TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION QUARTERLY, 19(3), 262280 Copyright 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 1057-2252 print

t / 1542-7625 online DOI: 10.10.1080/105722522010481535

Intellectual Fit and Programmatic Power: Organizational Profiles of Four Professional/Technical/Scientific Communication Programs
Bruce Maylath
North Dakota State University

Jeff Grabill
Michigan State University

Laura J. Gurak
University of Minnesota

Do programs in technical communication thrive when administered in English departments or in other configurations of administrative units? This article examines the variations in professional, technical, and scientific communication programs at four universities across the north central U.S. The first three programs have histories that led them to be housed at increasing distances from their universities English departments. The fourth is a nascent program emerging in its universitys English department.

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Presiding over the 2008 board meeting in Montreal of INTECOM, the international umbrella organization for technical communication societies, the University of Twentes Michal Steehouder remarked that he had never understood why technical communication programs in U.S. universities were never housed in communication departments, as similar programs typically are in European universities. Steehouders puzzlement hints at how idiosyncratic and seemingly arbitrary has been the development of professional, technical, and scientific communication

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(PTSC) programs in the U.S. Why indeed are so many of the programs in the U.S. housed in English departments? Is such a structure necessary? Would placement of PTSC programs in alternative structures lead to better outcomes? This special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly is devoted to answering these questions, and in this article we do so by looking closely at the structures of four universities with PTSC programs in the north central U.S. We have organized this tour of campuses by exploring three institutions that have placed their PTSC programs at ever-increasing distances from English departments and then circling back to a program housed in a traditional English department. Our doing so is prompted by our mutual observation that PTSC programs in the U.S. seem to flourish when they are independent of English or other large departments and that they often flourish still more when they are located in an engineering or applied science college or at a land grant school. A review of histories and placements of PTSC programs in the U.S. (Connors, 1982; Keene, 1997; Kynell, 2000) appears to provide long-running evidence to support our observationone we share with others. In a paper presented to the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC), Davis (2000) observed that humanities departments, especially those focused on literature, often stand opposed to practices that are common in business, science, and engineering. Among such practices, she listed real-world contexts: internships, technology, design, and collaboration. She pointed out that these contexts are important to technical communication programs and that where a technical communication program is located within a university has a profound impact upon the nature of the program (p. 19). Similarly, in the introduction to Kynells book, Tebeaux (2000) wrote,
One critical problem, for the first as well as present technical writing teachers, is that technical writing has been linked with English departments. Universities, even as they have developed beyond the basic liberal arts model, have kept the model, which has forced writing instruction to remain the responsibility of English departments. In both the early and closing years of the 20th century, writing instruction has not had a natural or even an accepted position in many English departments, which believe that their focus should be on literary studies. Thus, the problems faced by English faculty who found themselves teaching technical writing to engineering students (either by choice or by mandate) and the concepts they now teach were shaped during the early decades of the 20th century. Senior faculty will wince anew at problems faced by technical writing teachers and engineering faculty during these decades. Why? Because many problems that arose before 1910 still exist, becoming battles that many senior technical communication faculty experienced during the early 1970s and still face today. (pp. xvxvi)

The peculiarity of U.S. English departments as embarrassed but often firm owners of writing of any sort grows out of the fields formation in the latter half of

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the 19th century. Parkers (1967) landmark essay Where Do English Departments Come From? examined the history of the Modern Language Association (MLA) to reveal the English fields early attempts to define itself by claiming everything remotely connected to language and literature in English, followed in the early 20th century by the successful attempts of literature adherents to make all others feel unwelcome to the point that they left and formed their own associations and departments (National Council of Teachers of English in 1911, Speech Association of America in 1914, and Linguistic Society of America in 1924). Still, most English departments held on to their control of writing instruction for the tangible benefits it accorded:
Little by little English departments lost journalism, speech, and theater, and recently [in the 1960s] we have seen the development of separate undergraduate departments of comparative literature and linguistics. There have been polylingual grumblings from foreign language departments about the English department monopoly of courses in world literature. For a time there was a real threat of separate departments of communications (for example, at Michigan State University), but English has somehow managed to hold on stubbornly to all written composition not intended for oral deliverya subject which has always had a most tenuous connection with the academic study of language and literature, but which, not incidentally, from the outset has been a great secret of strength for English with both administrators and public, and latterly has made possible the frugal subsidizing of countless graduate students who cannot wait to escape it. (Parker, 1967, p. 350)

