Current Overview of Academic Certificates in Technical and Professional Communication in the United States

Lisa Meloncon

Abstract

Purpose: This paper provides a current overview of graduate and undergraduate academic certificates in the U.S. It details information about the current number of certificates, requirements, and courses, both required and elective.

Method: The study employed qualitative inquiry methods based primarily on textual analysis and the deployment of codes to assign a summative attribute for course types.

Results: The field presently offers 110 certificates, which represents a growth rate of 186% for graduate certificates and a growth rate of 191% for undergraduate certificates.

Conclusion: Certificate curricular data show that, unlike other degree programs, there is still no consensus on what a certificate should be and what courses should be required. Questions are offered to help the field start conversations about certificates.

Keywords: undergraduate degree programs, graduate degree programs, academic certificates, trends in U.S. curricula

Practitioner’s Takeaway

• Affords hiring managers a better understanding of what it means to have a certificate in Technical and Professional Communication.
• Provides a better understanding of curricular practices in U.S. certificate programs at both the graduate and undergraduate level, including online programs.
• Offers questions that require the collaboration of practitioners to help answer to update and/or revise curricula.

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Introduction

Since the last field-wide curricular survey of academic degree programs and certificates in 1997, the field of technical and professional communication (TPC) has experienced a growth rate of 166% (Meloncon, 2012). During the last 15 years, research studies have looked at undergraduate programs (Allen & Benninghoff, 2004; Harner and Rich 2005; Meloncon & Henschel, 2012; Rainey, Turner, & Dayton, 2005; Whiteside, 2003) and graduate programs (Kim & Tolley, 2004; Meloncon, 2009; Wilson & Ford, 2003). However, an academic growth area that has received little attention is academic certificates (Nugent, 2010).

One reason that the field may not have produced a comprehensive overview of certificates is that the certificate landscape is a complicated one. As its name implies, the certificate attests to a certain level of achievement or a certain level of knowledge in a particular area. A certificate serves a different function from certification, which implies stringent requirements by a professional organization or nationally recognized entity.

Historically, TPC has had two types of certificates: those awarded by some recognized body for continuing education or professional development and those awarded by academic institutions. Certificates offered for continuing education by various organizations are usually marketed by focusing on the course. Certificates for continuing education vary in type and duration, usually driven by the recognized body that will “certify” the information. An example of the latter is the STC’s “online certificates” for those who complete a short course in a designated topic. The courses are divided into 90-minute sessions and require from 5 to 8 sessions. Participants must “log in for all sessions” to receive credit. The benefit of this continuing education initiative is that it focuses on a specific topic. One could potentially argue that certificates offered by academic institutions provide more breadth, while certificates offered as professional development or continuing education provide more depth within a subject.

Academic certificate programs, on the other hand, are designed to provide certain skills and knowledge without having to complete a full undergraduate or graduate degree curriculum. Undergraduate students can complete a certificate and gain an extra credential upon graduation, and students, who already have a degree, may return to complete a graduate certificate as a way to update skills, earn a promotion, or change careers. The certificate remains an educational program with specific outcomes and objectives. These outcomes are exemplified in the language used to market academic certificate programs. At the graduate level, institutions use language that identifies their target market as “working professionals,” “those who are already working,” or “students beyond the BA level,” and emphasizes the benefits of the certificate such as “brush up on writing and editing skills,” “seek professional training…to advance their careers,” or the “development of a professional portfolio of work.” When describing undergraduate certificate programs, schools highlight specific skills such as “writing and editing skills” or they take the broader approach that a certificate “can easily accompany the completion of most other degrees.” This language used to “sell” the certificate is important because institutions market their certificates by touting the “importance of skills and concepts, not specific courses” (Norman & Wells, 1997, p. 149).

Norman and Wells (1997) reported the last field-level review of academic certificates, and it only included information on the number of certificates being offered and two brief “institutional profiles.” A lot has changed in the last 15 years. In what follows, I provide an informational report detailing the number of certificates at the undergraduate and graduate level, the names of the certificates, an overview of field-wide curricula, and information about certificates offered totally online. Also included are admission requirements for graduate certificate programs. Finally, a discussion of the data and questions for the field are posed.

Study Method

The certificate data presented are part of a larger study of U.S. programs in TPC. The study method had four stages: gathering programs and requirements, verifying programs, compiling courses, and coding the courses. A working list of U.S. four-year institutions was compiled by combining the schools listed on the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing Web site, Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication Web site, and the Society of Technical Communication academic database; searching online using phrases such as “degrees in technical writing” (and various combinations of degree types, program names, and order) and scrolling through approximately ten pages of results to catch additional programs; cross-checking information from Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System listing of degrees awarded; following list-serv discussions that pertained to programmatic and curricular questions; and combing through conference proceedings for mentions of new programs and changes to existing programs.

