Certification Committee Meets at STC Headquarters

The STC certification committee, chaired by Steven Jong, met at Stately STC Manor this past weekend. By all accounts there was a lot of progress and a lot of work got done. Joining Steve in Fairfax were (in no particular order) Buck Chaffee, STC President Mike Hughes, Rob Hanna, Charles Fisher, Steve Murphy, Karen Baranich, Jenna Moore, Dan Wise, STC Executive Director Kathryn Burton, Deputy Executive Director Lloyd Tucker, and Intercom editor Liz Pohland.

Buck Chaffee of The Caviart Group led the meeting; Buck is an expert in certification and testing and has administered thousands of exams. He has 30 years of certification experience and has previously been the head of a certification board, so his expertise was extremely helpful and most welcome.

Over the course of the weekend the group discussed KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities), job/task analysis, a profile of an STC-certified technical communicator, and potential test specifications. Jong said the weekend went very well, with a lot of focus and a great group of workers. They outlined over 100 potential KSAs, which they'll have evaluated by a select group in the future.

The committee reconvenes in Fairfax in November, but that's not their only stop. Steve Jong will visit the Boston chapter later this month for a Q&A on certification while Rob Hanna will do the same in Toronto in November.

If you have any questions about certification or would like to volunteer your expertise, please contact Steve Jong.

4 Replies to “Certification Committee Meets at STC Headquarters”

  1. Why not identify the people in the picture?

    The phrase next to the picture of 10 people mentions 12 people “in no particular order.”

    As we reinvent the STC website, I hope we will also be more sensitive to the impression of STC that our content creates.

  2. Thanks for the comments. The paragraph is not meant to be a caption but rather a list of attendees, not all of whom were in the photo. If you’d like to match names to faces, they are: (standing, back, l-r) Rob Hanna, Steve Murphy, Michael Hughes, Steven Jong, Buck Chaffee, and Dan Wise; (standing, front, l-r) Liz Pohland, Jenna Moore; (seated, l-r) Karen Baranich, Charles Fisher; (not pictured) Kathryn Burton, Lloyd Tucker.

  3. “The committee reconvenes in Fairfax in November, but that’s not their only stop. Steve Jong will visit the Boston chapter later this month for a Q&A on certification while Rob Hanna will do the same in Toronto in November.”

    That sounds like Rob and Steve are making special trips to get the pulse of STCers … but isn’t Rob’s home chapter the Toronto one and isn’t Steve’s the Boston one? If so, isn’t this a little misleading?

    Wouldn’t this be more genuine content if, instead, Rob were visiting a chapter in Florida and Steve visiting a chapter in California?

    Or, is my observation about clarity and honesty really unimportant?

    Thoughts?

    1. My apologies for the confusion; it was not my intention to mislead anyone with that paragraph at all. I believe those are indeed their respective chapters.

      As reported in a previous blog post, Steve also presented to the Carolina chapter in August and the New York Metro chapter in June.

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