Scientific and Technical Communication
Is STC Right For Me?
If you're interested in finding out more about a field named by US News and World Report as one of the top 20 Hot Job Tracks in the country and by Newsweek as among the top 100 degrees in modern higher education, learn more here about how to get your degree in Scientific and Technical Communication at Michigan Technological University. We're not only one of the largest undergraduate technical communication programs in the United States, but our program was recently recognized as one of only ten writing programs nationally to win the CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence.
Do You Like...?
- communicating with others in ways that help them learn and achieve their goals?
- having strength in speaking, writing, or graphic design?
- having an affinity for math or science?
- user-centered interface analysis and design?
If so, you'd make a great technical communicator.
Technical communicators make scientific, technical, and practical knowledge available to a variety of audiences in various media such as print, video, web, and digital multimedia. They also often manage communication processes within organizations (including managing teams of other technical communicators), as well as create documents which represent those organizations to the wider public.
Program Learning Goals
Disciplinary knowledge
- Understand the social responsibilities that attend their critical and creative work as professional communicators.
- Demonstrate the abilities to write, speak, and design for a range of audiences, representing diverse stakeholders, with competing and sometimes conflicting interests
Communication
- Be able to communicate using a variety of media and genres
- Be able to communicate to diverse audiences with a range of needs
Social Responsibility and Ethical Reasoning
- Be prepared to engage in problem solving that results in sustainable designs for communication products
- Understand personal accountability for the impact of products on particular communities
Global Literacy
- Demonstrate the ability to communicate effectively and appropriately in cross-cultural contexts
- Demonstrate basic literacy in a modern language and understand its cultural significance
Critical & Creative Thinking
- Demonstrate the ability to consider issues from multiple perspectives
- Demonstrate abilities to evaluate and synthesize information from a variety of sources in order to advance innovative communication solutions
Information Literacy
- Be prepared to use multiple research methods to solve a range of rhetorical problems
- Understand how to access, evaluate, and use information ethically and legally to accomplish a specific purpose, with a specific audience in mind
Technology
- Demonstrate a working knowledge of current technology that supports professional practices in the field
- Demonstrate the ability to learn new and emerging technologies
Knowledge of the Physical and Natural World
- Understand scientific principles relevant to the field
- Understand personal responsibility for sustaining the physical and natural environments in which they work
What Technical Communicators Do
- Produce everything from newsletters to brochures to marketing materials for a variety of organizations and businesses
- Write and edit manuals, design web sites, produce videos, and other multimedia projects for various industries, such as the automobile, computer, aeronautical, medical, and environmental industries
- Work with engineers, researchers, and scientists in producing reports and articles for publication in specialized technical, medical, or other trade journals
- Write grants to help non-profit organizations fund useful projects
- Publish computer documentation, and write on-line help files for complex software packages
- Translate technical and scientific information into other languages
- Produce sales, marketing, and public relations campaigns
- Compose and conduct internal training programs
- Consult for industry on risk communication, and internal and external communications issues
- Teach Scientific and Technical Communication at the university level (with an advanced degree in STC)