Tellingly, from the perspective of PTSC administrators, a 1991 MLA survey revealed that English departments were offering more sections of professional writing than of creative writing and literature (Rentz, 2001). Rentz, who, with two colleagues, contributed another article to this special issue, wrote earlier,
If you were to read any of the books depicting English studies that have come out over the last fifteen years, you would never guess that professional writing figured significantly into English departments missions or activitieseven the composition expertsignore the presence of professional writing in English departments. Does this neglect imply that writing can simply be folded in composition studiesthat the two areas of writing instruction are largely interchangeable, and thus that what we say about the relation of composition to literary studies holds true for professional writing as well? Or is professional writing a nasty little secret of English departments, one representing an embarrassing compromise with capitalism and the technostate about which wed rather not speak? (p. 186)

Is the secret to PTSC programs prosperity that they be placed in a structure apart from literature-focused English departments? In this article, we do not purport to offer a comprehensive recent history to answer this question. Rather, we begin to

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provide an answer by offering a sustained glimpse of four universities structures for locating PTSC programs. In so doing, we begin to respond to Kynells (2000) call for such study:
Technical writings place in English, Humanities, and Engineering departments around the United States needs further study because although the conclusion of this chapter would imply that the disciplines place became secure by the 1950s, this is only partially true. (p. 100)

Our tour begins by examining a program that, on the surface, appears to offer a structure and placement that affords the best of all possible worlds. However, a sustained look under the surface reveals unanticipated flaws and weaknesses. Because of the structures complexity and inherent tensions, we explore this structure with special thoroughness.

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-STOUT At the University of Wisconsin-Stout (UW-Stout), all academic programs are housed at the college level, with their directors reporting directly to the dean. Instituted in 1969, the structure is intended to promote interdisciplinarity. Each program has a modest budget and clerical staff, but each relies on the goodwill and cooperation of traditional, disciplinary departments for instruction, advising, and service staffing. Some programs, like art, applied mathematics, and computer science, rely almost exclusively on a single, related department. UW-Stouts technical communication program relies heavily on the English and philosophy department. Known locally as the program-director model, this university-wide structure of directors reporting to deans had long been in place when UW-Stout started its BS in Technical Communication in 2000, followed by its MS in Technical and Professional Communication in 2009. The structure found favor in some of the universitys colleges more than others. In particular, the structure was popular with the faculty in what until recently was the College of Technology, Engineering, and Management. Thus, a program such as Graphic Communications Management could easily include courses in Art, Business, Design, Management, and Media that were taught by instructors in such departments as Art and Design, Apparel and Communication Technologies, and Business. In this respect, the structure performs as intended, allowing the disciplines to be bridged so that students can easily cross between them. Intellectually, placing a technical communication program in a college where it would rely largely on an English department would seem a good fit. In terms of programmatic power, however, the fit produces friction. What the local propo-

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nents of the program-director structure did not anticipate was war within a discipline. As outlined in our introduction, English (and one could add language and literature departments in general) has been engaged in a civil war since shortly after the formation of the MLA. In starting a technical communication program at Wisconsins Polytechnic University, as the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents officially dubbed UW-Stout in 2007, the administration did not encounter resistance from departments and disciplines outside of English. Core courses in the program included several from departments such as Art and Design; Business; Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science; and Speech Communication, Foreign Languages, Theatre and Music. Instead, resistance came from within the Department of English and Philosophy. Tellingly, resistance did not come from the philosophers, who contributed significantly, especially as advisors to undergraduates in the program. Notably and tellingly, a couple of literature faculty members who also taught creative writing performed with distinction as program advisors. The same was true later of all the composition specialists who eventually were hired and of a few literature specialists as well. However, entrenched resistance emerged early on and successively from a hard core of literature specialists hardly a surprise to those who know the history of the English field as it has played out in the U.S. From its start a polytechnic university in all but name, UW-Stout had never offered a major related to English until the UW Board of Regents approved the BS in Technical Communication, although the university had long offered English minors in journalism, literature, teaching, technical writing, and writing (general) and a specialization in professional writing. Until 2000, the Department of English and Philosophy functioned as a service department to the rest of the university. When the program in technical communication became official, the universitys admissions office and administration often billed it as UW-Stouts version of an English majora label that often raised the eyebrows and sometimes the hackles of literature specialists in the Department of English and Philosophy. Curiouslyto those not familiar with the English disciplines historythe department for decades hired literature specialists to teach all its courses except philosophy and logic, even though its offerings were overwhelmingly writing courses. (As Dan Riordan, the departments longtime advisor for the technical writing minor and professional writing specialization, pointed out repeatedly to his several successors as department chair, all of the departments literature courses together could be taught by fewer than 3 of its 18 tenured/tenure-track faculty members in English, if the 3 taught only literature; all others would be left with writing courses exclusively.) Such hiring practices did not begin to change until 1998, when, with the proposal for a technical communication degree under advanced development, the departments staff committee recognized that it would need a composition/rhetoric/technical communication specialist to serve as program director.

