[Lecture] Configuring the English Department to Make the English Major Sustainable into the Future, 22 Jan

Last updated:2015-01-19

Topic: Configuring the English Department to Make the English Major Sustainable into the Future

Speaker: David S. Kaufer, Head of English Department, Carnegie Mellon University from 1994 to 2009

Time: 10:30-12:00 AM, Thursday, 22 January, 2015
Venue: Room 210, School of Foreign Languages Building, South Campus, Sun Yat-sen University


Abstract
The talk will introduce CMU’s English department, our history, the research of our faculty, and our professional curriculum that trains technical majors at CMU, engineers, computer scientists, and natural scientists in the large array of communication skills they now need to become leaders in a global context. We also train English majors for employment in this global community under many job classifications –technical writers, professional writers, on-line journalists, content specialists, science writers, medical writers, grant proposal writers, technical editors, information designers, web designers, multi-media specialists, software documentation specialists, and more. I will make the argument that to be competitive for the future, the English major worldwide must stay rooted in the English language but must branch out as well to the many modes, media, and contexts of communication in which English is used by the global workforce.


About the Speaker
David S. Kaufer, PhD, University of Wisconsin. Department of Communication, with a specialization in communication and rhetorical Theory, linguistic pragmatics, and computer-mediated communication. Research Interests include Acquisition of writing skills, Textual data analysis. The relationship of texts and information flow in organizations, Technology and writing
Honors and Awards:
Elected Fellow of the Rhetorical Society America, 2014. There are only 20 Fellows in an organization of over 2200 members. Fellows are elected based on their significant research and service contributions.
Winner of the RSA Award for Mentoring, Rhetoric Society of America, 2014
One of my articles -- Kaufer, David & Cheryl Geisler. (1989). Novelty in Academic Writing. Written Communication, 6, 286-311 – was among the top ten cited in the last 25 years in the Journal Written Communication, the top-ranked journal for textual researchers with a specific focus on writing.
Winner of the Ellen Nold Award for Best Article of the Year in Computers and Writing (with C. Neuwirth), 1990.
Article nominated for NCTE award for best article in Scientific and Technical Communication (1994). "Collaboration Across the Verbal/Visual Interface: Supporting Graphic Design Teams." Technical Communication Quarterly, Winter, 1993, pp. 37-50.