication, or as a kind of vanity publishing. Like other Web publishers, the Center for the Bibliography of Science Fiction and Fantasy qualifies as a full-fledged scholarly publisher. The bibliographies it publishes are reviewed by a qualified editorial board just as they would be for hard copy publishers.

Congratulations to Dr. Cummins on the latest publication of a labor of scholarly love. Judith Merrill is a crucial editor and writer in SF; now scholars around the world have ready access to this outstanding bibliography.

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Beginning with the fall 2007 semester, Dr. Kris Swenson and Dr. Ed Malone, will each add a new role to their responsibilities in the Department of English and Technical Communication. As the number of students increases, managing the courses they take becomes more complex. The department itself is changing in response to changes in the student body and to changes in the campus. In addition, our BS and MS degrees in Technical Communication are not quite two years old: these programs need attention and effort to develop most effectively.

As Coordinator of Writing Courses, Dr. Swenson will oversee the Department's English 20 (Exposition and Argumentation) and English 60 (Writing and Research). English 20 is "freshman comp," an important course taken by almost all incoming freshman. Her duties also include working with the faculty teaching these courses and coordinating policies and practices for the courses.

Dr. Kris Swenson


As Director of Technical Communication, Dr. Malone will work extensively with the graduate students on issues ranging from admission to keeping statistics on their test scores. Dr. Malone will also aid in recruiting both undergraduate and graduate students for the technical communication programs.

Dr. Ed Malone

For my part as chair, I welcome these new roles for Dr. Swenson and Dr. Malone. The department will function more effectively because of their contributions. Thanks are due the Provost, Dr. W. Kent Wray, and the Chancellor, Dr. Jack Carney, for making these new roles possible.

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The fall semester has well and truly begun. The first wave of student questions and dilemmas is over. (That first wave ranges from trying to find a classroom to trying to get into a class to finding an instructor.) For all that the university has over 1200 new freshman, there were fewer problems of this kind this fall.

Now that enrollment and class schedules have pretty well settled down, faculty, students, and staff can take stock and focus fully on the tasks of teaching, learning, and facilitating. The Department of English and Technical Communication sponsored a "Welcome Back" reception on Tuesday, August 28. Students and faculty from several departments mingled and ate goodies. In this photo, Erin Cotita, English major and department student assistant, prepares to cut the cake for serving.

The reception ran from 1:00 to 2:30; those attending did more than eat, as shown in this photo of students (Irangi, Li and Tommy) talking with Professor Emeritus, Nick Knight, and parent, Glenn Cotita.

Together with the break in the heat we're experiencing (highs of 85 F are much more pleasant than highs of 105 F) and the relatively smooth start of a new semester, this reception put, so to speak, the icing on the cake. (Or the dip on the crudités. if you will.)

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The Department of English and Technical Communication welcomes David Wright as a new Assistant Professor. Dr. Wright completed his PhD. last May at Oklahoma State University.

Dr. Wright shares this story of an unusual event:

Once, in South Dakota, I was caught between an wildfire and a massive thunderstorm. On the road ahead, we could see flames and massive amounts of smoke reaching the sky. Behind us was a wall cloud that looked like it covered the world. Since we couldn't drive into the smoke and fire, we had to pull over and wait for the hail and rain that was creeping in behind to overtake us and extinguish the wildfire. Believe me, it was quite a wild ride. While there, we watched a mountain lion stalk an antelope across the valley below the road.

Dr. Wright grew up in Oklahoma, where he learned to enjoy trout fishing, golfing, playing and recording music, and college athletics of all kinds. He has worked for NASA, the State of Oklahoma, in the software industry, and at one time was a member of a band that traveled a great deal and played lots of "really fine establishments." As part of his dissertation research into technology diffusion and as part of his work in the software industry, Dr. Wright visited livestock auctions from Texas to North Dakota (and everywhere in between) to research the cattle industry's technological readiness for animal identification processes, both hardware and software.

I'm going to guess that many of those livestock auctions weren't all that far from the "fine establishments" where his band played at an earlier stage of his life. The department is glad to have Dr. Wright join us; we hope you'll meet him, perhaps in one of his classes or through reading his research.

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We at UMR — faculty and students alike — enjoy several research opportunities.
Dr. Ed Malone (Assistant Professor of English and technical communication and Director of technical communication) and Tara Gosnell (graduate student in technical communication) have recently received a grant for a project titled "The Role of Historical Studies in Technical Communication Curricula." The grant comes from the Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, of which both Prof. Malone and Ms. Gosnell are members.