With the final working list of TPC programs, the most recent institutional catalog or bulletin available online (verified in March 2012) was located and saved. This saved copy was used for data analysis. As the official declaration of an institution’s programs and curricula, the catalog serves as a quasi-legal contract between the institution and a student. As a public record, the catalog verifies and supports the legitimacy of the academic enterprise: if TPC appears in the catalog, it is a real category. Additionally, catalogs also are a distinct genre with similar characteristics that make finding and comparing data easier (Frank, Wong, Myers, & Ramirez, 2000). As an institutional artifact, the catalog often is archived either electronically or in the institution’s special collections. Having these long-term records means the data and subsequent findings are based on documents that are not ephemeral (for example, department Web sites or program checklists) and the study’s research method is fully replicable (going forward and backward).

From the catalogues, which represent either academic year 2010-2011 or 2011-2012, the most basic information about the degree or certificate such as its exact name, type (for example, bachelors or certificate), and the institutional entity that administers the degree. For degree requirements, the method followed previous scholarship (Harner & Rich, 2005; Meloncon, 2009) and data collected included items such as hours to degree, internship requirements (if any), and cumulative experience requirements (if any). Additionally, data was gathered on online degree programs, since online education continues to be a topic of conversation within TPC, as well as in all of higher education.

With requirements of each program in hand, the author verified that the degree program was a TPC program or certificate and those results were inter-rated by an identified TPC scholar and an outside rater. At the program verification stage, the method is closely aligned to previous curricula work, especially the Academic Programs in Technical Communication series (Geonetta, Allen, Curtis, & Staples, 1993; Kelley, Masse, Pearsall, & Sullivan, 1985; Pearsall & Sullivan, 1976; and Pearsall, Sullivan, & McDowell, 1981), and the follow-up to these four texts, Keene’s (1997) Education in Scientific and Technical Communication: Academic Programs that Work. The primary criterion in all five of these works, as well as our own, is that the institution had to offer a TPC degree in a general sense (Keene, 1997, pp. xi-xiv). This means that the degree program includes a wide range of courses that would be recognized as courses appropriate for a TPC degree, e.g., courses in technical writing, courses that integrate technologies used in the profession, and courses focused on genres (that is, reports, instructions) common in the workplace. In the case of disagreement or when questions were raised, the author and raters worked together until an agreement was reached.

Schools that offer general writings studies programs were excluded. Several institutions offered a certificate that included one or two courses in technical communication with the remainder being journalism and/or creative writing courses. Institutions that offer specialized certificates were also excluded. For example, Southern Polytechnic State University (SPSU) awards a graduate certificate in technical communication. This certificate was included in the data. SPSU also awards certificates in four specialized graduate certificates (visual communication and graphics, content development, instructional design, and communication management). While these types of certificates are clearly technical communication, the focus of this study, as with previous curricular research, is on TPC degree programs in the broadest sense. Maintaining the research methodology of previous curricular scholarship does two important things. It provides a way to compare data across time, and it provides the field a much-needed overview of technical communication certificates. (With a solid understanding of general certificate programs, future research studies should explore more specialized certificates.)

Institutions for the certificate data were also verified based on the enrollment and/or admission status for students. One factor that distinguishes certificates from continuing education or professional development certificate courses is the necessity for students to be admitted to and enrolled at the institution. For undergraduate certificates, students must be concurrently enrolled as a degree-seeking student. If the institution did not have this requirement, it was excluded. For graduate certificates, students must have a BA/BS degree (or an advanced degree in an unrelated subject) and apply for and gain admission to the graduate school. (See Section below on Admission requirements.) If the institution did not have these two requirements, it was excluded. For example, UC Extension (2008), which is the continuing education arm of the University of California system, “provides innovative learning programs for adult learners.” While the courses required for the certificate seemed comparable to other schools, the extension does not require either concurrent enrollment in a degree program for an undergraduate certificate or an existing degree and admission for a graduate certificate.

With a final list of verified institutions (undergraduate n=67; graduate n=43), the next step was to compile all the courses offered. Courses were divided into two main categories: required and elective. Required, as the name implies, includes courses listed in the catalog as required to complete the degree. The required course listing is comprehensive. The elective category includes courses listed as possible electives or encompasses groups of courses from which students are asked to choose one or two. This part of the study was very messy as there is little to no consistency in how programs address electives. At one end of the spectrum are programs that prescribe all courses to be taken in the major (that is, there are no electives). In the middle are programs that offer relatively few TPC courses and/or provide a comprehensive list of electives, which made data collection comparatively simple. At the far end of the spectrum were large programs with a plethora of electives, which required that the entire list of course offerings from the university catalog be examined. Courses were included and coded if they had not previously identified under required courses. Thus, the elective category is representative of courses across the field, but it is not comprehensive.