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Because of the departments long history as a literature-focused unit (in mindset, if not in practice) and because it did not have ties to an academic major, faculty members in English met the program in its initial years mainly with apathy. The reason for this apathy was that more than three quarters of those in English expected to retire within the next few years. They would not oppose the introduction of a new degree as long as they were not expected to do anything to support it. In the meantime, the small number of English faculty members who had launched the program were finding that tending to the programs growth was quickly demanding far more hours than a handful of faculty members could handle while teaching the normal load of four courses per semester. Indeed, so many students joined the program so quickly that, according to the ATTW Bulletin, after just 3 1/2 years of operation, UW-Stouts technical communication program was already one of the 10 largest undergraduate programs, in terms of enrollment, out of more than 100 technical communication/professional writing bachelors programs in the U.S. (Turner, 2004, p. 9). To illustrate the programs staffing needs at a department meeting in the programs second year, the program director created a list of major areas that demanded staff attention: program administration, advising, alumni relations, communications, assessment and curriculum updates, co-ops and internships, experiential learning, fundraising, international activities, recruiting, registration, scholarships/awards, teaching, and advising the student chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. For each area, he added specific duties and activities. Until this point, most of the department had subscribed to the fiction that all program duties of any kind could be adequately handled during the 10-hour-per-week release time assigned to the program director. After this meeting, the faculty members from the previously mentioned areas offered support as they were able. In contrast, a majority of the literature specialists clung all the more fiercely to their preconceived notions of work assignments. Resistance during the programs first 4 years came mainly in two forms: first, refusing advising and service roles for the program and second, configuring hiring committees and job postings so that, with few exceptions, replacements for retiring faculty were nearly always literature specialists, rather than true generalists, as they were euphemistically labeled (and far from the composition specialists that the department so dearly needed and that the job market, by this point, so amply provided). Saying repeatedly that the department should not be changed by the addition of the technical communication program, the department chair during the programs early years excluded the program director and others supportive of the program when appointing hiring committees for generalist positions. In several cases, the new, young faculty members hired by these committees proved much more resistant to having a technical communication program in their midst than did the retiring faculty members whom they had replaced, even though in hiring interviews with them, the dean had stressed the importance of the program to the

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future of the department, college, and university. Their attitudes shaped by their recent indoctrination in English graduate programs, these new faculty members seemed eager and energetic volunteers in carrying the intradisciplinary civil war to their new faculty territories. As the program continued to mature, the systemic flaw in UW-Stouts college-level, program-director model became all the more apparent: Program directors reported to their deans, but the faculty members who were expected to support the programs reported to their department chairs. Worse, program directors served two masters: Although the directors reported directly to deans on program matters, they reported on everything else to the chair of the department where their tenure lines were held. Thus, department chairsnot program directorsheld the power to assign courses and sections, appoint committee members (including, most significantly, appointments to hiring committees), advise roles, and endorse for tenure and promotion, not only in regard to other department members but also the program directors themselves. When dean, department chair, and program director were all in agreement, the structure worked as intended. However, when one member of the trio acted with recalcitrance, the structure could easily produce dysfunction and gridlock. In theory, a program director facing a recalcitrant chair could report the matter to the dean and request mediation or assistance. In practice, though, because chairs were elected by their departments and not appointed by the dean as department heads, deans could be reluctant to exert pressure on a chair, fearing that such pressure might alienate a majority of a department. In an attempt to control the appointment and duties of the technical communication program director, UW-Stouts English and Philosophy Department added a program director article to its bylaws (University of Wisconsin-Stout, 2004, para. 5). This article should be read for contrast alongside the UW-Stout faculty handbooks clauses on program director selection, which gives such authority to each college-level governance group (University of Wisconsin-Stout, 2009, pp. 227). A search of all UW-Stout departments bylaws posted on the university Web site reveals that the English and Philosophy Department is the only one to include an article about program directors. By 2005, the university began to reevaluate its program structure in an initiative dubbed UW-Stout Focus 2010. An outside consultant, Samford Universitys John Harris, arrived at UW-Stout in early 2006. Harris was finishing a long career as a critic of disciplinary silos and a proponent of new interdisciplinary structures in such publications as Organise to Optimise: Organisational Change and Higher Education (Harris, Tagg, & Howell, 2005). In a memorable meeting at UW-Stout on February 13, 2006, with College of Arts and Sciences program directors and department chairs, Harris laid out his recommendations, also noting that his current visit to UW-Stout was hardly his first. In fact, he said, he had been brought to UW-Stout in 1969 to recommend the program-director model. In a tone of frustration, he said that it was inevitable that the university had experienced