A research project such as this allows the student to hone research skills and participate as an investigator in the faculty member's professional research. (The history of technical communication is a main emphasis of Dr. Malone's research.)

Prof. Malone and Ms. Gosnell have been meeting once a week this summer to write, design, and
test an online survey of technical communication program administrators and faculty. They plan to administer the survey in early September. They plan to present the results of the survey in an article.

In an article that will soon appear in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Prof. Malone notes that at least 200 historical studies have been published in the top five technical communication journals since 1990. These publications indicate an interest in and recognition of the value of historical research in technical communication. The research project will explore how academic programs in technical communication make use of the historical research.

Here are some examples of questions from the survey:

• In your opinion, should a technical communication program offer, on a
  regular basis, a course devoted entirely to the history of technical
  communication?
• Are students in your program expected to apply their knowledge of the
  history of technical communication?
• If so, how are they expected to apply their knowledge?
• What is the value of historical studies to students of technical communication?
• In your opinion, what benefits (if any) does a technical communication
  student derive from studying the history of technical communication?

The results of the survey will enable program administrators and faculty to make better-informed decisions about the role that historical studies should play in their curricula. The findings may also benefit technical communication scholars who are researching the history of technical communication by giving them feedback about the value of their research.

Continue reading "Student & Faculty Research" »

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On July 14, John Lemmerman and Laura Bettison were married at her parents' St. James home. John is a Lecturer in English and Technical Communication. Laura is originally from St. Louis; now, she works and takes classes at Drury University in Rolla.

John and Laura each have livestock — specifically, she had two goats when they married, and he had eight. (At one time, Laura had 100 goats!) They have merged their goat herds in Belle, where they have some extensive acreage.

In a somewhat different area of putting two lives together, John says, "Her parents are great, so I lucked out in the in-law department, too."

This poem comes from Korea in the 16th century. I have slightly adapted the last line:

The mountain is silent,
The water without form.
A clear breeze has no price,
The bright moon no owner.
Here, after their fashion,
May you grow old in peace.

   — by Song Hon, trans. by Peter H. Lee. The original last line reads "I will grow old in peace." The poem is from Poetry of Asia: Five Millenniums of Verse from Thirty-Three languages, gen. ed. Keith Bosley. New York: Weatherhill, 1979.

Continue reading "A Marriage in the Department" »

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Do you feel overwhelmed when you have to do research and presents the results in a written or oral report?

Writing is an essential skill for professionals in almost any field. Speaking to people, in groups large or small, is also an important skill for professionals. Most of our department's writing courses include a presentation, usually toward the end of the semester, on a topic that the student writes about and makes the topic of a presentation. In this year's summer school session, Dr. Kris Swenson's English 60 class explored representations of World War II. In the photograph, Andrew Jones begins his presentation on the importance of the US Air Force in winning that war.

English 60 — Writing and Research — builds on skills the student developed in Freshman Composition to develop substantial reports both written and oral. With networked computers and projectors in each classroom, students have ready access to technology such as PowerPoint to support their presentations. We've come a long way from overhead transparencies and flip charts.

This may be the last summer school entry for this year. Students in writing classes benefit from the concentration of summer school; working each day instead of every other day make for better continuity and focus.

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The University of Missouri - Rolla is a technological research university. Does that mean that all research done at UMR is technological? Of course not. One immediately thinks of the sciences here and their vigorous research programs. Are there areas at UMR which don't do research? What about the humanities and the social sciences?

This post will stick with the humanities and, specifically, with the Department of English and Technical Communication. Do members of this department's faculty do research? Yes, of course. And what kind of research do we do? Even though the department has two disciplines — English, especially literary studies, and technical communication — the research techniques are very similar. For both literary studies and technical communication, research istext-based, especially if one defines "text" to include audio, visual, and electronic media.

As does scientific research, our research involves forming hypotheses that are investigated, tested, and applied with research. However, scientific and technical research occurs in very obvious laboratories or in specific sites. Where is research in English and Tech Comm disciplines sited? In libraries, on the Internet, and also in specific locations. We make use not only of traditional printed texts but of texts in other media, of observations and of firsthand explorations such as interviews.

Since we don't have laboratories full of high-tech equipment, some folks assume our research doesn't require much support. But we do need support for our research: funds for library purchases, for travel to specialized libraries (two of us have gone to England for research), for software, for the time needed to explore and complete a research project. Like other researchers, we also require support for travel to professional conferences and gatherings where we share and discuss our research.