In the final step of the study method, the courses were coded. The process of turning course titles into quantifiable data involved coding each course by assigning it a general category. Previous scholarship helped to establish a baseline for general coding categories (Harner & Rich, 2005; Meloncon, 2009). Codes needed to accurately classify the type of courses offered, while limiting the number of codes to generate meaningful data. Course titles and accompanying course descriptions were used to assign a course to a code category. In some instances, to capture as much specific information as possible, it was necessary to use a primary and a secondary code. For example, a course was coded as “genre” to capture the quantifiable importance of learning different genres in TPC, but adding a secondary code enabled more specificity as to the type of genre course being offered. For instance, a course titled “Grants and Proposals” was assigned the primary code of genre and the secondary code of proposals. The author, another TPC scholar, and an outside rater created the code categories. The author coded the courses for the data presented here and another TPC scholar and an outside rater verified those codes.

Overview of Certificates and Curricula

Basing their numbers on data gathered in 1994, Norman and Wells (1997) reported 23 undergraduate certificates and 15 graduate certificates. Currently, there are 67 undergraduate certificates and 43 graduate certificates. Thus, the growth rate for undergraduate certificates is 191%, and the growth rate for graduate certificates is 186%. This growth rate makes it more imperative for the field to have a better understanding of the curricula of academic certificates. The following sections discuss

• Names of certificates
• Hours needed to complete the certificate
• Information on required and elective courses within curricula
• Online certificate programs
• Admissions information for graduate certificates

Certificate Names

Figure 1 and 2 show what institutions are naming their certificates in relation to the key terms of technical, professional, writing, and, communication.

Professional writing is the most commonly used name for the undergraduate certificate (33%) and graduate certificates (35%). Technical writing and technical communication, when combined, account for 25% of undergraduate certificate names, while technical communication accounts for 28% of graduate certificate names. Examples of the other words included in the names of certificates are editing, rhetoric, and publishing. Three graduate certificates include international in their name. When compared to master and bachelor’s degree programs (see Meloncon, 2009; Meloncon & Henschel, 2012), certificates show more agreement on names.

Figure 2 illustrates the percentage of certificates that use writing and/or communication in their name.

Including writing in the name is the most common approach. At the undergraduate level, 73% of the certificates use writing in the name, while 49% of graduate certificates do.

 

Number of Hours Needed to Complete a Certificate

Figure 3 shows the number of hours needed to complete the certificate. At the undergraduate level, almost three-fourths of the schools require 15 or 18 (which is 5 or 6 courses) hours for completion. While at the graduate level, almost three-fourth of the schools require 12 or 15 (which is 4 or 5 courses) hours for completion. Even though there is more variation in the number of hours for completion at the undergraduate level, the large majority of schools fall within the 12-18 credit hour range. The question then becomes what types of courses are available to students, which is the subject of the next section.

Required and Elective Courses in the Curricula

One of the primary research questions that drove this data collection was “what do curricula look like at the field-wide level?” The information in Table 1 shows at a glance the percentage of institutions that require a certain course or offer that course as an elective. For example, if a TPC program administrator was considering revising her certificate curriculum, then she could know that 28% of graduate certificates require an editing course. (Because the number of courses varies, the percentages do not add up to 100%.)

Table 1. Required and Elective Courses at the Undergraduate and Graduate Level

Generalized course topic	Graduate certificate required N= 118	Graduate certificate elective N= 218	Undergraduate certificate required N=192	Undergraduate certificate elective N=329
Advanced technical writing	12%	7%	13%	16%
Basic	30%	7%	51%	25%
Collaboration	0%	2%	0%	7%
Communication	7%	7%	4%	12%
Composition	5%	5%	3%	3%
Creative writing	0%	7%	0%	24%
Cultural studies	0%	7%	3%	12%
Document/Information design	28%	28%	22%	28%
Editing	28%	33%	37%	21%
Ethics	5%	5%	0%	10%
Genre	19%	63%	24%	51%
Global/intercultural	2%	14%	0%	3%
History	0%	5%	0%	0%
Internship	12%	33%	13%	27%
Intro. technical communication	21%	7%	19%	3%
Independent study	0%	0%	0%	4%
Journalism course	2%	7%	3%	22%
Linguistics	2%	9%	4%	24%
Management	12%	26%	0%	12%
Other	2%	12%	1%	9%
Persuasion	2%	7%	6%	12%
Presentations/oral comm.	2%	7%	1%	7%
Professional development	0%	0%	1%	0%
Publish	0%	5%	1%	3%
Research methods	19%	19%	4%	9%
Rhetoric	14%	23%	10%	25%
Style/prose	0%	5%	9%	12%
Teaching	2%	14%	0%	0%
Technology and tools	7%	14%	10%	24%
Theory	5%	21%	0%	4%
Topics	16%	40%	9%	21%
Usability	5%	7%	0%	7%
Video	0%	0%	0%	3%
Visual rhetoric	7%	21%	10%	7%
Web/multimedia	9%	42%	18%	36%
Writing	0%	2%	4%	4%