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conflicts between programs and departments. In advocating college-level programs, his original recommendation had been simultaneously to discard disciplinary departments. To his chagrin, a sizable faction of the faculty had resisted the latter change and succeeded in retaining departments, overlaid with interdisciplinary programs. The problems experienced, he said, were exactly what he had predicted (personal communication, February 13, 2006). In 2008, after several years analysis and debate, UW-Stout realigned its distribution of programs among colleges by forming four new colleges: College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; College of Education, Health and Human Sciences; College of Management; and College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Their predecessor units also numbered four: College of Arts and Sciences; College of Human Development; College of Technology, Engineering, and Management; and School of Education. UW-Stouts Department of English and Philosophy and its technical communication program had both been housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. Following realignment, both now reside in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Significantly, despite Harriss recommendation and program directors continued descriptions of systemic problems, disciplinary departments continue to survive underneath college-level programs. For UW-Stouts technical communication program, the conflicts have diminished in scale, in part because of a new, more supportive department chair and his recognition of the programs needs during opportunities to hire faculty members and in part because of department members acknowledgement that the program is here to stay. However, a structure in which a technical communication program is nominally independent of an English department, yet in reality is anything but, is much flimsier than a surface inspection might suggest. Such could hold true in an engineering or agriculture college as easily as an arts, humanities, and social sciences college. Ultimately, as we shall see increasingly in the cases below, attitudes toward PTSC programs can be and often are as important as location, but location determines who will be expected to take responsibility for programs, and thus whose attitudes will have a bearing on program outcomes.

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY MSUs professional writing program first offered classes in 2002 in a department that for many years had taught only first-year writing and had no major. That departmentcalled American Thought and Language and now Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultureswas tasked with teaching first-year writing to most of MSUs students. The department was always separate from the Department of English and was staffed largely by Americanists from multiple disciplines. The development of the professional writing major was made possible by a number of in-

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stitutional changes associated with the larger writing program. Therefore its name, as well as the location, purposes, and goals of the professional writing major all constitute an argument about what a writing major might look like in the early 21st centurya major that accounts for technical communication but is not overdetermined by it. Parkers (1967) allusion, cited in our introduction, to MSU as a site where writing began to separate from English hinted at an interesting clue to how MSUs professional writing program took root independent of English. Ostensibly, Parker was referring to long-serving president John Hannahs radical reorganizing of the university from the 1940s into the 1960s. One innovation was to form a new college of general studies, initially named Basic College, through which undergraduates took most of their general education courses. The college included a writing and speaking department, the forerunner of what would become known as the Department of American Thought and Language (ATL). Eventually, all the departments spun out of the general studies college and back to their colleges of origin, often resulting in the retention of the faculty but not the department. The exception was ATL, which was the only department to survive the elimination of the old general college to join the College of Arts and Letters. During this time, ATL instructors taught writing to the vast majority of MSU students in writing-intensive courses but, given the practice of hiring Americanists in history or English, the courses focused on American history, American philosophy, American literature, and the like. These courses therefore resembled first-year writing courses in many English departments that have weak or absent composition faculty. As DeVoss and Julier (2009) told the story, the possibility of developing a professional writing major much like that which eventually emerged was originally offered to the English department, which declined to move its focus in this direction. That decision resulted in the continued survival of the ATL department, which subsequently began developing the major as part of a larger vertical writing program initiative. As a result, ATL became the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRAC). The structure and meaning of the professional writing major is best understood within the larger context of the writing program at MSU, which consists of a number of degree programs, administrative entities, and institutional locations: the WRAC department, a writing center, a graduate program, and a research center called Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE). The graduate program resembles UW-Stouts in being housed at the college level. It consists of three degree programs: an MA in Digital Rhetoric and Professional Writing, an MA in critical studies in literacy and pedagogy, and a PhD in rhetoric and writing. The graduate program also resembles UW-Stouts in that most of the faculty members maintain their tenure home in a single department. However, unlike the situation at UWStout, the graduate program is titled Rhetoric and Writing, rather than Technical and Professional Communication, with a faculty housed primarily in English.

