General Information
Prospective Students
Current Students
- MTPC Requirements
- MTPC Coursework
- Capstone and Portfolio Projects
- The Written Comprehensive Exam
- MTPC Faculty
- MTPC Students
- Graduate Student Handbook
- Graduate Student Planner
- Department Forms
Alumni
Graduate Student Life
Useful Resources
- Society for Technical Communication
- STC Birmingham Chapter
- STC Atlanta Chapter
- STC Huntsville Chapter
- STC Middle Tennessee Chapter
MTPC Activities
The MTPC program’s activities do more than provide opportunities for networking with industry. The majority of the activities are geared toward professional development, and they offer wide-ranging opportunities for students in the program. There are also social functions to build relationships among students and faculty.
Society for Technical Communication Involvement
TPC faculty and students have developed associations with three regional chapters of the Society for Technical Communication (STC): Birmingham, Atlanta, and Nashville. These chapters are very supportive of the MTPC program at Auburn and provide students with numerous opportunities. Through STC participation, one student acquired an internship in Atlanta, and another student found a job opportunity in Nashville. Also, a number of job positions in Birmingham have been filled by TPC students through their involvement with the STC.
Active involvement in the STC allows the TPC program to stay current with regional activities, participate in meetings, and gain business contacts in the surrounding areas. Some of the past field trips have included visits to Atlanta and Birmingham STC meetings. The Birmingham Chapter stays actively involved with the Auburn TPC programs through holding an annual meeting at the university (see April in Auburn) and providing a scholarship award.
April in Auburn
Annually in the past--and now biennially--TPC faculty and students team up with the Birmingham Chapter of the STC for a day-long meeting that we call April in Auburn. The next April in Auburn meeting will be held in April 2008. An agenda will be available by December 2007. The 2006 meeting was held Saturday, April 8 and focused on practical sessions for professionals and featured presentations by several Department of English faculty members. The sessions included:
- New Industry Standards for Website Design, HC 3116, 9:40-10:30 am, presented by Jason Kneip, Librarian II, Archives and Special Collections, Auburn University-Montgomery and Michelle Sidler, Assistant Professor, Department of English
- Editing Workshop, HC 3104, 10:45 am to 12 pm, presented by Joyce Rothschild, Coordinator, Technical and Professional Communication Program, and Assistant Professor, Department of English
- Best Practices in Document Design, HC 3104, 1-1:50 pm, presented by Keith Gibson, Assistant Professor, Department of English
The April 2005 meeting, titled "Writing Proposals and Grants" focused on writing proposals and grants and featured keynote speaker Chuck Keller who presented tips for finding, analyzing, and responding to requests for proposals. Keller owns Keller Proposal Development & Training based in Pensacola, FL and is the co-author of the textbook Proposal Writing: The Art of Friendly and Winning Persuasion.
Other speakers included:
- Lee Griner, editor for the UAB Graduate School and instructor for its Professional Development Program
- Juanita Syljuberget, a Contract Administrator in the Auburn University Office of Sponsored Programs (OPS)
- Jenci Spradlin, Project Manager, Economic Development, City of Opelika, Al
- Nathan Meier, MTPC alum and Proposal Development Specialist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
The 2004 annual meeting centered on the theme “Dealing with Change." A number of speakers related their experiences working in the field as technical communicators. Also on the program in 2004 were English faculty member Keith 
Gibson and MTPC students Elizabeth Cater Childs and Julie Anne Zorn; each spoke about the current research they were conducting. Students in the MTPC program participated throughout the day by introducing the various speakers.
The April in Auburn meeting is as much about networking as it is about the sharing of ideas and experiences. Bringing together people experienced in industry with graduate students approaching the job market, the meeting provides an excellent opportunity to begin networking with STC peers.
Field trips
The MTPC faculty, through coordination with Auburn alums, arrange field trips to encourage networking and allow students to see the types of environments they are preparing to enter. Also, students get an overview of the way technology is used in each company. |
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Businesses that have been visited include: |
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The companies put together informative presentations that include subject matter experts, editors, multimedia groups, and upper-level employees to provide students with a range of information concerning how technical communicators fit into the company's overall composition.
Alum Presentations
Staying actively involved with the program, MTPC alumni give presentations to students at the graduate and undergraduate levels. In November of 2002, Lowell Lambert (MTPC, 02) entitled his talk “Going Down that Bumpy Road to Your First Technical Writing Job," and he discussed searching for job opportunities, preparing for the interview, surviving the interview, and getting the job. Alise Chabaud, a 2003 graduate of the MTPC program, also discussed job search strategies in her November 2003 presentation. Alise held her second presentation via an interactive video conference in 2004 between Auburn and her office, National Center for Biomedical Research and Training/Academy of Counter - Terrorist Education, at LSU. In April 2005, nathan Meier, a 2003 MTPC graduate, now a proposal development specialist a the university of Nebraska, Lincoln, spoke at the April in Auburn meeting on the topic of writing proposals and grants.
These interactions with MTPC alumni provide a unique opportunity for current students to discuss the impending leap from graduate school to industry. Through the alumni presentations, graduate students in the MTPC program are able to become more familiar and comfortable with the job search process as well as gain invaluable insight from the experience of their predecessors.
Annual Potluck Dinner
MTPC faculty, students, and friends gather for an annual potluck dinner toward the end of the spring semester, giving everyone a chance to socialize and recognizing achievements of students who presented their MTPC portfolios in the current academic year. |
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