 

Since the number of hours and subsequent number of courses are so limited, most institutions craft their curricula to limit students to a narrow range of courses. Since many schools dictate the courses students can take, I wanted to determine if there were any commonly required courses or “core courses” (Meloncon, 2009). Unlike master’s degrees and undergraduate degrees, the only course that could be concerned a “core course” is the basic course at the undergraduate level. Otherwise, there does not appear to be a consensus on what “core courses” should be included in a certificate’s curriculum. However, there are courses that appear with greater frequency at both the graduate and undergraduate level. See Table 2.

Table 2. Burgeoning Core Courses in Graduate and Undergraduate Certificate Curricula

Generalized course topic	Graduate certificate required	Graduate certificate elective	Undergraduate certificate required	Undergraduate certificate elective
Basic			51%*	25%
Document/Information design	28%	28%	22%	28%
Editing	28%	33%	37%	21%
Genre	19%	63%	24%	51%
Web/multimedia	9%	42%	18%	36%
* core course

The five courses in Table 2 can be considered burgeoning core courses because they are the most frequently occurring and are found at over 50% of the schools as either a required or elective course. This frequency indicates institutions do share some fundamental understanding that these courses can prepare students to successfully enter the job market. A brief overview of what the general course category means is warranted.

• Basic: this is the introductory course in technical communication that provides an introduction to key concepts of purpose and audience and also provides practice in the production of various types of documents commonly associated with technical communication.
• Document/information design: this course focuses on the practical production of designing documents (or online materials) in a visually appealing and usable way. It appears to offer a combination of theory and practice. Theory in this sense means focusing on how to design documents to help the end-user access and use the information; practice means using a variety of tools to produce professionally designed documents. Several of the course descriptions I spot-checked used the name information design to mean the same thing as document design.
• Editing: As this category title implies, this is an editing course, and course descriptions indicate the editing process starts at large order concerns such as organization and moves toward lower order concerns such as grammar and usually focuses on large-scale issues all the way through sentence level issues.
• Genre: Courses coded in this category include all courses that focus on one of the three major generic categories—instructions, proposals (including grants), and reports, as well as specialized genres such as promotional writing or science writing.
• Web/multimedia: This category is a catchall for courses that contain one of these words in the title of the course. The emphasis in these courses seems to be on the front-end design and usability of Web sites as well as writing for online audiences.

Online Certificates

It will come as no surprise that there are an increasing number of certificate programs offered totally online. Table 3 includes schools that offer complete online certificates.

Table 3. Institutions that Offer Online Graduate and Undergraduate Certificates

Graduate certificate institutions		Undergraduate certificate institutions
Arcadia University		Black Hills State University
Bowling Green State University		Cal State Dominquez Hills
East Carolina University		Metropolitan State University Denver
Louisiana Tech University		Minnesota State University, Mankato
Minnesota State University, Mankato		Purdue University Calumet
Murray State University		Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
New Jersey Institute of Technology		Southern Polytechnic State University
Northern Arizona University		University of Maryland University college
Southern Polytechnic State University		University of Massachusetts Lowell
University of Central Florida		Washington State University Pullman
University of Texas El Paso		West Texas A&M University
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Of the12 graduate institutions, 9 offer a face-to-face degree programs of some type, and of the 11 undergraduate institutions, 8 offer face-to-face degree programs of some type. For six institutions, the online certificate is the only TPC degree program offered. The institutions that offer some other type of TPC program face-to-face use the same courses for multiple programs. Said another way, the online certificate programs were not developed as distinctly different from face-to-face degree programs.

