The December 2011 Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication has been published.
 

Closing our first year, we are moving along at a great pace. There are five books under contract, with four under review. As the series editor, I am happy to inform IEEE, PCS, Wiley, and all interested parties that the PCS Book Series entitled “Professional Engineering Communication” is moving along well. With five titles signed in the first year and four under different stages of review as of this writing, the series is gaining momentum and attention from relevant researchers, practitioners, and instructors. This PCS book series addresses, specifically, the needs of IEEE membership, focusing on professional communication elements, techniques, concerns, and related issues. Created for professional engineers, technicians, academic administration/faculty, students, and technical communicators in related industries, this series meets a need for need a targeted set of materials that focus on very real, daily, on-site communication needs. With an eye to realistic examples, gleaned from engineers and their colleagues, this series aims to produce resources that are new, unique, and on task.

Click here to read the 2011 status report.

Call for Proposals (due December 12, 2011)

Online proposal submission: http://www.rose-hulman.edu/roseval

Conference dates: April 1-3, 2012, on the campus of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana

Are you interested in becoming a more competent manager? If so, then the IEEE Expert Now course, Thinking and Interacting Like a Leader, is for you. This course was developed by Dr. Kim Sydow Campbell, Professor of Management Communication and Derrell Thomas Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow in the Culverhouse College of Commerce at the University of Alabama. The course is based on Dr. Campbell’s book, Thinking & Interacting Like a Leader: The TILL System.

The course consists of three modules.  The first module―what’s a manager do? ―concentrates on what it means to be a manager. The second module ―what’s it take to think like a leader?―focuses on building the emotional intelligence behind the communication skills needed by managers to improve their relationships with organizational members. In the final module ―how do you put it all together?―will enable you to use what you learned in modules one and two to analyze communication success in a management situation.

This page lists resources that are benefitial to educators in technical and professional communication, as well as engineering educators who incorporate writing and communication in their courses.

Do you rely on the same on-campus or near-campus organizations for service learning projects? Have some projects turned out to be office work? Have students had trouble finding organizations compatible with their personal philosophies? Do you have trouble finding nonprofit partners nearby? The right projects nearby?

We'd love for you and your students to use the SLOT-C Database, a free service learning resource developed at Auburn University. It makes finding real projects—and good student-nonprofit matches—easier. It's designed for upper-division and graduate students in communication-related courses.

The SLOT-C connects your students to nonprofit projects across the country (and eventually beyond). It's searchable, and for some projects, students can telecommute. Also, students can learn a little about the organization up front.

http://www.earthzine.org/2011/12/22/earthzine-to-hold-third-annual-essay-and-blogging-contest-on-sustainability/

Earthzine invites undergraduate and graduate students from around the world to submit an essay for its 2011 Third Annual College and University Student Essay and Blogging Contest. This year’s contest theme is “How Can Earth Observation Help Us to Build a More Sustainable World?”

In this podcast Pamela Estes Brewer discusses her article, "Miscommunication in International Virtual Workspaces: Report on a Multicase Study," which appears in the December, 2010 issue of the Transactions on Professional Communication. Among her findings, based on a study of 22 employees from three organizations: participants noted different factors for miscommunication than those, to date, that have been considered in most computer-mediated communication literature.