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This collection of entities can be called the writing program because, as a collection, it is responsible for the teaching and research of writing at MSU. (As we shall see in the next section, such a collection resembles to a large extent what existed at the University of Minnesota in the 1980s90s.) One of its virtues is its verticality. (See Miles et al. [2008] for more on vertical writing programs.) The program applies an intellectual verticality in that writing is taught in a conceptually coherent way, and MSU students encounter the writing program at various points in their time on campus, thereby experiencing vertical movement through courses and programs. Because it is part of a vertical structure, the professional writing major can focus on being a major, rather than serving a broader writing-across-the-curriculum function or supporting service courses. Likewise, the program is distinct from the first-year writing instruction. Students in the major have a core set of experiences, which include an introduction to professional writing as a major, a field of practice, and an intellectual activity; an introduction to Web development; a cultural rhetoric course; a visual rhetoric course; and an internship experience. The major has three tracks: Digital and Technical Writing, Writing in Communities and Cultures, and Editing and Publishing. In practice, students often take enough courses that they complete more than one track in the major. DeVoss and Julier (2009) described the major as focusing on the following capacities:

Understanding how different contextsrelated, for instance, to delivery

mode, document type and genre, audience, and purposeshape a writing-related task; Writing to and for various audiencescultural, professional, organizational in effective and persuasive ways; Writing creatively, with panache and flair; informatively, with clarity, conciseness, and comprehensibility; persuasively, with detail, description, and supporting evidence; Conveying complex information in informative, understandable ways with both words and images; Editing across project types and levels of edit (for example, peer review, content editing, copyediting); Mapping, coordinating, and managing large-scale projects; and Exploring and mastering software to produce a range of documents (pp. 7374).

The naming of PTSC programs has been an issue for some time (e.g., Allen, 1990), so we present MSUs major in these terms to highlight a few issues central to our discussion. First, it should be possible, in view of DeVoss and Juliers (2009) description of capacities, that this academic major focus on outcomes that are common to many programs in the field. Second, it should be possible to see

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that this program can produce technical communicators, as indeed the program has. Third, understanding this programs history of development is essential to understanding its location and structure. The program was imagined originally by rhetoric and composition specialists, some of whom focus on professional and technical writing. This history gives the program a particular emphasis on culture and rhetoric that those at MSU understand as a strength. The professional writing major, therefore, is also understood at MSU to be an undergraduate major in rhetoric and composition. Fourth, the program developers were not required to develop the major within the confines of an English department. In practical terms, that meant that they could create a fully articulated writing major and deal with issues in ways informed more by rhetorical studies than by literary theory and analysis or by other approaches traditional in humanities fields. Similarly, creating the program outside the English department also meant that the majors development was free of the compromises, common in established English departments, that would result in a set of literature courses, for instance, embedded as part of the majors requirements. Finally, the major is administered within a departmental faculty where neighboring administrators oversee the first-year writing program and graduate degrees in rhetoric and writing. The lead administrator for the professional writing major, therefore, concerns herself exclusively with the major as a major, which enables significant intellectual freedom while being surrounded by other writing program administrators, making coordination and collegiality possible.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA Among PTSC programs in the U.S., the University of MinnesotaTwin Cities has been a pioneer with each degree it has established. The universitys success in establishing rhetoric and scientific and technical communication degrees can be traced in part to the programs independence from both the English and the speech communication departments. The geographical features that gave rise to Twin Cities also gave rise to twin subcampuses, with the College of Agriculture placed in St. Paul and the College of Liberal Arts placed in Minneapolis. In the era of streetcars, the 3 miles that separate the St. Paul subcampus from the Minneapolis subcampus were sufficient in 1908 to prompt the university to form the Department of Rhetoric to teach humanities to the students in St. Paul, mainly through courses in writing, speaking, and reading but also in courses like theatre. Later, before its scientific and technical communication degrees took prominence, the department offered a masters in agricultural journalism. Eventually, the rhetoric department also served three more colleges added to the St. Paul location. Taking advantage of its status as the official humanities and social science unit for the four St. Paul colleges, the department offered a BS degree and then launched the MS degree in 1979, followed by a PhD in 1992.