Admission to Graduate Certificate Programs

Practitioners (with an existing undergraduate degree) may find graduate certificate programs appealing for any number of reasons such as updating their skill set, a refresher of their skill set, certification to gain a promotion or raise, or certification to change jobs, to name but a few. However, practitioners may also hesitate to explore this option because they think admission requirements too cumbersome. Unlike admission to graduate programs (see Eaton, 2009), applying to certificate programs requires less paperwork, and in many cases, no standardized test like the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) or even a writing sample. (In addition, most schools are flexible with admission requirements for certificates so be sure to contact the certificate coordinator to get the most accurate information.)

While the admission requirements may not be as involved as master’s degrees, students are required to apply and be admitted to the institution to pursue a graduate certificate. All institutions do, however, require a completed application for admission and usually, an application fee (as listed). Table 4 lists admission requirements for schools offering a graduate certificate.

If students wish to continue with their graduate studies and complete a Master’s degree at the same institution, the majority of institutions will apply all courses taken for the graduate certificate toward a Master’s degree. However, once that decision has been made, students must then complete the admission requirements for the master’s degree, which are different from what is described in Table 4. (See Eaton [2009] for more information on admission requirements for Master’s and PhD degree programs.)

Table 4. Admission Requirements for Graduate Certificate Programs

University	Application fee	Personal statement	GRE	Writing sample	# Recommendations
Arcadia University	$20	Y	N	N	2
Arizona State University	$70	N	N	Y	3
Auburn University	$50	Y	N	Y	3
Boise State University	$55	Y	N	N	3
Bowling Green State University	$30	N	Y	N	3
East Carolina University	$60	Y	N	N	3
Eastern Michigan University	$30	Y	N	Y	2
George Mason University	$60	N	N	Y	3
Illinois Institute of Technology	$40	Y	N	N	2
Kansas State University	$40	Y	Y	Y	3
Kennesaw State University	$60	Y	Y	Y	N
Lawrence Technological University	$50	N	N	N	N
Louisiana Tech University	$40	N	N	N	N
Madonna University	$25	N	N	N	N
Milwaukee School of Engineering	$0	N	Y	N	2
Minnesota State University, Mankato	$40	Y	N	N	N
Missouri University of Science and Technology	$50	Y	Y	N	3
Murray State University	$30	N	N	N	N
New Jersey Institute of Technology	$60	Y	N	Y	1
Northern Arizona University	$50	Y	N	Y	N
Northern Illinois University	$40	N	Y	N	2
Northern Kentucky University	$50	N	N	N	N
Old Dominion University	$50	Y	Y	Y	2
San Diego State University	$55	N	N	Y	3
Southern Polytechnic State University	$20	N	N	N	N
Stevens Institute of Technology	$60	N	N	N	2
University of Alabama, Huntsville	$40	Y	Y	N	N
University of Central Florida	$32	Y	Y	Y	2
University of Cincinnati	$45	Y	N	Y	3
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth	$60	Y	N	Y	3
University of Minnesota	$75	Y	Y	Y	N
University of Nebraska, Omaha	$45	Y	N	Y	N
University of North Carolina, Charlotte	$55	Y	Y	N	3
University of Texas, El Paso	$45	Y	N	Y	N
University of Washington, Seattle	$50	Y	N	N	N
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee	$56	Y	N	Y	2
Western Carolina University	$45	N	N	Y	N
Western Illinois University	$30	Y	Y	Y	3
Westminster College	$50	Y	N	Y	2
Wright State University	$25	N	Y	N	N
Youngstown State University	$30	Y	N	N	N

Discussion and Questions for the Field

In what follows, I discuss the data and offer questions for the field—academics and practitioners alike—to consider. The questions posed below are not meant to be comprehensive nor are they meant to indicate that these are the most pressing questions. Rather, the questions are meant to instigate field-wide conversations about curricular concerns.

Certificate Names

In academic circles, discussion of names of certificates, as well as degree programs, dates back to the first days of Council of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (Pearsall, 1974). Those discussions continued intermittently in the literature and in conference conversations until Johnson (2007) approached the issue directly. He discussed the issue of naming from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, and in doing so, he highlighted a quite practical concern about naming, that is, “naming has political consequences” (Johnson, 2007). The politics of naming is evident on the professional side of the field as evidenced in the STC’s work to compel the Bureau of Labor Statistics to update the entry in the US Occupational Outlook Handbook (Martin & O’Sullivan, 2007). In both cases, naming concerns revolve around key terms—technical, professional, writing, and, communication. Based on the data (Figures 1 & 2), the following questions arise:

• What is the driving force behind the academic propensity to name certificates professional more so than technical?
• What are or will be the ramifications of this naming practice for the field in the future?
• How do potential employers perceive a professional writing certificate as it compares to perceptions of a technical writing/communication certificate?
• What are additional “political consequences” of certificate names within the academy and outside of it?