It may not seem obvious, but even poets and fiction writers do research. The research done by creative writers needs much the same kind of support as literary or technical communication research.

My purpose in this post is not to discuss the value of research in our disciplines, but I will say that literary research and technical communication research add to our culture's knowledge of human experience and its meanings. Trent Watts' work on images of manhood in the southern USA, Kate Drowne's discussion of the relationship between the social and literary experience of Prohibition in the 1920s, Jack Morgan's account of Thomas Sweeney, the 19th Century Irish-American general, David Wright's investigation of the diffusion of technology in the cattle industry — these examples come from half of the department but indicate the range of our explorations.

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The photo shows Dr. Trent Watts, Assistant Professor of English and Technical Communication, making a point in his summer school class. In this particular session, the class was discussing Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil."

Hawthorne's explorations of Puritan New England might seem like heavy work on a warm July day in the 21st century Ozarks. In fact, the atmosphere in Hawthorne's fiction is often dark enough to chill the summer heat here in Rolla. Dr. Watts is teaching American Literature I this summer, thus the Hawthorne. I asked him to comment on summer school and on early American literature. Here's what he told me:

On Summer Teaching

On Early American Literature

Dr. Watts' second comment, of course, includes much more than Hawthorne: just a few of the writers covered are
Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson.

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In the last eight years, I have published a webzine devoted to the ghazal as a form for poetry in English. I've been privileged to publish a number of excellent poems by accomplished poets, as well as some informative and provocative prose about the ghazal.

Recently, I've published the July issue and a special issue, both of which are important additions to The Ghazal Page. The July issue has six excellent ghazals, each with its distinct voice. The special issue is an article, "English Ghazals Based on Arabic Forms," which challenges some of the conventional ideas about ghazals in English.

Why do I publish The Ghazal Page? Why am I writing about it here?

As department chair, I have a number of duties and responsibilities. One responsibility is to maintain my research program. During my career, writing poetry has been my primary research. Recently, The Ghazal Page has been my major research project. I believe the ghazal form holds great promise for poetry written in English and want to do my part to make that happen.

UMR seeks to be a diverse community of scholars within a world-wide environment. The ghazal, originating in Arabic and Persian cultures, has potential for widening our understanding of and communication with important areas of the world. The Ghazal Page has published poems from India, South Africa, Uzbekistan, and Singapore (as well as Canada and New Mexico).

Here is some information on the ghazal form. There're also several links on The Ghazal Page. The links take you to other sites that discuss or publish ghazals.

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Jack Morgan (Research Professor of English and Technical Communication) has just published an article on John McNulty, who wrote forThe New Yorker from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s. Prof. Morgan's article appears in the Summer 2006 issue of The Recorder: The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society. The article's title, "He's Irish and He Broods Easy: John McNulty and the Irish Cohort at The New Yorker," is drawn from one of McNulty's pieces.

Prof. Morgan's article continues his scholarship exploring Irish and Irish American literature, history, and culture. Morgan's 2006 book, Through American and Irish Wars: The Life and Times of General Thomas Sweeney (Irish Academic Press) is a full-length example of this scholarship.

John McNulty has been largely forgotten. A Google search for "John McNulty" shows that there are many John McNultys—lawyers, doctors, businessmen—but produced only a few entries for John McNulty the writer, including this review of This Place on Third Avenue, a collection of his stories published in 2001 by Counterpoint Press.

American popular culture contains many stereotypes of the Irish and Irish Americans. Professor Morgan's article constitutes an introduction and appreciation of McNulty's life and writing that directs the reader to the genuine experience.

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The Salmon of Clubs

Dr. Ed Malone's article, "The Use of Playing Cards to Communicate Technical and Scientific Information, has just been accepted for Technical Communication, a peer-reviewed journal published by the Society for Technical Communication. The article is scheduled for the February 2008 issue. In it Dr. Malone (Assistant Professor of English and Technical Communication) describes and analyzes several decks of playing cards that have been used to communicate technical and scientific information.

Decks from the 17th century include one with instructions on how to carve meat, fish, or fowl at the dinner table and one about mathematical instruments. From World War II, a deck of cards trained civilians to spot enemy aircraft. More recent uses include Iraqi most-wanted cards displaying fugitives.

Dr. Malone's article will encourage readers to consider the implications of playing cards as a medium for technical and scientific information.

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