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Until the 1990s, when a high-speed transitway connected the subcampuses, geographical separation did much to sustain the rhetoric departments independence from English and speech, although we should note that a long history of rhetorics and oratorys being taught in polytechnics and land grant schools also played a role in keeping the department firmly attached to the agriculture college. The University of Minnesota has always had a liberal arts college and departments of speech communication, English, journalism, and the like. Notably, during the early 1980s, an undergraduate program in composition and communication spun off from the English department to form its own administrative unit, until it was reabsorbed into the English department in the late 1990s. Locating technical communication degrees in an agriculture college may have been unique among PTSC programs in the U.S. However, such a structure was not unique if one looks at other vital PTSC programs located in science and engineering colleges and universities. Most such programs have been aligned with engineering: Those at Carnegie Mellon, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Washington all come to mind. That said, a significant and notable minority, including the four programs depicted in this article, have been aligned with other disciplines. Technical Communication in Two Worlds Whether located in an agriculture or an engineering college, PTSC programs in these locations share a mutual challenge: One is always trying to demonstrate fit. Or as our late colleague Victoria Mikelonis liked to say about proposals that the department created in the agriculture college, it was important to aggie up. New course proposals, new program proposals, new hires, and the like need to be connected to the strategic mission and plan of the college. Sometimes the connection is relatively easy to make (for instance, with environmental writing or professional communication) but often is difficult (for example, with classical rhetoric or gender studies). And with each new dean come the same sorts of questions: What is a rhetoric/technical communication department? Why are you in the agriculture/engineering college? Most of the time, in the case of the rhetoric department, the continued large volume of service teaching was enough to convince the agriculture dean of the departments importance, especially when the University of Minnesota changed its accounting to a system whereby a large percentage of generated tuition flowed back to the collegiate unit. Yet some deans also saw the intellectual fit of a department that specialized in communication in applied settings and studied communication and science, technology, and new media. The same can be said of the other departments faculties and heads. Most saw the benefits not only for teaching but also for collaboration. One distinct advantage of being in the agriculture college, in contrast to, say, liberal arts, was that technical communication was situated in the midst of research

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and other activities in the plant and animal sciences. Faculty members from the rhetoric department often participated in funded research projects; graduate students had opportunities to connect theory with practice; and undergraduates were able to apply their training to internships with the Minnesota Extension Service or similar entities. Thus, being situated in the College of Agriculture was similar to any PSTC program situated in any science or engineering college: On the down side, you must always work very hard to show how you fit and to tailor your ideas to the environment. On the up side, you have a chance to collaborate with actual scientists, and you are surrounded by the very environments that many technical communication scholars wish to study. Another advantage for the former rhetoric department was that it was not situated in the larger College of Liberal Arts and thus did not have any direct competition with English or speech communication. Although larger proposals, such as new degrees, needed campus-wide consultation, smaller proposalsnew courses, seminars, faculty research leave proposals, other collegiate funding proposals were exempt from the traditional tensions that a technical communication program might feel within English or other similar departments. Although faculty from the rhetoric department enjoyed numerous collaborations with colleagues in the liberal arts (especially English, journalism, and speech communication), when it came to funding and curricular decisions, the rhetoric department and its technical communication programs were generally left alone. In 2005, the world that the rhetoric department had always known began to shake apart. The University of Minnesota began an institution-wide strategic positioning process. In so doing, the president and provost set their sights on undergraduate writing as a top priority for the university. At that time, first-year composition was taught in three places: the College of Liberal Arts English department; the College of Education and Human Developments Department of Post-Secondary Teaching and Learning (formerly called General College); and the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environmental Sciences rhetoric department. The provost decided to create a new department, Writing Studies, in the College of Liberal Arts, and move all first-year writing into this new department. The provosts decision included closing the rhetoric department in 2007 and moving all its programs and faculty from Agriculture to the new department in the College of Liberal Arts, where the department now resides side by side with the English department, the communication studies department, and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Today, the Department of Writing Studies houses all the scientific and technical communication degrees as well as the Writing Center, all first-year writing, and a program in second-language studies. In both instancesfirst in the College of Agricultures rhetoric department and then in College of Liberal Arts writing studies departmentthe technical communication programs have not been embedded in a larger English-type department

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and thus have not had to fight the battles, either for legitimacy or for autonomy, in which so many other PTSC programs have had to engage. In both instances, the technical communication degrees have been unique on campus and relatively autonomous from other units such as English, speech communication, or communication studies. In the current writing studies department, the scientific and technical communication programs are at the core of the department, in large part because most of the faculty and all the existing degrees to date came from the former rhetoric department. As Writing Studies evolves as a department, it will be important to maintain the historic strengths in technical communication and not be overshadowed by first-year writing or new programs in other kinds of writing and communication.

NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY Our analysis of structures containing PSTC programs ends with an English department that has managed so far to achieve a balance among literature, composition/rhetoric, and professional writing, although not without lengthy and vigorous debate. North Dakota State University (NDSU) had offered a concentration of technical writing within its bachelors and masters degrees in English for some time. Then, in 2008, the North Dakota State Board of Higher Education approved a new PhD program named English: Practical Writing. With the growth of high technology in North Dakota (Microsofts third largest facility in North America is located in Fargo, as are branches of Navteq and other high-tech firms), this land grant university is updating its curricula to reflect the requirements and expectations of the technical communication field. In so doing, the English department is working with other departments to create a truly interdisciplinary curriculum. In contrast to many English departments, NDSUs currently has a slight majority of its faculty as specialists in rhetoric, composition, and technical communication. The change from a large majority in literature to a close balance between literature and writing-oriented specialties came about during the past decades replacement of retirees as the department responded to the universitys mission of address[ing] the needs and aspirations of people in a changing world by building on our land-grant foundation (Mission, 2006). The move was not welcomed by all in literature, but in time most of those who objected have retired. What typifies those remaining, as well as those who have arrived since 2000, is a general acknowledgement and respect for the importance of both literature and writing. Indeed, with the recent advent of a vertical writing program, all faculty members, regardless of specialty, teach at least one section of an upper-division writing course each year. In turn, it is not unusual for those who specialize in a writing-oriented

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subfield to teach a section of literature, as nearly all started with traditional literature-focused English majors in their bachelors programs. Much credit goes to the then department head, Dale Sullivan, who presented his model of program and department community building in a CPTSC keynote address (Sullivan, 2007). A formal discussion of this model took place at CPTSCs 2009 annual meeting in a panel titled Positioning a Technical Writing Program Inside an English Department: Creating an Exception to the Rule. Representing NDSUs literature faculty, Miriam Mara (2009) cited the input that Sullivan solicited from the entire department as it drafted its proposal and curriculum for the new PhD in English: Practical Writing. She noted that the doctoral program rests on a humanistic base, encouraging students to embrace the humanities. For example, the program contains an English Studies component, which asks students to complete literature course-work either in an earlier degree or when they arrive at NDSU. Representing NDSUs writing faculty, including professional and technical communication, Andrew Mara (2009) highlighted the departments efforts at finding useful overlaps in faculty expertise, department resources, and university strengths to avoid opening rifts between disciplines, which can end up exacerbating old antagonisms either through enforcement of the status quo or the mere flipping of power imbalances. From his perspective as a relative newcomer, Maylath (2009) pointed out that
keeping a balance appears to be one of the keys to keeping this department civil and functional. During a needs assessment in fall 2008, the departments faculty was all but unanimous in agreeing that the next position hired should be in literature, as the positions in writing areas were now filled and the needs met. Such unanimity is not always forthcoming; however, discussions are consistently civil, respectful, and productive.

Whether such harmony can be maintained remains to be seen. Will newcomers to the faculty come with less community-minded attitudes and behavior? As curricula are updated and if courses in such areas as design and project management migrate from offerings in other departments to offerings within the English department, will the literature specialists stage a revolt?

CONCLUSIONS The future of a PTSC program in an English department does not seem as sure as it does for a program housed in structures like those at MSU, the University of Minnesota, or even UW-Stout, much less those in Europe. Each structure manifests meanings, benefits, and drawbacks. Among them, we can list the following:

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1. The location, names, and purposes of PTSC programs are always a function of a dance between local politics and economics and more global disciplinary issues. These narratives have provided plenty of local context, but we want to stress that these arrangements are also disciplinary arguments about who we are and what we value. The decisions at the University of Minnesota regarding department name, for instance, or the view at MSU that the professional writing major is an answer to the question of what a writing major might look like should be viewed in this context. These structures as disciplinary arguments are perhaps not well understood as such, yet they have a powerful materiality and persistence that should command our attention. 2. Focused programs or departments also change the nature of the conversation about research and scholarly activity. First, the autonomy of writing programs and departments entails the articulation of a research agenda and programs. At research institutions in particular, departments exist in part to structure research, and departments are expected to have research central to their mission. Second, autonomy enables a productive conversation about research because new value systems must be developed as part of these new institutional structures. 3. PTSC programs manifest greater alacrity and nimbleness when they stand apart from traditional English departments (and, one might add, traditional Danish, Dutch, French, etc., departments, as one might find in Europe). They can respond, for instance, to workplace trends and employment expectations in the professional and technical communication field significantly faster and more variably than programs not so positioned. Indeed, when they are fully independentas are the ones at Minnesota, Washington, and many European universitiesthe literature faculty display no more awareness or concern than they do about other independent departments in diverse fields such as business, engineering, or natural sciences. Indeed, even at NDSU, where a high degree of harmony has been achieved, change in such areas as curriculum and hiring occurs at a slower pace than at any of the other three universities we have examined. 4. PTSC programs placed in hybrid arrangements, such as UW-Stouts, can offer some benefits in more naturally interdisciplinary arrangements. However, such arrangements, which can appear to provide independence on the surface, can be detrimental when programs must depend below the surface on faculty members (in literature or otherwise) who are apathetic or, worse, outright hostile toward the program that they are charged with implementing, supporting, and maintaining. A historical weakness of interdisciplinary programs is that they are not owned by powerful departments and are therefore vulnerable and weak. These programs can be particularly weak if departments charged with supporting them have it within their power to disown programs, whether by hook or by crook.

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Over time in such environments, PTSC programs may naturally tend to distance themselves from literature, in moves that may parallel what has occurred at MSU over the past half century and accelerated over the past decade. Debate and conflict over what are legitimate areas to teach and research (not to mention hard feelings over discrepancies in salaries for new hires) evaporate as distance increases between the faculties of literature and PTSC programs. 5. Recruitment of students can vary considerably with a programs placement but probably hinges more on program names and recruitment strategies and tactics than on location itself. As noted earlier, UW-Stout, for instance, tried to overcome students unfamiliarity with the title technical communication by describing it as UW-Stouts version of an English major. NDSU, in contrast, recruits students to its program by keeping English as the title of its degrees but then requesting students to pick a concentration, such as writing or literature. To compensate for the drawbacks of labeling its degree technical communication, UW-Stout is proposing that its newest curriculum for its BS include a retitling to insert journalism in its degree name. 6. Recruitment of PTSC faculty can occur more smoothly and quickly when PTSC programs are independent of literature. In our experience, the possibilities of working in an environment outside of English have been deeply attractive to candidates. As noted above, during the UW-Stout programs early years, literature-focused English department members actively worked at counterpurposes with their regents, universitys, colleges, and programs objectives to establish a technical communication program and attendant faculty. And whereas PTSC programs like NDSUs can meet their hiring needs, those like MSUs and the University of Minnesotas can proceed without an eye turned toward maintaining a politically expedient balance between literature and writing. With PTSC programs increasingly having to respond rapidly to technology and workplace changes and with competition coming from programs worldwide, PTSC programs independent of literature would seem to hold an advantage. Indeed, the global nature of recruiting faculty to PTSC programs came into starker relief when CPTSC held its 2009 annual meeting in rhus, Denmark. There it became apparent that an increasing number of U.S.-based programs have hired nationals from such nations as China, India, Russia, and Ukraine. Just as striking at rhus was one of the local hosts recent faculty hires: a U.S. citizen who earned her PhD in the University of Minnesotas rhetoric and scientific and technical communication program. During the CPTSC meeting, she noted that she had never taken a course in Minnesotas English Department. Rather, her credentials from Minnesotas former rhetoric department were what appealed to the faculty in rhus.

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Bruce Maylath, a Professor in North Dakota State Universitys English Department, was the University of WisconsinStouts Founding Director of Technical Communication, after teaching as a graduate assistant at Michigan State and Minnesota.

Jeff Grabill is Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing and Co-Director of the Writing in Digital Environments (WIDE) Research Center at Michigan State University. He is interested in knowledge work within organizational contexts.

Laura J. Gurak is Professor and Founding Chair of the Department of Writing Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her work examines rhetorical and social interactions on the Internet, especially online communities and digital literacies.

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