Number of Hours Needed for Completion

Figure 3 shows the number of hours needed for certificate completion. Undergraduate certificates, on average, require 1-2 more courses than graduate certificates. This seems to indicate that academic planners believe undergraduates need additional coverage in topics related to technical communication. Or it could be based on institutional guidelines that require undergraduate certificates to include a minimum number or hours. The existing curricular literature lacks a discussion of hours’ requirements. But, but even if institutions have little control over the number of hours required to receive a certificate program, the field should be asking questions about hours and certificate programs such as

• How do hours’ requirements dictate the choice of courses required in a program?
• What is the rationale for so few courses (most common is four) at the graduate level?
• Conversely, what is the rationale for common hours at the undergraduate level?
• Do people who hire students with certificates have a sense of what a certificate means in regards to the number or hours and/or do they even ask questions regarding the number of hours completed?

Required and Elective Courses

At the undergraduate level, one core course has been identified: the basic course. As an introduction to the practice of technical communication, it should not be surprising that this course is a core course of the undergraduate certificate curriculum. Since the undergraduate certificate is generally marketed as a complement to other degree programs, providing a basic overview is a good way to ground the curriculum. However,

• Why does this course, or one like it, not appear in the graduate curriculum, especially when many certificates are marketed as a way to change careers?
• What is the content of these courses and how closely does it align to practice?

With the increasing emphasis on the visual and the growing amount of data generated across fields and industries, the appearance of courses on document and information design are a good sign. However, based on the course descriptions, there is much ambiguity about what is actually taught in these courses. Questions for the field include:

• What is being taught in these courses? And does the content match the visual and data demands of the 21st century technical communicator?
• Should curricula include a greater emphasis on the trends in “big data”? (Lohr, 2012)

The large emphasis on genre courses (combined required and elective for graduate certificates 82%; combined required and elective for undergraduate certificates, 75%) seems to indicate that certificate curricula understand that students need to understand the wide variety and kinds of documents they will be asked to write. Undergraduate curriculums show a greater number of required courses in primary genres while at both levels schools show an emphasis of having a wide range of courses focused on more specialized genres. The most common genre courses in the graduate curricula are courses on instructions (51%) and proposals (37%). At the undergraduate level, the most common genre courses are instructions (28%), proposals (19%), and reports (18%). In 2005, Rainey, Turner, and Dayton received 67 survey responses from technical communication managers. These managers provided a list of information products produced to include pdf documentation, manuals, and online help, (326), which bodes well since many schools have courses focused on these types of documents. While it seems industry focus and academic focus align on the topic of instructions, the larger question remains

• Is the emphasis on genres a good curricular and practical move?
• What approaches are being used to teach these genres?
• What other genres need to be included in the curricula more prominently?

Only 9% of graduate certificates that require a course focused on the web, but 42% offer it as elective. At the undergraduate level, a web course is required at 18% of programs and as an elective in 36%. Currently, the web is such an integral part of the work of technical communication that these numbers, especially the low number of required courses, raises questions about the role of web development courses. Questions for the field include

• What should the role of web courses be?
• Should writers and communicators be required to know how to build Web sites? Or should writers simply know how to write for one?
• What other web related topics should be included in the curricula?

Other Courses of Note. Other courses outside of those that appear most frequently that merit discussion are internships, topics, and rhetoric. Internships are required in 12% of graduate certificates and are offered as an elective in 33%. At the undergraduate level, they are required in 13% of undergraduate certificates and are offered as an elective in 27%. TPC has a long history of including internships as requirements or highly recommended electives in academic programs (see Munger, 2006; Savage & Seible, 2010; Sides & Mrvica, 2007). However, as Bloch’s (2011) analysis of internship reports show, the internship also requires substantial work on the side of the faculty, the student, and the sponsoring organizations. Thus, are internships a good curricular fit for certificate programs?

Topics courses are those courses in which the topic changes each time the course is taught. From an academic standpoint, topics courses can be used to pilot a new course or they are used to offer coverage in current or innovative areas within the field. Graduate (16% required/40% elective) and undergraduate (13% required/27% elective) certificates have a fairly large presence of topics in the curricula. While we know these courses are offered, what we do not know is what the “topics” are of these courses. For example, are their common topics in topics courses? Are topics courses how curricula are staying current in the field or are they serving another purpose? Why is it that so many institutions have these courses listed in certificates when, as previously discussed, certificates seem to be more narrowly defined curricularly?

