The Brotman Award for Instructional Excellence recognizes collaboration within and among departments, programs and groups to improve the quality of undergraduate education. Made possible by a donation from Jeffrey and Susan Brotman to "enhance teaching and learning," the award is administered by the UW Teaching Academy, made up of the winners of the Distinguished Teaching Award. Jeffrey Brotman is a UW law graduate and regent. Susan is a director of the UW Foundation. This year's awardees receive $17,500.

Department of Technical Communication

As an undergraduate student in the UW's Technical Communication Department, Alex Thayer used to describe his major for those who asked as "engineering writing."

But as he progressed in the program, Thayer quickly realized he was wrong. Being a technical communicator is more than translating technical concepts into plain English, he said. He is also gaining an understanding of the rhetorical and scientific principles of how communication works.

In Technical Communication's special lab, graduate student Connie Missimer, left, uses a Web site while consultant Anita Salem, center, and TC Chair Judy Ramey watch her on a TV screen.

Thayer credits the well-rounded, hands-on education in communication design he is gaining in the TC program with helping him land a recent internship with IBM in San Jose. He is one of many TC students who say they are reaping the rewards of involvement in an outstanding program.

That success has earned the Technical Communication Department a 2000 Brotman Award for Instructional Excellence.

Judy Ramey, chair of the department, says TC students are seeing success because they're being well prepared to take advantage of a dawning awareness that effective communication in the '00s involves more than just writing skills or HTML fluency.

"People are beginning to understand that Web sites are not documents; they are relationships," Ramey said. "You have to see the human reality of it, and that's where our people are flourishing. We show them how to bring all the threads together to shape the site for the use of their audience.

Missimer's image on the TV monitor allows Salem and Ramey to see how she is using the Web site and thus to detect problems with the site design.

"Our interns are the highest paid interns in the College of Engineering right now. And when they graduate, they get jobs at places like Microsoft, IBM, Intel, at e-commerce companies and dot-coms. They have job titles like Web master, producer, and information architect as well as technical communicator."

Several factors contribute to TC students' marketability, Ramey said. One is the atmosphere of the department. The hierarchy is flat, she explained.

"Everyone calls everyone else by their first names — there are no 'doctors,'" she said. "We treat our students as younger colleagues, as emerging professionals. They treat us as senior colleagues. That creates a collaborating environment where everyone brings something to the table and everyone is respected for their contributions."

Another vital piece of the system is an emphasis on experiential learning. Students in the science writing pathway, for example, can contribute to a regional science magazine, Northwest Science & Technology.

"That gives students a hands-on laboratory in which they can learn to identify stories, interview sources and be involved in the production process," she said. "But at the same time that they are being nurtured as emerging professionals, they are putting out a professional quality magazine."

The department has also revamped writing throughout the College of Engineering with the establishment of an Engineering Writing Center that uses students as tutors to help their engineering peers navigate the complexities of writing about scientific topics. A related portfolio assessment project is tracking writing progress in the college. And an emphasis on fostering a global perspective has created an international technical communication program featuring student and faculty exchanges and an international summer-workshop series.

For Thayer, the insights he gained from TC faculty and by working in the Engineering Writing Center paid off handsomely while he was at IBM. One of his initial assignments involved work on a document that contained more than 1,500 pages of information. Previously, the company had simply distributed the document in multiple printed volumes.

Thayer knew there had to be a way to make the information more accessible. He designed an Internet-based interface that granted users access to all 1,500-plus pages almost instantly. Several months later, he was awarded a patent for the interface.

"I never would have gained that patent without my education as a technical communicator," said Thayer, who expects to graduate with a bachelor's degree this year.

Rob Harrill, News & Information

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