Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication

We’re delighted that Christina Sun, who completed the Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication and earned her BA in English in 2016, has returned to our campus as a master’s student in the MFA program and as the PWTC program’s teaching associate. She brings with her real-world experience (three years as a technical writer at athenahealth) combined with a creative writer’s skill in narrative. Her classes have received universal praise from her students, who speak highly of her enthusiasm and concern for their intellectual and academic well-being.

Graduates of the Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication now number more than 400, making for a professional network spanning many fields and many countries, with graduates working in Germany, Israel, Scotland, and Spain. Each year several return (in person or of late, remotely) and share with current students their perspectives from technical writing and UX design, commercial and academic publishing, law, and medicine. Among the visiting luminaries this year was Chana Zolty ’16, who enjoys a career in the exciting and rapidly growing field of online games and is currently a technical writing manager at Pragma Platform in Los Angeles. Chana was able to offer an entry-level position at the same firm to Patrick Olszewski ’22.

In 2022 we continued our partnership with UMass Instructional Technologies, providing our students apprenticeships and a practicum while at the same time applying best practices in UX to the university’s learning management systems, with attention to universal design, accessibility, and design justice. This year we began another interdepartmental collaboration, as current students interned with Data Science for the Common Good, a joint effort between the UMass Center for Data Science and nonprofits and government agencies working in public health, education, health and wellness, and environmental conservation. We hope that this relationship will become long-term, and that the internship will be perennial.

Job placements from spring through summer and fall were quite robust. That so many new graduates found safe harbor is evidence—as if more were needed—of their high caliber as aspiring professionals. A partial list of 2022 placements is below. Congrats to all!

—Janine Solberg and David Toomey, Co-directors, Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication

PWTC Placements for the Class of 2022 (as of July 2022)

Jillian Beck , technical writer, Teradyne Ryan D’Alleva , technical writer, Teradyne Mandy Deng , intern, Azenta Life Science

Christopher Estes technical writing intern, EDB

Alex Konecky, access services librarian, Perkins Library Duke University

Benjamin Lagasse, technical writer, VulcanForms Inc.

Victoria Okoro, UX writer intern, Rapid7

Oxford Summer Seminar

This year’s 36 seminarians had ready access to the quiet and bucolic charms of Oxford’s University Parks instead of the plethora of noisy tourist groups, back to the level of pre-pandemic times, crowding the center of the city. Despite the dramatic change of venue, trading a cozy sixteenthcentury stone college for a nineteenth-century sprawling layered brick complex, the seminar stayed the course on its well-established tradition of academic rigor and characteristic spirit of camaraderie.

Graduates of the Program for Professional Writing and Technical Communication now number more than 400, making for a professional network spanning many fields and many countries, with grads working in Germany, Israel, Scotland, and Spain.

Patrick Olszewski community technical writer, Pragma Platform

Jade Tang , commercial lines operations associate, Arbella Insurance Group

The program, almost fully back to its prepandemic attendance numbers, continued some of the traditions started because of the imperatives imposed by Covid-19 in 2021 by keeping the competition between different “houses” named after Keble’s quads (Liddon, Pusey, Hayward, and Newman) for the highly coveted House Cup. The different houses ferociously competed during trivia night, the “Amazing Race” Oxford edition, and engaged in weekly photography contests, as well as taking part in many activities skillfully orchestrated by our two dynamic junior deans, Jessica Shay

(BA English and Psychology, Seminarian 2021),and Emily McDonough (BA History, Seminarian 2021), and under the guidance of our graduate assistant, Robert Louis (PhD candidate in Comparative Literature).

The scholarships awarded through the Hofer Fund proved to be invaluable this year in helping seminarians cover important expenses mostly associated with the effect of inflation on travel costs.

The seminarians ventured out of the city of Oxford for our traditional field trips to London (week 2), Bath and Stonehenge (week 3), and Blenheim Palace (week 5). During the reading week, seminarians were allowed to travel outside the confines of the United Kingdom. Paris, Amsterdam, and Dublin were the most popular destinations amongst our seminarians.

The number of course offerings increased from the previous year due to the greater number of seminarians (8 courses from the 5 in 2021). The courses Reading Jane Austen, tutored by Dr. Thomas MacFaul, and Oxford, The City as a Work of Art tutored by Dr. Beverley Lyle, were the most popular of the program. The lectures and tutorials were delivered in the state-of-the-art classrooms found in Keble College’s H.B. Allen Center, featuring air conditioning (a very rare occurrence in Oxford). These classrooms were more than serviceable especially during the July heatwave, which saw the highest temperature ever recorded in Britain at 40.2 degrees Celsius or 104.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The seminarians were also treated to four lectures under the auspices of the British Studies Colloquium on several topics ranging from Performing Queenship about the rule of Elizabeth I (Dr. Ian Archer, Keble College) to the subversive contribution to music in Britain by the composer Ethel Smythe (Dr. Jonathan White, Corpus Christi College), all related to the colloquium’s theme “Women in British History.” These lectures were followed by the seminar’s traditional formal dinners hosted in the majestic Keble Hall.

The 2022 Oxford Seminar, characterized by both the continuity of well-established traditions and the unprecedented move to a new home, proved to be a great success. This bodes well for the future of the UMass Oxford Summer Seminar as it enters its 56th iteration in the summer of 2023, the second year of many to come at Keble College.

—Philippe Baillargeon, Director, UMass Oxford Summer Seminar