Rhetoric courses are courses that generally have rhetoric in the title. Sample course titles include, “Foundations of Rhetoric” (undergraduate); “History of Modern Rhetoric” (undergraduate); “Rhetorical Criticism” (graduate); and “Rhetorical Theory” (graduate). While these courses are not as common as the burgeoning core courses in Table 2, they are common enough, combined required and elective at 37% of graduate institutions and 35% of undergraduate institutions, to ask the questions: what is the place of theory in certificate curricula? Is rhetoric the best theory for certificate curricula?

Following are two sample curricula that are representative of graduate certificates. Both require 15 credit hours, which was the most common number of hours, and one is in Technical Communication and one is in Professional Writing, which were the two most commonly used names. See Table 5.

Table 5. Sample Curricula for Graduate Certificates

	Technical Communication	Professional Writing
Required	Technical rhetoric and applications	Research methods
	Technical editing	internship
	Technical communication ethics
Electives	Select Two	Select Three
	Introductory seminar in technical communication	Grant writing
	Visual rhetoric in print document production	Issues in professional writing
	Oral communication for technical communicators	Fieldwork in community literacy
	Writing for the computer industry	History of rhetoric
	Technical publications management	Histories of writing technology
	Instructional design
	Topics in on-screen document production

Following are three sample curricula that are representative of undergraduate certificates. Two are in Professional Writing, which is by far the most commonly used name (33% of all certificates) and one requires 18 hours and one requires 15 hours, which were the two most common number of hours. The other is in Technical Communication (12% of all certificates) and requires 18 hours. See Table 6.

Table 6. Sample Curricula for Undergraduate Certificates

	Example 1 Professional Writing 18 hours	Example 2 Professional Writing 15 hours	Example 3 Technical Communication 15 hours
Required	Scientific and technical writing	Professional writing	Principles of multimedia writing
	Technical writing	Document design	Principles of technical communication
	Advanced composition	Study of language
	Technical editing	Study of rhetoric
	Rhetoric of style	Journalism production
Electives	Select One	Not applicable	Select Four
	History of modern rhetoric		Principles of visual communication
	Organizational communication		Principles of technical editing
	Independent study		Manuals and instructions
	Introduction to linguistics		Computer documentation
			Business reports

The curricula of the two undergraduate certificates in professional writing, Example 1 and Example 2 are more structured. Example 1 requires 5 out of 6 courses needed for completion, which means students can only select one elective. In Example 2, students have options and are required to take the prescribed list of courses. Example 3 offers the most flexibility with only 6 of 18 hours prescribed as required. However, while these examples are representative of professional writing and technical communication certificate curricula, there is no statistical significance between the kinds of courses offered and the name of the certificate.

With a snapshot of several certificates’ curricula and the already discussed questions about the lack of consistency in curricula, it is also important to consider an alternate scenario. In discussing the two institutional programs they profile in their chapter on certificate programs, Norman and Wells (1997) pointed out “both [programs] were very carefully planned to fit the department and the local market” (p. 148). While the data presented here is meant to provide a field-wide overview, the data by themselves cannot express the specifics of the “local market” or the possibilities of other institutional pressures on curricula. Thus,

• What information about local markets and concerns should researchers gather?
• Then, how can that localized information be put to use for field-wide concerns?

Still considering certificate curricula as a whole, the field needs to be self-reflective, especially considering the idea that “employers complain that there is no consistency among graduates and very little assurance that a graduate has a minimum set of capabilities” (Davis, 2002, p. 143). So some questions for the field include:

• What should minimally be taught in a certificate program at the graduate and undergraduate level?
• What are the expectations from those who will be hiring certificate graduates and how do those expectations match what is being taught?
• What differences exist in the levels of instruction at the graduate and undergraduate levels? (Keene, 1997).
• Should the field be concerned that there are not “core courses” in certificate programs?
• Do certificate programs help to prepare certificate for certification?

Online Certificate Programs

According to the Sloan Consortium’s annual report on the state of online learning in the U.S., 6.1 million students took an online course in fall 2010, which is a 10% increase from the previous year (Allen and Seaman, 2011). Since the inception of Sloane’s annual report seven years ago, the numbers of online courses has risen steadily. Thus, the number of online certificate programs in technical communication should come as no surprise. At the graduate level, 28% of certificates are offered wholly online, while 16% of undergraduate certificates can be completed online. In their marketing and information materials, several institutions highlight that some courses can be completed online. This option provides another level of flexibility in completing the certificate, and also indicates the institution’s potential and interest for moving toward a complete online curriculum.

Up to this point, the field has had no comprehensive data about online programs so it is impossible to determine trends or growth rates in online programs. Since certificates are the most common academic program offered online, the present study will provide a starting point to track the growth and to monitor trends these programs. Questions for the field include

• How many online certificates can the field sustain?
• What are best practices for teaching TPC in online settings?
• How can we address ongoing issues of quality and rigor from various stakeholders?
• What professional development opportunities exist for faculty being asked to teach online? What roles should professional and academic organizations play in helping to train online instructors?
• What are summative and formative assessment techniques that we can use to assess online programs?

Sustainability and Professionalization

Upon consideration of the field-wide growth rate of certificates, we may need to consider the issue of sustainability raised by Johnson (2004) because it ties directly to one of the most pressing questions that came out the data collection: Can such rapid program expansion be sustained, and if so, how can we develop best practices or state of the art techniques for TPC program administration? Sustainability, in a general sense, is the capacity to maintain a certain process or a state indefinitely, and it is a term closely identified with ecology and sustaining current inhabitants within their environments. Sustainability efforts are intimately tied to the future. Johnson questioned whether rapid growth is good for the field and whether this growth could be sustained. He writes, “the perseverance to sustain our programs, and to anchor our power and status in and out of the academy, will require deep and sometimes painful assessment of who we are and where we want to go” (p. 113).

A potential “painful assessment” not previously addressed but directly connected to issues of sustainability is the limited number of course offerings and availability of qualified faculty. Many institutions have started certificate programs because of demand and/or the potential to generate revenue, that, for example, require four courses with only six courses in technical communication available. What this means for students is that they are limited in the types and kinds of courses they can take. From a program sustainability standpoint, this can be viewed as a positive for sustainability because it means the department is not over extended. However, on the other hand, it may indicate that department has limited resources, including teaching capacity, and cannot handle more course offerings. It also suggests that academic certificate programs may be unable to adequately adjust course offerings to changes in the professional landscape, which means certificates lose one of their biggest marketing promises, to offer current skills and knowledge necessary for the workplace.

Part of Johnson’s’ question about what the field wants to be intersects with ongoing issues of professionalization. For example, Coppola’s introductions to two special issues of this journal (2011, 2012) stress the “growing collective consciousness, but certainly not collective agreement, for professionalization” (2011, p. 283) of the field. In both special issues, considerations of the current state of the field as a profession took center stage. However, the place of academic programs, including certificate programs, was conspicuously absent. Of all the academic degree programs, the certificate can be “precisely the point at which industry and academic goals and interests have the opportunity to meet” (as cited in Little, 1997, p. 281), and in meeting and through discussion, it provides a location to develop a greater sense of the profession and the value-added technical communicators can bring to an organization. This collaborative approach could enact what Kline and Barker (2012) called a “professional consciousness.” Kline and Barker argued that collaboration (based on Wenger’s community of practice) could “encourage professional consciousness that leads to increased professional status” (p. 32). What better location to establish a joint enterprise than under the auspices of training the next generation of technical communicators? And embedded within this opportunity is a chance to explore answers to the question, “Given the conflicting demands of academe and the world of practitioners, how can program planners best create quality programs?” (Keene, 1997, p. 193). To which I would amend, how can program planners create, adapt, and sustain quality programs that meet the diverse needs of stakeholders?

Conclusion

Similar to the findings of Norman and Wells (1997), academic certificates still fulfill the same three goals: to enhance a degree, to train people making a career change or to provide professional development opportunities for working professionals (p. 126). Certificates are an important touchstone in the field because more so than other academic programs they sit at the intersection between academia and industry providing an interesting mix of training and education, a bridge between theory and practice. Thus, having current, comprehensive field-wide data about academic certificate programs affords an important opportunity for those who direct and teach in academic programs, for local practitioners and for hiring managers and other stakeholders to discuss the curricula and expectations and sustainability of such programs in times of limited resources. In addition, it provides an opportunity to discuss the current and future roles of certificates within the field. While the “questions for the field” asked above have no easy answers, entering into conversations that explore potential answers can only enrich and forward technical communication as a vibrant, diverse, and vital professional and academic field.

Acknowledgments

This research was partly funded by the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication. The author gratefully acknowledges the research assistance of Anastassia Bowers and the comments and suggestions from the reviewers.

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About the Author

Lisa Meloncon is an STC senior member and professor of technical and professional writing. Her main interest is in health, environmental health, and medical communication, and the impact of communication in delivering complex information to lay audiences. She also owns a technical communication consulting firm. Contact: meloncon@tek-ritr.com, phone 803-370-0008.

Manuscript received 19 May 2010; revised 23 June 2012; accepted 25 June 2012.